North Carolina State University Athletics
COUNTDOWN TO KICKOFF: Media Relations
9/1/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 1, 2005
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH - It's the details that make NC State Assistant Athletics Director for Media Relations Annabelle Vaughan wake up in the middle of the night, worrying.
There are so many little things to be taken care of prior to a home football game for anybody involved in stadium operations, especially when opening a new facility like the massive four-story Vaughn Towers that will debut on Sunday night against Virginia Tech, in perhaps the biggest home opener in school history.
There are about 250 credentialed writers, photographers and broadcasters expected at the game, not including the 70 or so television production crew, media relations staff, stat crew members and other volunteers. That will make things rather cramped in the new press area, which features 112 permanent seats.
For Vaughan, making sure all the little details are covered is particularly important, since the media's experience in covering the team and games create the public perception of the school and the football program. So her responsibilities go far beyond arranging player and coach interviews.
The littlest things can keep her awake.
Like what? The list is pretty amazing. It includes finding out the name, weight, height and hometown of every walk-on, who may or may not be on the sidelines of a football game. It includes finding the exact spot for the eight or nine cameras that will be on the field at Carter-Finley Stadium, including the all-important "beauty cam" that captures shots of cheerleaders or crowd shots from the stands as the broadcast heads to commercials. Sometimes, it even includes taking the temperature of a television.
(Funny story: two flat-screen televisions on press row were a last-minute addition to the new Vaughn Towers press box and had to be mounted on the side walls. Turns out, one of them was about four inches away from a heat-activated sprinkler head, so someone had to figure out how much heat the televisions emitted before they could be mounted so close to the sprinkler head.)
"You don't take a class in stuff like this," said Vaughan, a 1987 magna cum laude graduate of Clemson with a degree in English. "It's kind of nuts."
Indeed. During a half-hour conversation, Vaughan fielded calls from head football coach Chuck Amato and assistant coach Todd Stroud. Wolfpack Club Associate Executive Director Steven Ponder stopped by to drop off some parking passes, and media relations assistant Brian Reinhardt popped in twice to get approval for issuing even more media credentials.
On a normal day, Vaughan gets about 50-70 calls a day. She's stopped trying to keep track of the number of e-mails.
For the media relations staff, football season begins with the production of the media guide, the glossy publication that includes player and coach biographies, football records and a history of the program. That was difficult this year because of new NCAA regulations that limit media guides to 208 pages, so Vaughan had to decide what to leave in and what to leave out before sending it to the printer in June.
The daily preparations for the start of football season kicked into gear on July 13, when Vaughan brought in two media-training consultants from Chicago to meet with players, to instruct them on how to conduct interviews and give them a better understanding of how to deal with the media.
In late July, Vaughan and two of her staff members went with Coach Chuck Amato, linebacker Oliver Hoyte and wide receiver Tramain Hall to Hot Springs, Va., for the ACC Football Kickoff, an annual three-day trip to meet with media from around the country. This year there were more than 250 media members in attendance to gather information for stories about the upcoming season.
Things get crazy when camp begins in early August. Vaughan does a popular daily diary on the www.gopack.com about things that go on during the two weeks of camp before school starts. She tries to attend every football practice, which are closed to the media at Amato's request, to pick up details she can share for television broadcasts and keep tabs on developments on the team.
Now that the first game of the season is only a few days away - with the long-awaited opening of the new press box in Vaughn Towers - Vaughan and her staff are scurrying to finalize all the little details.
On game day, they arrive about four hours before kickoff. Each of the eight full-time members of the media relations staff has game-day responsibilities, either on the sidelines or in the press box.
Program director Caffie Darden handles the media will-call area on game day, which is set up at the media gate to hand out credentials for out-of-town media, professional scouts, bowl scouts or anyone else headed to the press box who has yet to pick up credentials.
Assistant director Bruce Winkworth oversees Roger Warren's five-person volunteer statistics crew, which for the first time will have its own private box to keep track of stats. Reinhardt handles in-game notes and announcements. Associate director Chennelle Miller will be on the opponents' sidelines and will oversee the opposing team's post-game press conference. Assistant directors Bill Newton and Pat Norris handle miscellaneous duties throughout the course of the game.
Assistant director Brandon Yopp will be on the Wolfpack sidelines as a liaison to Vaughan in the press box, to give updates injuries or any other developments that happen in the game that need to be relayed to the media.
There will also be a half-dozen NC State student assistants who will serve as runners, to get stats to the media, put out seat cards and hand out photo arm bands, putting out seating cards. Of course, the media relations student intern - starting linebacker Oliver Hoyte - won't be able help at all on game day.
When the game is over, Vaughan's staff finish the official game stats, help conduct the post-game press conference, aid writers on deadline in the press box and update season stats. And then begin preparation for the next game.
"Coach wants the depth chart and stats of the next opponent when they come off the field," Vaughan said.
And soon enough, it will be time to start preparing for basketball.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
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