Thursday March 15th, 2012
I followed the team all year and was expecting this to be another job assignment, but when I got my media pass and began to walk down stairs to the Nationwide Arena event planning area; I knew this is a one in a life time opportunity. I showed my media pass to security and walked into a sports fan version of heaven.
I walked in the media room is ten times larger than the media room at Chaifetz Arena. I run into the usual suspects that follow SLU basketball, the Post-Dispatch, Fox Sports Midwest, but then I begin to see CBS, TBS, AP, The New York Times, ESPN, Chicago Tribune, and every other major media outlet in the nation all converged into one room.
I decided to then look up, televisions everywhere broadcasting every game, not to mentioned high-definition, flat screen televisions. I was watching the first round games with national media members.
As I’m watching the games, a guy begins to stand next to me; I looked down at his name badge, Myron Medcalf, ESPN. I did not want to say anything, but in my mind I was saying, “Holy S***, I read this guy’s articles and now he’s standing next to me, should I say something? No, he probably won’t want to talk student journalist,” Turns out he is a very nice guy.
I then I turned to my right and its Mark Viera from the New York Times, but I wanted to say “Hi, I wrote a blog for you guys, do you need a new sports blogger for the Atlantic 10 conference?” We started talking and after speaking with him I started writing another blog post for the New York Times.
Finally, it was press conference time, but I really wanted to watch the end of the UNC Asheville and Syracuse game (UNC Asheville was up when I left). I spoke with most of the starters and then went to Majerus’ press conference. The poor guy seemed out of breathe, probably too many press conferences. Besides that, the press conference was a classic Majerus press conference, funny, witty, and a lot interesting questions.
One of the more fascinating questions was from a reporter who asked Majerus about Twitter. Majerus said he had no idea about Twitter and said “I can’t see this Twitter thing—you know, just went to the bench, the water was wet.” That’s basically Twitter to Majerus, the only thing he missed was a few hashtags.
After that, I posted a few articles, and went to bed. Thursday, I was on Cloud 9 living every sports fans fantasy.
