OGS did for a few years, and it can be tons of fun, but it's certainly not without a high level of stress. We reached out to some old Louisville friends to get their thoughts on what it's like to cover the madness of March in the hoops-mad Bluegrass.
Mike Mudd, assistant sports editor, the Louisville Courier-Journal:
I make it a point never to schedule a doctor's appointment or a health screening or anything like that during March. And with good reason: I would be scared to death to see what my blood-pressure reading is during these couple of weeks of March Madness.
During the three weeks of the NCAA Tournament and the boys' and girls' Sweet 16 high school tournaments, the atmosphere here in the office to produce and process all the sports sections is like watching the movie Apollo 13. It's like the controlled chaos of mission control at NASA. And much of the time, something is going wrong or not working out like you thought it would. Stories don't fit, breaking news happens, upsets happen, copy and photos run late or — even worse — they crash and disappear in the publishing system. It's all part of our own March Madness.
During a given evening in March, we may have both Louisville and Kentucky playing NCAA games, our local women's teams playing, high school state basketball tournament games (sometimes early in the tournament numbering four games a day), and that's not counting the rest of the tournaments and the rest of the sports world to try and fit into the paper. We start each day at about 5 p.m. and don't stop sprinting on our computers until about 1 a.m. During that time, we may have switched our plans how to play everything three or four times. Editors juggle up to seven or eight stories per night, and layout folks juggle up to six or seven pages.
To give you an indication of how much manpower it takes to produce all this, it's a long-standing tradition at the C-J that the entire month of March is blacked out for vacations. Reporters, editors, clerks, layout editors, head-honchos, you name it, no one is allowed to take time off. In fact, an average overtime total for the month of March just for the night sports desk can run upwards of 60-70 hours.
If you like the adrenaline of deadlines and the real rush of sustained stress, there's no better place to be than in a sports newsroom during March. It's all the more reason why I tell people I don't root for any single team to win; I root for all of them to lose!
Kent Taylor, Sports Director, WAVE-TV:
March Madness in Kentucky is just that — MADNESS!
You could work for 30 days in a row, doing your own laundry on the road. Or a last-second shot could send you home early. It's a magical time because there is so much hope and anticipation, which results in the highest of highs, or the lowest of lows. And it's like hitting a wall when it's over.
From the celebration after Kentucky won the 1996 national title, to the disappointment of Louisville getting manhandled by Michigan State in the 2009 Elite Eight.
As long as I've been in this business, I'll never have a year like 1996. My trip began with a five-hour drive to Memphis for the Conference USA Tournament. Then it was six hours to Milwaukee, where U of L needed overtime to beat Tulsa by two, then upset Villanova two days later. That meant a 12-hour drive to Minneapolis, sleeping on a cot with three to a room. It also meant that Tim Duncan and Wake Forest were next for the Cards. UK was waiting for the winner in the regional final, but the Cards fell, 60-59.
The Cats manhandled Wake, so it was back on the road. Back home, and then a 14-hour trip to New York. We arrived in Manhattan, maneuvered through the traffic and got to the Marriott Marquis in Midtown, only to find out, when we get to the third floor check in, that our engineer had switched our hotel to one adjacent to the Meadowlands across the river.
Fred Cowgill, Sports Director, WLKY-TV:
I've done TV sports for 30 years, and March Madness is my favorite event. Been to almost every major U.S. city but Las Vegas. I've seen Indiana and Kentucky win national titles. Worth all the bumps, dinners at 3 a.m., satellite feeds crashing, Internet feeds crashing, almost getting hit by lightning in Indianapolis. We also had a typhoon during our special the night UK won the title in NYC in 1996. And we almost froze to death during a special in Atlanta. Lots of memories. All worth it.