I have been very fortunate to have a long and fulfilling career in sports video production in the largest market in America – the New York market. As such, we’ve hosted a great number of major events in the area before and during my career, giving me opportunities I would never have had if I lived in, say, Tulsa, Oklahoma. I have also traveled to a few events outside of the area as a fan. What follows are the top 10 memorable events I have attended either as a fan or as a worker:
10. 1990 AFC Wild Card Game, Miami vs. Kansas City – I had been a Miami Dolphins fan my whole life, and began going to see games in the northeast and Miami with a college buddy (and lifelong friend) in the late 1980s. The team was not very good, aside from Dan Marino, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper; they could not run the ball nor play defense. In 1990, Don Shula finally began putting together a good team, and I followed them all year long, attending the NFL Draft for the first time as Miami drafted the left side of their offensive line (Richmond Webb and Keith Sims) and traded for cornerback Tim McKyer. Two weeks later I was in South Florida to shoot minicamp practices with my friend Dave Hack, who was the Dolphins’ Director of Video, because his assistant had to be out of town to attend a family wedding. To say this experience, shooting practices for a pro team, was a game-changer for me is an understatement; it was then that I realized I had to have a career in sports, no matter what. That became my goal. During the 1990 season, I attended a pre-season game in Philadelphia and the season opener in New England as well as games in Buffalo, twice in New Jersey (Jets and Giants), and Washington, making friends with some of the players, taking photos from all over various stadiums, including from the sideline. I wasn’t wealthy, but knowing Dave meant media passes rather than buying tickets to attend games. Finally, the Dolphins finished the season 12-4 and made the playoffs, hosting the Kansas City Chiefs at Joe Robbie Stadium. Because my Dad worked for American Airlines, I flew down for the game and got to cheer the Fins on to a tremendous comeback victory with Dan Marino driving the team for two touchdowns and a victory after entering the 4th quarter with a 16-3 deficit. It was so great to finally see the team in a playoff game – and to win – in their home stadium. That season set me on a course to work in sports, and I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I was in Buffalo the following weekend to see Miami fall 44-34 during a blizzard so strong that no defender could maintain footing, which was why the score was so high, but that didn’t matter after the Chiefs game. I knew what I wanted to with my life, and I went out and did it.
9. Game 4, 2002 NBA Finals, New Jersey vs. Los Angeles Lakers – I’m not much of an NBA fan, but I did get to work on the videoboard crew at the
Meadowlands Arena for the 2002 NBA Finals, and what made Game 4 most memorable was seeing the Lakers hoist the NBA Championship Trophy (ugly, as it may be – it looks like a ball teetering on the rim of a garbage can) after completing a 4-game sweep of the Nets. It’s not often you get to see team win it all, but I did on that night. I remember Shaquille O’Neal absolutely dominating the Nets for the entire series, averaging over 36 points and 12 rebounds per game because the Nets simply had no answer to Shaq. I still have one of the façade banners from the arena somewhere in my garage. The following season the Nets made it back to the Finals and fared better, but lost to San Antonio in six games with the decisive game in Texas.
8. 2021 Army Navy Game – When I was laid-off, “RIF’d,” let -go, fired, whatever you want to call it, in 2010 from my job at the Meadowlands Sports Complex because Giants Stadium had closed and the arena’s last sports tenant, the New Jersey Nets, announced they were moving to Newark’s Prudential Center for two seasons before moving to Brooklyn, I began my freelance career in earnest. One of the first freelance gigs I scored was working as a cameraman for Army football games. I was the end zone camera operator for a few years, then their replay operator for a few years before settling in as their wireless sideline cameraman, which may be the best regular job I have ever had because it was so much fun. Unfortunately, my client lost the Army gig after the 2019 season, but I had a tremendous decade-long run at West Point. Thus, in early 2021, I asked my contacts at MetLife Stadium if I could direct the videoboard show at the Army Navy
game, to be held in December. Given my history of directing events at the stadium and my history with Army football, I was granted my request. I worked the 2002 game at Giants Stadium, and while that was a great experience, I did not have the knowledge and respect for the military academies that I’d gained through working Army football in the 2010s, so the 2021 game meant far more to me than the 2002 game. I remember giving a pep talk before the production meeting with the crew, something I had never done before, to emphasize the importance of the game, how some of the men and women who would be on that field either for the academies pre-game march-on or in the game itself would leave after graduation to serve our country and come home in a casket, and that the people they would focus their camera lenses on were not mere college kids, but soldiers and sailors. I wanted them to see the faces in their lenses and realize what this game was about, and many told me that was the best pre-game speech they’d ever heard. But we have a great crew at the stadium anyway, so I knew they’d deliver and they did, in a nearly perfectly executed show, from pre-game to post-game. It was one of the most perfect shows I’ve ever been associated with, and the Army Navy show is a really long show, with crew in position for 3 hours before the game even starts. I don’t know if or when the game will return to New Jersey, but I am hoping to get on the crew for this year’s game in Philadelphia.
7. 1994 World Cup Games – The World Cup is obviously one of the biggest sports events in the world, so when the United States was named host to the 1994 World Cup, I had hoped to score tickets to a game…. To no avail, at least not through the FIFA lottery system. Giants Stadium, being the only soccer-sized stadium in the New York market, hosted numerous games, so I decided I’d try to scalp tickets at the venue, which I had done successfully in the past, never paying more than face value for numerous concerts that I’d attended. Problem was, they wouldn’t even let drivers into the parking lot without tickets. So I parked in a warehouse parking lot in Moonachie and walked a mile to the stadium where my beloved Italian squad (my mother’s Sicilian) took on Norway. I scored a $50 ticket for just $30 because there
were no fans in the parking lot looking for tickets and scalpers took a beating. It was a great time, with the Italian crowd singing and cheering the Azzurri on to a 1-0 victory. The German team advanced to the quarterfinals in what was expected to be an easy game against Bulgaria. I was dating a woman from Ireland at the time and when I told her I had gotten myself into the Italian game, she begged me to take her to the quarterfinal; she being a soccer fanatic as a European. My father’s German heritage meant that I rooted for Germany when they weren’t playing Italy, so I didn’t need convincing to execute my park-and-walk scheme one more time. Like the Italian game, the parking lot was one giant party, with a mostly German crowd downing pints and eating German food. We easily scored tickets just below face value and as soon as we got into the stadium, my date made her way to a pay phone to call her family in Ireland screaming with joy that she was attending a World Cup game. That call must have cost a fortune, back then. And that was the first time I began to realize just how much soccer meant to Europeans. That game made her summer, though I went home quite disappointed with Germany falling 2-1 loss to underdog Bulgaria after opening the game’s scoring.
6. 2000 NFC Championship Game, Giants vs. Minnesota – the 2000 Giants were not expected to be a good team, but after a 3-2 start, they went on a tear, winning 9 of their next 11 games en route to a 12-4 record and the NFC East Division title. Still, the media mocked them, calling them the worst division champ in the NFL. After winning the divisional round, once again, they were mocked as the worst team to make it to a conference championship game. That game was held at Giants Stadium, where I sat in the producer’s chair and served as music coordinator/DJ for Giants home games. It was a really fun job, playing tunes, getting the fans into the game, coordinating TV timeout activities, and cueing legendary PA Announcer Bob Sheppard, who was one of the finest gentlemen with whom I have ever worked. The Giants were hosting the Minnesota Vikings and were a home underdog because the Vikings had one of the most high-powered offenses in the NFL with Duante Culpepper, Randy Moss, and Chris Carter lighting up
scoreboards all season long. But Giants quarterback Kerry Collins played the best game of his career and the Giants defense manhandled the vaunted Viking offense. The score was 35-0 Giants at halftime, which turned the second half into a party every time I got to play music during a TV timeout. I remember playing “We’re Having a Party” by local favorite Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at the two-minute warning and having 78,000 fans singing along. But the best experience that day, for me, was in the postgame. The Giants had won the game 41-0 and Bob Sheppard left at that two-minute warning to beat traffic out of the parking lot. After the game, an NFL official brough up a page of copy for the PA Announcer to read, and since we no longer had a PA Announcer, I became the PA Announcer. Telling fans that they could pick-up championship merchandise for, “your 2000 NFC Champion New York Giants” elicited a massive cheer; what a rush! The fans hung on my every word when I told them to turn their attention to the stage where “NFL on Fox host Terry Bradshaw will now present the George Halas Trophy to your 2000 NFC Champion New York Giants.” That announcement brought the house down the way Paul McCartney does when he ends Live and Let Die with a pyrotechnic fusillade. It was so damned awesome. I’ve never experienced anything like that before or since.
5. The 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games – Long before meeting my wife, Susan, she and her law school roommates bought tickets to attend the Atlanta games, trying to score tickets to premiere events but ultimately receiving tickets for badminton, baseball, volleyball and team handball. By 1996, Susan and I were engaged and her friends had lost interest, so the two of us went and had a ball. Fortunately, we got to visit Centennial Park (so named because this was the 100th anniversary of the first modern Olympics) before it was bombed and closed. Going to the park was a fun experience in and of itself, meeting people from all around the world and trading pins. Oh, and scalping tickets. I managed to deal our extra tickets while also dealing some of the tickets for events we were going to attend, wheeling and dealing and working my way up to those coveted medal-round gymnastics tickets;
yup, I scored! We did enjoy team handball and sat with the girlfriends of two of the Team USA players, who were super nice and explained the game to us to an understandable level. Fortunately, we had left the park a few hours before the bombing and witnessed neither the carnage nor the panic that ensued when the park was evacuated. I had always wanted to work an Olympics and still have not done so, but in truth, attending was better because I got experience multiple events in multiple venues while hanging out and partying instead of working in one venue for two weeks.
4. 2019 PGA Championship – I serve as a freelance video news journalist for a company based in London, and they send me to championship-level events and press conferences. They sent me to my first golf tournament, the 2016 PGA Championship in nearby Springfield, NJ at the Baltusrol Golf Club. It was a great time, covering the tournament for the entire week, but I was new to covering golf and spent the week learning as I went. They next sent me to cover the 2018 U.S. Open at Shinnicock Hills Golf Club in the Hamptons, which was equally memorable to my 2016 PGA Championship experience. But when I was assigned to the 2019 Championship at Bethpage Black, I was now a multiple-major veteran. But what really made that experience better than my previous major tourney experiences was that I received a photgrapher’s lanyard and was permitted to work “inside the ropes” to cover the tournament. Though I couldn’t shoot video on competition days because television had exclusive video rights on the course, I could take pictures. Further, a vendor I know at Sony was on-site loaning camera gear and gave me a camera that shoots great photos and video. As a result, I did my usual work, getting hours of footage on the three practice
days for my client as well as post-round interviews with dozens of golfers through the competition, I also managed to shoot some 1,600 photos on the course over the 4 days that I had the camera. What’s more, Brooks Koepka, one of my favorite golfers, won the Championship, his fourth major in two years (he won the Open a year prior at Shinnicock) in dominating fashion and some of the other golfers gave great quotes about him. It was a really great week that left me looking forward to the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot and the 2022 PGA Championship at Trump National. Unfortunately for me, the pandemic meant no media at Winged Foot and the PGA’s decision to go woke moved the PGA Championship away from Trump National to somewhere in the Midwest. Missing those two majors makes me appreciate the week I spent at Bethpage even more.
3. Super Bowl XLVIII – Yes, the game itself was terrible, with Seattle destroying Denver by a score of… well, I don’t even remember. I remember the Broncos were down 3 touchdowns at halftime but thinking that with Peyton Manning, the Broncos could still come back; then Percy Harvin took the second half kickoff and ran it back for an 87 yard touchdown. How do I remember that detail of the game? I was a cameraman for the MetLife Stadium videoboard show; the 50-yard line game camera operator, in fact, and that kick return was the hardest play to cover, panning to my right to follow the kick, the following Harvin from the east end zone to the west
end zone, a good 120 degree pan. I had always wanted to attend a Super Bowl, going back to when I was a kid watching those championship Miami Dolphins teams win back-to-back, but never made it. Tickets were too expensive. But working the game was incredible. We were there the Thursday before the Super Bowl to build and test cameras, then Friday for rehearsals, including two fly-overs and three halftime rehearsals from the foot of the stage – we were told that anyone who had a cell phone out would be fired immediately because they didn’t want any footage out before the Bruno Mars/Red Hot Chili Peppers performance on Sunday. On Super Bowl Sunday, our call time was 9am, and after firing up cameras again and a long production meeting, we had 5 hours to walk around and take everything in, which we all did. To date, Super Bowl XLVIII remains the only time I ever ran camera at an NFL game.
2. 1995 Stanley Cup Finals, Game 4, New Jersey vs. Detroit – I was working for the New Jersey Devils at the time as a freelance video editor, creating content for the video board show all season long. The Devils had made it to the Stanley Cup Finals one season after losing the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals to the New York Rangers in heartbreaking fashion in overtime in Game 7 (and I was there, at the game, crushed because I wouldn’t be working the Stanley Cup Finals). In 1995, the Devils swept the Detroit Red Wings, four games to none, winning the clinching game four by a score of 5-2, so the
1. 2022 Kentucky Derby – Susan and I were married on Derby Day in 1997; Silver Charm won the race and is still alive today, retired at Old Friends Equine Facility in Kentucky. Thus, for our 25th Anniversary, I decided to take
Susan to the 2022 Kentucky Derby earlier this month. It was just a phenomenal experience. We attended the Kentucky Oaks the day prior, so we spent two days at America’s most iconic track, chatting with people in our trackside courtyard section on the rail and at the Galt House hotel’s Conservatory bar. And what a Derby to attend, with longshot Rich Strike winning at 80-1 odds in front of a crowd of 147,294. The food offerings were delicious and the bourbon was flowing as all food and beverages were included in the price of the admission. It was a phenomenal time we hope to repeat in 2024 at the 150th running of the Derby. Hope to see you there!
Yes, I have been very fortunate in my career, which is why I really enjoy sharing my experiences with sport management students at Rutgers University, where I teach part time. I genuinely hope that my students get where they want to go in their sports careers and exceed my experiences, and some are well on their way. It took me decades to get to my first Super Bowl and golf grand slam events, but I’ve had students who have worked their first Super Bowl, PGA Championship and Hall of Fame induction ceremonies before they’ve graduated! They are getting tremendous experience and building a resume before earning their degree, and that’s how college should prepare students for their futures. But I’m not done yet. I still hope to do some more championship-level events, including the World Series, which is the one event that has eluded me so far.
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