The Rest Of The Story

Most cougar fans will be recognize the names of Sammy Linebaugh or Toby Christensen among other names who have worked the sidelines. This next season cougar nation will become more familiar with Holly Rowe, Jenn Brown and Erin Andrews to name a few. Many fans might consider those individuals simply pretty faces or that former athlete filling in downtime during a slow game. Have any of us truly considered the amount of work that goes in behind the scenes? How do they always find that star players mother sitting on the 40 yard line section B row 34 out of 62,384 fans in the stadium? How did they know the tuba player was the running backs brother? Yes they may pop up between downs and only briefly. What do they do during their off airtime? Those individuals soon as they receive their assignments often will dive into mountains of previous stories, google every players name and begin prep work looking for possible insights that others may miss. And on gameday itself? They will begin working the lobbies and sidelines relentlessly gathering all the possible information asking the questions (team trainers, sports information directors, athletic directors, equipment managers) so us as fans will know the rest of the story.

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat may have been coined approximately fifty years ago by Roone Arledge but those words also exemplify everything that these sideline journalists bring us even today. The passion. The triumphs. The tragedies. Those slobberknocker hard hitting sounds. Things we can expect to be addressed at halftime for each of our teams. So next time we see that reporter asking the tough questions on a controversial call or relaying a simple tidbit we as fans will know the rest of the story.