High praise for the running clock

Another Friday night, another high school game for The Orange County Register.

I got my first district game, an Orange County League tilt between Saddleback (of Santa Ana) and Costa Mesa, which was 2-5, but lost each of its last two games by two points. You can get some of the play-by-play from my story at http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/costa-33983-mesa-yard.html, but what that won't tell you about is the 45 minutes that featured one play or how the "running clock" rule saved my bacon.

With 36 second left in the first half, Saddleback lost one of its leading rushers (one minute after another went down) to injury, and it took a bit of time to set his dislocated arm get take him off the field. Then Saddleback let the clock run down and took a penalty before punting to end the half. That was followed by 25 minutes of halftime for Costa Mesa's homecoming. That put my 10:30 deadline in danger.

But Costa Mesa was able to get a 35-point lead late in the third and boosted it to 42 points before the fourth quarter started. Several of the writers at The Northern Virginia Daily had told me about the Virginia High School League's running clock rule, and I knew California had a similar regulation, but this was my first time to see it in play.

After the start of the fourth quarter, if the lead is 35 or more, the clock runs except for scores, changes of possession or injuries. Incomplete pass? Keep that clock running. Out of bounds? Out of luck (if you wanted the clock to stop). That speedy fourth quarter got me out of Jim Scott Stadium in time to get my stats in on time, and I wrote my story in 13 minutes. Still missed 10:30, but not by much.

High schools have had this rule for baseball and softball for years. It is usually 10 runs in baseball and 15 in softball, and can end a game after five innings (instead of the regulation seven). Reporters sometimes call it the "slaughter rule," although the official name is the "mercy rule."

I won't tell you what I called it Friday night, but I was glad the CIF had mercy on me. Whoops.

Brethren Christian redux

I finally got to see a team for a second time, and it was quite a different game. Just a few weeks after a penalty-filled, clock-stopping-for-incomplete-passes, three-hour game that then included the guy at Starbucks in Lakewood turning off the internet on me, Brethren Christian looked like a different team, running the ball most of the time and dominating Fairmont Prep. Here's a link to the story.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/christian-33696-fairmont-brethren.html

"Mike & Molly" & Me

On Wednesday night, Christina and I did a very "tourist-in-LA" thing, driving out to Burbank to see a taping of a sitcom.

Having already done "Jeopardy!" and "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," I was interested in how a sitcom is put together. The answer is "somewhat haphazardly, but very carefully."

We arrived at Warner Brothers as requested just after 5 p.m., and within an hour we were being seated with about 200 other people at Stage 14, which was home to "Friends" before "Mike & Molly" began to tape there in 2010.

The warmup guy was OK, although Christina and I both said we liked Chunky B from the Ferguson show better. Of course, Chunky gives everyone candy, tells a few bad jokes and then the taping begins, and both times we saw Ferguson they pretty much kept the cameras rolling and were done in little more than the time it takes to watch the show at home.

For "Mike & Molly" the warmup guy had to keep us entertained for about 3 1/2 hours. The first half hour we watched an old episode to get into the right mood for that night's show. Then came the time for the cast introduction. While they were getting ready to film live scenes, we watched two pieces of the show that had been taped earlier so they could record the audience's laughter.

The first of the live scenes took place in the restaurant that Mike and Carl always hang out in. They get a surprise visit from their captain, who was played by special guest Gerald McRaney. The scene was funny and went off flawlessly, although the warmup guy said they would do it a second time just to make sure they had a copy in case something went wrong in post-production. While it was tough to laugh as much the second time, hearing and seeing the same stuff, the audience did its best.

After they moved to the other side of the stage, they did a second scene in the kitchen of Molly's house. That created a little more difficultly. After the first take went flawlessly, the writers spent a few minutes working on new lines, which ended up being funnier, but also required several takes because Swoosie Kurtz and Katy Mixon had a little trouble with them. It was the kind of stuff you'd see on a bloopers show, and at one time Billy Gardell (Mike) even exclaimed, "We DO have rehearsal."

Eventually that scene was done and they moved on to another live scene at Mike's mother's house. After similar line-changing and several takes, the actors were able to complete the scene and the audience was fed (a slice of pizza and a bottle of water).

All the while, the warmup guy tried to keep the audience distracted with bad jokes, magic tricks and getting people to dance, or perform odd talents or talk about where they were from. He also gave out a ton of gift bags and mugs, trying to get the audience to compete for them.

Christina and I were more interested in watching the action on the set, with all of the production people going about their jobs and new lines were tried out. In a way, the rewriting helped, because when the audience thought it had heard everything, some new line caught us off-guard and actually made the scene better.

Following the pizza break, things went a little more smoothly, with a live scene, a taped piece and two more live scenes presented in their proper order so the audience could follow the story. The final bit was also taped, and after the laughter was recorded, the cast did a curtain call and we were on our way.

The total time commitment was close to five hours, so I couldn't see this being a regular thing, but I'm sure I'd go again with someone visiting from out of town, or if there is a sitcom we just HAVE to see in person.

The episode, by the way, is titled "Mike's Boss," and is scheduled to air on CBS at 9:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on Monday, Oct. 29. I'm sure Christina and I will watch with particular attention to see how everything is sewed together.

More from the gridiron

Spent another Friday night under the lights, this time at El Segundo for a game against Laguna Hills. In Virginia, teams routinely travel 50 miles to play someone else, but around here this is pretty rare. Turned out to be a great game, which Christina also enjoyed. Here's a link:

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/segundo-33512-second-laguna.html

Three-hour game!

The NFL has nothing on some of the high school teams here in Southern California. On a recent Friday night the game I covered took three hours, and that was with 12 minute quarters and no commercial timeouts. How did that happen? Lots of scoring and lots of incomplete passes to stop the clock. This all added up to to some serious issues making deadline, but I got a story in the Register none-the-less. Enjoy.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/christian-33378-anthony-brethren.html

Back To My Roots

I'm still looking for a full-time position, but in the interim I have picked up some freelance work with the Orange County Register, covering high school football. It reminds me of Fridays in Luray, when I would work until 4 or 5 p.m., grab something to eat and then meet up with John Natalie wherever it was that we were doing a game. I had to be a double-threat, radio sideline reporting while keeping play-by-play for my stories in the Page News and Courier. Sometimes I had to be a triple-threat, also filing a story for the Potomac News or Manassas Journal-Messenger on deadline that Friday. Anyway, I thought blog readers might like an easy link to this past Friday night's story.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/lutheran-33208-crean-dominates.html

Delay means Olympic-size frustrations

I have sat back and watched the past two weeks as more and more Olympics viewers are figuring out something I learned 16 years ago while viewing the Atlanta games: NBC doesn’t care about sports fans. The Peacock figures it already has us in its back pocket.

Actually, I haven’t really sat back. I have been following the #nbcfail hashtag on Twitter, where what NBC says is a loud minority has been chronicling the stupid decisions and mistakes that treating the Olympics like a reality show has caused the network. I have been contributing to the discourse on occasion. For those who care, in my opinion tape-delaying anything in 2012 is stupid, but putting soccer and basketball on the former Versus and not breaking for commercials in-game (or schmaltzy features at all) is brilliant.

I thank NBC Sports Network that it is a Ryan Seacrest-free zone. When the online streaming works, such as at 1 o’clock in the morning, it is great. Other than that, I cannot think of anything good to say. Marquee events that the rest of the world -- an audience of some 2 billion -- can see live are postponed six and sometimes 12 hours in the east, and another three in the west. Friends of mine don’t want “spoilers” because they think they can avoid finding out the results for that length of time.

The breaking point for me was a poll that showed a strong majority in favor of BOTH live and tape-delay presentations. This sounds great to me. Let me watch it live on the big TV in the living room when it happens and show it to the 9-to-5ers after dinner if that is the way they want it. According to the Gallup poll conducted Aug. 4-5, 59 percent of those questioned agree while just 12 percent of respondents favored NBC's current approach. Another 17 percent of respondents favored only live coverage, so that means nearly 80 percent want access to the events as they happen.

How does NBC respond to this? Dick Ebersol, who oversaw the Peacock’s Olympic coverage through the 1990s and the first decade of the new century, told blogger Joe Posnanski two days ago that the network doesn’t see this as a sports event. Ebersol told Posnanski, a former Kansas City Star sports columnist:

“People talk about how we should treat this like sports? You know, we’re getting an 18 rating some nights. Do you know what rating we would get if this was not under the banner of the Olympics? We’d be lucky to get a 1 rating for some of these sports.”

Yes, their ratings are great. A big reason why is that the network shuts off all other options on my HDTV by 5 p.m. (since I live in California). But when the winners and losers are determined after the money is counted, people will point fingers at how wrong-headed NBC was in the grand scheme of things. The Olympics ARE sports, they ARE news. And when something smells like day-old news, it is.

Instead, the network relies on a heavy mix of swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball, diving and athletics. Hours after the events are over, editors slice and dice the actual competition, maybe even create some fake drama,  add a healthy dose of feature stories, and you have the perfect recipe for non-sports fans. As for those who want to actually see the events without all the distractions, they’ll watch like sheep because they have no other option.

But for those paying attention, what NBC is doing is not day-old news, it’s decades-old. In 1996, the network used what it called a “plausibly live” broadcast to delay swimming events by a couple of hours (you could still see daylight around the outdoor swimming venue at 10 p.m. Really?) and that famous Kerri Strug vault that may or may not have lifted the U.S. women to gymnastics gold had taken place earlier in the afternoon, not at 11:30 p.m. And this was for an Olympics that was in a time zone where live coverage was not only possible, but plausible.

So for those who think things will be different when NBC broadcasts the Olympics from Brazil (which shares a time zone with New York and Atlanta) in 2016, who think that #nbcfail will ultimately change things, I offer the example of Atlanta and every other Summer Games since then when I say NBC doesn’t care about sports fans' opinions in this matter.