Kyle Field's Jumbotron: Making it All Happen

The Jumbotron control room resembles a typical, albeit "compact", television control room. It is located on the 9th level of the Kyle Field Press Box.

Andy Richardson, Television Production Manager in the Texas A&M Video Lab, has been at all of the Aggies' games this season at Kyle Field, usually arriving over four hours prior to kickoff.

He hasn't gotten to see a snap of live football action though. Why?

Well, Richardson is the gameday producer for Kyle Field's Jumbotron and, along with a crew of about 15 others, puts in a very long day's work helping enhance the experience of Texas A&M football.

Fans and even players and coaches have come to expect the instantaneous replays throughout the game, continuous score updates from around the nation, and more. It can't be that hard, right? Just push a couple of buttons and there you go.

There is so much more to it than that. Camera operators, cable grips, producers and graphics coordinators all work together to help make the Jumbotron, installed at Kyle Field in 1996, enhance the gameday experience of the fans.

"Our main job is to try and give fans a close-up view of game action that they can't get at their seat," Richardson said. "It gives them a sense of excitement, and also allows us to showcase the traditions and all the other things that make Kyle Field a unique place to watch a football game."

Richardson and seven others spend upwards of five hours in the "control room", tucked up into the far south corner of Level 9 in the Kyle Field press box. Inside that little room, no bigger than about 8 feet wide and 20 feet deep, is where all the magic happens.

From high atop Kyle Field, those running the big board communicate with three camera operators, who are each assisted by cable grips. There is one camera on each side of the field, along with a main camera up top that captures game action and shows all of the replays.

Richardson and some of his staff will begin planning for a gameday the week prior to kickoff. Each game has its own special elements that will be incorporated into the pregame and in-game ceremonies-for example, the Virginia Tech game earlier this season featured a military jet fly-over and a huge American flag spread out across the field.

A few days before the game, the staff will prep the big screen, basically testing different features in a dry run that will check for any problems. An engineer from Sony, the maker of the Jumbotron screens, comes in each home game week and checks for problems. Different data is also preset into the computers for easy access on gameday.

Now it's Saturday. A lot of the Texas A&M athletic staff will put it a long day in and around Kyle Field, and that's no different for the Jumbotron crew.

"Crew call is four hours prior to kickoff," Richardson said. "As soon as everyone gets to the stadium we have a meeting to go over the pregame ceremonies and whatever else is going on that week."

At that meeting, everyone is briefed as to where they have to be during the pregame presentations, and once that is done the pregame setup begins. The crew sets up the cameras, checking the sound and the quality of the picture.

Following the setup, another short meeting is held to take care of the rest of the game action, especially halftime and postgame, discussing where things such as halftime presentations and the postgame press conference will take place.

The board shown controls what goes out over the big screen and all the TV monitors in the stadium. The staff in the control room can see what every camera is showing at once and select what they want to broadcast out over the Jumbotron.

And, before they know it, march-in begins one hour before the game and the Jumbotron is "on the air", so to speak. From that moment, all of the pregame action is outlined down to the second.

"The pregame timing is all coordinated, through [Associate Athletic Director] Mike Caruso and myself down to the second the players run onto the field," Richardson said. "From a game management standpoint, that screen stays active from the time march-in starts until Coach Slocum finishes talking to the media. All of the action within the stadium is coordinated to give fans a great gameday experience."

The control room is also in communication with the Aggie Band via a headset to avoid any sort of audio conflict during a timeout. If the band is set to play, the Jumbotron crew will make sure they are not airing any sound over the speakers.

As the game progresses, a lot of people keep an eye on the big screen to watch for replays. Close calls are the ones fans want to see the most, but don't look for a nice slow-motion view of the play. The Big 12 Conference has set guidelines regarding replays, allowing schools to show replays as many times as they want and at whatever speed they want, unless it is deemed "controversial".

In those instances, schools are asked to show the play just once and at regular speed. It is a quick judgment call that has to be made by the Jumbotron crew, most of the time arising in possession and interference issues.

The staff is always looking for that one special shot, be it in the stands or on the sidelines, that really conveys to the fans the emotion of the moment.

"After Ja'Mar Toombs scored the touchdown against Oklahoma in 2000, our camera on the sideline got him waving a 12th Man towel with a big smile on face," Richardson said. "The stadium just exploded. (Things like that) give fans a chance to see the excitement in the players eyes and can transform the entire stadium."

A new feature, added following the Texas game in 2001, is a live feed of the postgame press conference that Aggie players and coaches conduct with the media. Fans that stick around in the stands can listen to the A&M team and staff talk about what just happened on the field.

Does having a game selected for television change things? Not really.

The Video Lab provides network producers with different visuals used during the broadcast, things like campus shots, and the truck in turn provides the control room with a feed of what's going out over the air. This gives the Jumbotron crew a few more camera angles to choose from.

It can get very hectic in the control room, especially since the staff up there gets no breaks. There is always something on the big screen, even during halftime. And, realizing they are in essence producing a live television broadcast helps the Jumbotron crew focus on the job at hand.

"One thing about working television is that we are doing a live event," Richardson said. "Part of that is you can anticipate things, but you never know what's quite going to happen. You have to be ready to react, with different graphics, or go into timeout mode, and so on, so you're working all the time.

"It's a hectic place to be but I think it's a lot of fun. To an outsider it may look like chaos, but I consider it organized chaos."