The following is part of a 10-week series on the history of UW-Stout football. The series, which will run every Wednesday in The Dunn County News, is a collaboration with the The News, the Dunn County Historical Society and UW-Stout Athletics. The Stout football program will mark the centennial with a reunion celebration on Homecoming, Saturday, Oct. 1. For more information about the reunion, call the UW-Stout athletic office at 715-232-2224.
Editors note: The 1982 Stout-Oshkosh football game made national television. The following account, written by Chuck Buelow, director of University Relations at Stout, covers preparations made during the week leading up to the game. Incidentally, the Blue Devils won.
For Stout and Menomonie, Football Television Odyssey II began routinely.
UW-Stout athletic director Warren Bowlus hurried up the steps to his office in the fieldhouse to answer a ringing telephone shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday (Sept. 28).
“Warren? This is Rex Lardner. I'm with CBS Sports in New York.”
“Hello Rex.”
“I wonder if you would allow us to broadcast your game with Oshkosh as part of a national double header.”
“We'd be very interested.”
“The problem – the game would have to be switched to Sunday. Is that impossible?”
“Nothing's impossible.”
Lardner informed Bowlus that there would be a $30,000 guarantee from CBS for the game. With that, Bowlus was off and running. His first stop was head coach Bob Kamish. “He thought I was kidding”, Bowlus said. “I knew he wasn't kidding”, Kamish said. “Warren doesn't kid.”
Bowlus quickly got administrative approval to make the game change to Sunday. Next, he called Wisconsin State University Conference Commissioner Max Sparger. Sparger wasn't entirely surprised by Bowlus' information. He had heard a radio report the night before indicating that CBS might telecast several NCAA Division III games. He thought there was a good chance that a WSUC game would be one of those televised.
With the National Football League strike, the major networks have been left without a television schedule. They have scrambled to fill their Sunday and Monday time slots since the strike began last month. CBS has a contract to televise NCAA games. Within that contract is an obligation to televise four Division III games along with the Division I games that they broadcast.
Oshkosh Approves
After his call to Sparger, Bowlus contacted Jim Flood, athletic director at Oshkosh. Oshkosh's approval to change the game to Sunday was obtained. The $30,000 guarantee from BCS, according to WSUC rules, would be divided down the middle with each school receiving $15,000. By 1:30 p.m., only 40 minutes after he had received the call, Bowlus was back on the phone to Lardner in New York with the message that all systems were “go.” With that, the work began.
All the arrangements that must be done for a Saturday afternoon game had to be switched to Sunday. Scorers, timekeepers, field officials, grounds crew, security, band (including one from Prescott that was going to be a guest at the Blue Devil game), students, staff, cheerleaders, pom pon squad – all had to be notified of the change.
The news spread across the campus instantly. By mid-afternoon, some students were already painting signs to welcome CBS cameras.
Once Stout had agreed to the telecast, the race was on for my office, University Relations. I'd learned a year ago when ABC had agreed to do a regional telecast of the Stout-Platteville game that the networks' appetite for records, statistics, player profiles and other backup material can be gigantic.
I suspect that the networks do not need all the material they request. It's more of a frantic reaction to the situation they find themselves in. They are 2,000 miles away from Menomonie in some skyscraper with this vast responsibility to get a football game on the air by Sunday. Their calls to the campus help them maintain their sanity.
By mid-afternoon Tuesday, a producer, director and an assistant to the producer have been assigned to the Stout-Oshkosh game. By the end of the afternoon, most of the information requested had been pulled together with enough copies for half the people in New York City.
Early Wednesday, televised head shots had to be taken by Stout's Teleproduction Center of Coach Kamish and several key players in uniform. CBS also needed film of a previous game and a 60-second videotape promoting the campus. That material would be worked into pregame and halftime shows.
Of course, they want all of the material by Wednesday. “We'll send a courier” is a catch phrase that will be repeated time and again within the next several days. Providing a 60-second promotional tape of the campus could have been a problem. Fortunately, ABC had requested a similar tape a year earlier. The Teleproduction Center had it on file.
Selecting several key players for the taping session also presents a problem. Everyone on the team works hard. You don't want to slight anyone by not getting recognition for them. However, decisions are made. I decided to videotape senior running back Bob Johnson and Tod Zimmerman along with quarterback Glen Majszak and wide receiver Mike Kraimer, one of the leading receivers in the conference. In the elimination process, I'd overlooked Clay Vajgrt. How stupid of me. He had won three games for Stout with field goals, two of them in overtime. I felt badly when I realized I had not included him. Another member of the starting lineup, Jesse Hughes, had also been left out of the taping session. Ironically, he would go to be selected by the CBS announcers as Stout's “most valuable player.” A $1,000 scholarship would be awarded to the University in his name from Chevrolet in recognition of this honor.
The taping session turned out to be a disaster. Through a communication error, Coach Kamish didn't get the message to attend and bring game jerseys with him. The players showed up at 7:45 a.m. but because of classes, could not wait when Coach Kamish did not arrive. Later that morning, the mix up was straightened out and the players were tracked down in their classes and asked to return to the Teleproduction Center at 10 a.m. Kraimer, however, could not be found. He did not have a class that morning so the office began telephoning all of his known haunts. Later he was discovered at home sound asleep and not answering the phone. He was hustled down to the Teleproduction Center where the tape was completed.
A courier picked up the tape at noon and it was on its way to New York. On Tuesday evening, a courier had picked up the promotional tape and film of a previous game. In each case, a generous supply of records, statistics and backup material was included in the packets.
Through television commercials, we've all become familiar with overnight delivery of express packages between distant cities. It all seems so streamlined and efficient. Not so.
Generally, the courier turns out to be an individual who could get lost driving from one end of the Lake Menomin bridge to the other. When you place a package in the courier's hands, you sense that will be the last the world will ever see of it. Menomonie police had to lead a courier to my home Tuesday evening when he couldn't follow directions from three blocks away.
By Wednesday noon, CBS had changed the production staff – a new producer, director and assistant director were assigned to the Stout-Oshkosh game. With the new assistant director, the phone calls began again.
“We need rosters, up-to-date stats, flip cards and news accounts of your team.”
“Can't you use the ones I sent earlier,” I responded weakly.
“No” is the answer. “We'll have to have new ones – at least six copies of each. We'll send a courier to pick them up.” Later that afternoon, a call comes from the staff of the NFL Today show.
“Brent and Irv need backup material for your game with Oshkosh Sunday. Can you send profiles, rosters, up-to-date stats?”
“Can't you round up some of those that I've sent to the production staff?” I ask. I'm rejected again.
Of course, everyone knows the story of the fated ABC broadcast of the Stout-Platteville game a year earlier. The athletic director and my office went through. These same preparations at that time.
Unfortunately, the game never aired. A microwave signal beamed from Nelson Field to equipment in Minneapolis-St. Paul never made it. A means of getting the signal over the hills surrounding Menomonie to the Twin Cities could not be found before game time. The production had to be scraped although all the pregame preparations had been made. A chance for the Blue Devils to achieve at least regional fame had been lost on an engineering failure.
That's why the appearance of Walter Pile in my office late Wednesday afternoon seemed so important.
Pile is a field technical manager for CBS. He would be responsible for Sunday's signal. Among Pile's credits were a Super Bowl game, the Pope's coronation and the Royal Wedding in England. Could a man with these kinds of credentials fail? Within the next few days, Pile would prove himself equal to the task.
Announcers
By Wednesday afternoon, the announcers of the game, Tim Ryan and Johnny Morris, had been named. Generally, they do not do college games. They are part of the regular NFL, broadcast team. In preparing for the game, Ryan was on the phone from his home in New York already Wednesday afternoon. Could we send a pack of information – statistics, rosters or other backup material? We told him it had been sent by courier a day earlier to CBS Sports, “Good,” he said. “I'll check with the office to see if they have it.”
I was surprised I'd finally talked to someone in New York who did not want duplicate material sent. Ryan and Morris are a class act. Ryan flew to Oshkosh and spent Thursday on campus to background himself, both on the university and its team. He and Morris spent most of Saturday backgrounding themselves additionally on the Blue Devils. Backgrounding includes film sessions with the coaches along with an opportunity to tour the campus and community to gain additional insights. I was surprised to see Ryan Sunday at 9 a.m. Mass at St. Joseph's knowing his busy schedule.
By late Thursday, CBS equipment and crews began arriving. Besides a technical crew from Eau Claire, they supplemented their staff with 20 Stout students.
From the beginning, Pile was convinced he would have no trouble getting a signal out of Menomonie. The reason for his confidence was an earth station that was put in place Saturday. The earth station would beam the signal to a satellite and then to network receivers. Rental costs to CBS for the earth station ranged from $4,700 to $12,000 a day. No one seemed to know for sure. Some people said there were only four earth stations in the country. Others heard there were 12. The earth station was carried on the back of a semi-trailer. With the dish in place and pointed skyward, the contraption looked powerful enough to talk to God.
Thursday, the network flew a team to Menomonie consisting of a producer and two cameramen to put together a videotape on the campus and community. They spent more than two hours filming beautiful Lake Menomin, the Red Cedar and other scenic community areas before realizing their equipment malfunctioned. They made some adjustments and started all over again.
They looked for typical Menomonie scenery, cruising local neighborhoods and a farm to catch the flavor of Northern Wisconsin. Fifteen hours after arriving in Menomonie, they were on a flight back East to edit their material for a two-minute spot on NFL Today to be shown Sunday at 11:30 a.m.
Their work never made the air waves, at least in no recognizable form. For some reason, still unknown, the good publicity that the campus and community would have gained from their efforts never materialized.
During the week, Lee Score, executive director of the Menomonie Area Chamber of Commerce, helped iron out some of the local logistics. In addition, he wanted to come up with a T-shirt that would capture the network's attention. A year earlier for the ABC telecast he had created the “Who the Hell is Howard Cosell” T-shirt which turned out to be the hot item of the weekend. He was stumped this time.
The Sports Source came up with the best idea, a shirt with “Who Needs the NFL” blazed across the front. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune carried a picture of the shirt and CBS announcers held it up for their television audience. It was the biggest selling souvenir of the weekend.
With Stout replacing the NFL on Sunday, newspapers from coast to coast showed interest. Calls were received from as far away as Everett, Wash., and Asbury Park, N.J. Locally, papers who we had never heard from before, including the Spooner Advocate and the Red Wing (Minn.) Republican-Eagle called for advance information. Sports Illustrated, the Star-Tribune and the Pioneer Press, as well as local newspapers and Channel 13, sent reporters to cover the week's activities.
The silliest question I heard all week was one from a reporter who wanted to know if the telecast would be “blacked out” in the Menomonie area.
Blacked out? Are you kidding? For a small college athletic program, a telecast of this proportion was a dream come true. There would be no blackouts if we could help it. We would like the world to see it.
Everything seemed to be in readiness on game day. I am the public address announcer at Blue Devil games so I had a few remaining responsibilities before the broadcast.
The producer gave me a schedule: at 1:30 the two teams would leave the field and the national anthem would be played; at 1:46, the teams would return; at 1:48 there wpi;d be a re-enactment of the coin flip (optional) and, 1:50, the kickoff. CBS made two requests of me. The first, that the national anthem be played before we went on the air; the second, that the kickoff take place exactly at 1:50 p.m. We would be on the air 10 minutes before kickoff.
Unusual Choice
Oshkosh won the coin flip and elected to defend the south goal. That seemed to be an unusual choice. Obviously, it was made to take advantage of a slight wind that was blowing. As the teams left the field, I looked toward the flag at the north end of the field to determine wind direction. To my surprise, the flag was not flying.
Here we were only seconds away from the national anthem and we had no flag. I sent a runner down to the field to notify Bowlus. In the meantime, we rescheduled events to allow a jazzercise unit to perform a pregame routine before the national anthem.
When they finished, I introduced the Stout band under the direction of Lynn Pritchard and asked the crowd to join them for the playing of the national anthem. Everyone stood and faced the flagpole at the north end of the field. Almost before the first note sounded, I realized my mistake. With a good show of patriotism the band pressed on while the audience stood at attention staring at the naked pole.
Was the flagless anthem just one indication of things to come? I hoped not. Fortunately, the whole affair was not on television. The anthem was completed before air time. We would later learn that the student assigned to put up the flag before the game could not find it. It had been left up after last week's game. A Stout security officer noticed it and took it down. It wasn't in its usual place. Security helped hunt up another flag on campus. It was unfurled sometime during the first quarter.
All the commotion, anxiety and tension that accumulated during the week seemed to be recreated in the press box as the kickoff approached.
To those involved in the production, the kickoff carries all the tension of a space launching. There is no turning back.
As I watched a videotape replay six hours later, my thoughts were backed down to earth. “Gosh,” I concluded, “Menomonie is a beautiful place in the fall.”
Those across the nation who saw our fair city on television just had to agree.
