Behind The Scenes Of The Lounge Broadcast
May 19, 2022 | Baseball, Athletics, Joel Coleman
A team effort brought an idea to life.
STARKVILLE – Chad Dacus came to the ballpark prepared.
The longtime Mississippi State Bulldog fan, who mans his One Tortilla Grill just beyond the centerfield wall at Dudy Noble Field, arrived at the stadium on Tuesday night knowing important work was going down in one of the outfield rigs near him.
MSU broadcasters Bart Gregory and Charlie Winfield were announcing Tuesday's game on SEC Network+ from State's storied Lounge in the confines of Winfield's rig. Dacus made sure the boys didn't have to work on an empty stomach.
"I kind of feel obligated to Bart," Dacus joked. "We have to feed him and keep him happy."
On the menu? Wild turkey carnitas. Here's how they came together.
"I took some wild turkey legs and thighs, put it on the smoker a little while and stuck it in the Dutch oven," Dacus explained. "Cooked it down with some onions, some lemons, limes, juniper berries, black pepper, a couple of beers of course, and some turkey broth I'd made at Christmas. I cooked it for about four hours [Monday] night, then pulled all the meat. I took all of that liquid and put it in a blender. Blended all of that back together and stuck it on the meat, then brought it out here and put it on the flat top and made tacos out of it."
And as for Gregory's review: "I didn't know what I was eating, but I knew with Chad cooking it, it was going to be good."
Dacus has a reputation for making magic happen when it comes to food. He can turn seemingly any mixture of ingredients into a top-notch dish.
It's not unlike Mississippi State's talented broadcast and video operations team, who can turn virtually any set of circumstances into a remarkable viewing experience. Here's a quick look at how that group delivered once again on Tuesday and allowed Gregory and Winfield to bring the Lounge through the screen right to anyone watching.
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Those who helped orchestrate Tuesday's broadcast included Senior Associate Athletic Director of Broadcast Operations Bennie Ashford, Director of Broadcast Technology Jonathan Ashley, Coordinator of Broadcast Technology Sam Fisher, as well as Zac Aughtman and William Lindsey. Their efforts combined to deliver on a unique idea that'd only been discussed for awhile before Tuesday night took it from being talked about to getting done.
Now, putting together a broadcast in the outfield isn't easy. However, it's easier at Mississippi State than it'd be at a lot of other places.
"The baseball stadium is wired up for broadcasts," Ashley explained. "Unfortunately, those positions are all where we need cameras. Fortunately though, for us, we have so much infrastructure and we did such a good job getting that infrastructure in when they were building the stadium. Thanks goes to Bennie on that one for sure. So, we had audio and video connections that were available to us at the outfield camera location. So basically, we just ran two cables from there – one for video and one for audio – to kind of cable the [broadcast] area for video and audio."
Still, in order to announce from the Lounge, Gregory and Winfield had to sacrifice a convenience or two – perhaps most significantly an outback circuit.
"[An outback circuit] mutes the main mic out and gives another output to [the announcers'] mics to speak to our production team," Ashley said. "So, in general practice, someone would key down and say something like, 'I'd like to look at that replay again.' But that's not on the air. You'd never hear that as the audience, but we hear it back in our production room. So, we weren't going to be able to give them that ability."
Gregory and Winfield didn't mind though.
"Working with Charlie and Bart on that and texting back and forth with them in the planning stages of this like, 'Hey guys, are you going to be OK not having this?' They agreed to that, and they were willing to work with us to get this thing pulled together," Ashley said.
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Once the game began, there wasn't much change from a usual production standpoint. The wiring had been done. A setup of equipment brought over from softball's Nusz Park was put in place. From there, it was all systems go, save for a new wrinkle or two to set this broadcast apart.
"It was really just a broadcast as normal," Ashley said. "We probably put [Gregory and Winfield] on the air more than we normally would just because it was such a unique environment and a unique perspective of the game. We had two cameras out there for them. One was what we call a snoop cam, which gives us the ability to look at the talent and put the talent on camera while they're still in their seated position and they don't have to get up or stand in front of a camera or move positions or take their eyes off the field. Our second camera was basically our open shot talent setup shot, where basically the talent faces the camera and looks and you kind of get brought into the broadcast that way. That was then set up to kind of overlook them, so you got a perspective of what their actual view was of the field during the game broadcast."
Overall, Ashley said things went smoothly, only needing a tweak or two here or there as daylight turned to night.
"As your shading and your light goes away, we'd have to adjust some cameras and things like that," Ashley said. "But other than that, it was very smooth. It was a normal broadcast is a good way to put it. It was almost like we were up in our broadcast booth."
Chalk it up as another successful trick for MSU's broadcast and video operations magicians. This is a unit that takes great pride in their work, and it always shows, just as it did again on Tuesday.
"We always want to try and make every broadcast like it is on a big network," Ashley said. "We want that quality, even in our smaller broadcasts, because we don't want the average fan to say, 'Oh, this isn't looking as great as it should', or, 'What happened from this broadcast to this broadcast?' We want to really keep a consistency across all of our stuff and we want it to look great. We all work behind the scenes to make everything look as best as it can and for each production to seem flawless. Obviously behind the scenes we see some things that happen that your average fan may not pay attention to or see, but we take a lot of pride in what we do and how we accomplish things and how our broadcast looks to our average fans as well as the fans that watch every single broadcast."
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So how was it all for the men behind the mic – a couple of guys who've spent many days in their life in that same outfield they've now had the chance to call a game from?
"It was just awesome for me," Winfield said. "The thing I think that made it so special was we didn't run everybody out of their spots. The people who were always here were still here. They kept doing their thing and we just tried to blend in like we were just two guys watching a game."
Added Gregory: "I thought it was exactly how we thought it was going to be. It was just two guys watching the game from the outfield. It was great to see a lot of friends that came up to us between innings. Some friends tried to steal food during innings. It was a special night. We tried not to make it too much and just be a part of the ballgame and not make it be about us being in the outfield."
Both men loved the experience. But both also were very quick to point all the credit to Ashford, Ashley, Fisher, Lindsey and Aughtman.
"What those guys did to be able to pull it off was great because Charlie and I had the easy job," Gregory said. "For us, when the game started, we were just talking about the game."
Of course it was a contest in which Mississippi State claimed a 14-4 victory over North Alabama. Or put another way, Dawgs win again – on the field, in the broadcast booth and from the production room.
