For the first time in the show's history, ESPN sent its "College GameDay" program to the state of Wisconsin Saturday in advance of Marquette's Big East showdown against Pittsburgh. Most people tuning into the show see the finished product and have little idea just how long of a process getting the show on the air is.
OnMilwaukee.com got permission to spend a day behind the scenes with the GameDay crew and documented the day from start to finish. Live television may have been the inspiration behind the phrase "hurry up and wait". For fans, crew, talent, and staffers, GameDay isn't just a show; it's a multifaceted event that takes an awful lot of effort, planning, and adjustments. Here's an inside look at just what it's like spending nearly 24 hours at the Bradley Center.
* * *
It's a little before 4 a.m. Saturday morning, and I am relaxing in bed in my downtown apartment, which happens to be just a couple hundred yards from the Bradley Center. Already, I can hear stirring outside. A look out the window verifies my suspicions; fans are already lined up to get into the Bradley Center.
Andy O'Connell is one such fan. Dressed in a stylish, pinstriped navy suit - complete with pants tucked into his blue-and-gold socks - and a brown derby, O'Connell has been camped out since a little before 7 p.m.
"We've been doing it all year," O'Connell said. "So, why not get up for this? College GameDay doesn't come very often, so we're here."
While O'Connell and friends waited outside in the March cold, a full crew was busy inside the Bradley Center, getting the building ready for the doors to open at 7:15 a.m.
Since the Admirals had a game on Friday night, stage setup -- which usually begins on Thursday night -- couldn't start until after the ice was covered following the game, and Marquette's court was put down. Making things more complicated, a post-game concert by REO Speedwagon took a little longer than expected to clean up, so crews couldn't really get going until 3 a.m.
A crew member explained that cables for cameras, power, and audio were strung through the building while the floor was set up. He said that most workers arrived around 3 a.m. and probably would finish up sometime after midnight Sunday.
The stage is, for the most part, set by about 7 a.m. Rece Davis, Jay Bilas, Hubert Davis, and Digger Phelps are in a Bradley Center dressing room that has been transformed into a high-tech command center, complete with wireless internet and four televisions equipped with DirecTV. In this room, the talent and producers will go over the rundown for the 10 a.m. live broadcast, as well as plan for taped segments that will air throughout the day on the entire family of ESPN Networks, as well as ABC.
7:38 a.m. -- The mid-court seats of the Bradley Center are filling up fast. The Marquette students who have been lined up outside all night aren't too loud yet, but they're probably just trying to warm up.
"I think my mouth is frozen," explained one student trying a quick nap. "I'll be fine by 10."
To pass the time, the 1977 National Championship game between Marquette and North Carolina is shown on the big screen.
7:44 a.m. -- A group of guys in the front row start chanting "Erin Andrews," referring to ESPN's popular sideline reporter. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to let them know that Andrews is handling sideline duties for the Wisconsin-Michigan State game in Madison and won't be at the Bradley Center until later in the evening.
7:58 a.m. -- Marquette students like to dress for the occasion. There are a lot of people dressed up as the GameDay crew, none of whom seem to be able to fully replicate Phelps' ultra-bright neckties. One group of girls in the front row is dressed in nurse outfits with diapers.
"It's game day, baby," explained freshman Danielle DiVito. DiVito and her friends spent much of Friday coming up with the idea and putting it together.
"My mother would be so proud," DiVito said.
* * *
8:08 a.m. -- Barry Sacks, producer of GameDay is standing off to the side of the set, overlooking the growing - and vocal - crowd. Saks has been the show's producer since its inception three years ago and says the key to a good broadcast is fan enthusiasm.
"The crowd will dictate how the show goes," Sacks says. "They drive our talent."
"The bigger and louder the crowd, the more energy our talent will have. We're looking for the biggest and loudest crowd we can get every week, and so far ... this looks pretty good for 8:11 in the morning."
Sacks outlines the schedule for the day. Rece Davis will open the 9 a.m. SportsCenter with a quick, live hit from the set. They whole crew will do a live segment during the show and will take over the airwaves with the "GameDay" broadcast beginning at 10 a.m. Once that show is done, a number of segments are taped for the 11 a.m. games on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and ABC while Andy Katz of ESPN.com will record a segment for ESPNews to wrap up the morning schedule by 11:30.
* * *
8:20 a.m. -- Sacks goes back to the workroom to meet with the talent and go over last-minute plans. Out in the bowl, the crowd has just erupted as Phelps, wearing a dark suit with a bright gold tie, emerges from the north tunnel and makes his way to the set.
Addressing the crowd, he is promptly but lightheartedly booed when he mentions he was once the coach of Notre Dame. Phelps tells them the same thing Sacks just explained; it's up to them to make the show a success. He picks a "captain" from the crowd to lead some cheers, and asks the band to play the school song.
Phelps talks about the special relationship that he had with former Marquette coach Al McGuire. It's a theme that will come up a lot this day, especially with the 1977 National Championship team to be in attendance.
He shares stories of bringing the Fighting Irish into the MECCA to face Al's Warriors during the high-water mark of the teams' rivalry. The crowd, he says, was crazy and intense. He expects the same things today.
"But keep it clean," Phelps warns. "This is a clean program going coast-to-coast."
* * *
8:53 a.m. -- The gang's all here. Phelps grabs a microphone and starts to whip the crowd into frenzy. He leads a "Let's go, Warriors" chant.
* * *
8:59 a.m. -- Here we go, the big screen is showing a live shot of the crowd, which has erupted louder than if Dwyane Wade himself walked into the building. After Davis' live shot, Phelps - always working the room - tells the students to keep up the enthusiasm all morning.
"He's always coaching," Davis says of his on-air partner. "The way he picks the guy to lead the cheers, he works with the band, he gets them fired up."
* * *
Phelps is a unique individual. He spent 20 years on the Notre Dame sidelines, leading the Irish to a 393-197 record with the school's only trip to the Final Four. Ask him to talk about the meetings between Notre Dame and Marquette and you might be there awhile.
"Al McGuire was like a big brother to me when I started coaching at Fordham," Phelps says. "He's always been a dear friend and we've always had a great relationship between the two schools."
Phelps credits McGuire for much of his own coaching style, and said that the late coach's ability to get people not to like him is what made even his most bitter rivals admire him.
"Nobody was better at the game of psychology than Al McGuire. He taught me what it was like. When I was coaching against UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, I was trying to be like Al McGuire."
"He taught me how to get the crowd and referees to focus all their attention on you so they forget about their team so with 2 minutes to go in the game, they're trying to figure out how you just beat them. It was a game of psychology and he was the master psychologist."
While the two were coaching, Marquette and Notre Dame faced off seven times, with the then-Warriors winning five. The atmosphere, Phelps says, was similar to what he was seeing this morning and brought back some fond memories.
"I grew up in New York State and it was like the old CYO games. It was Notre Dame, DePaul and Marquette," he said. "That triangle was very special and got us to the point where we as independents dominated college basketball in the late 1970s. Marquette won the title in '77, we got to the Final Four in '78, and DePaul went in '79. Then all of a sudden, there's the Big East and all three schools are in the conference now, which is what they needed."
* * *
9:35 a.m. -- To pass the time, there's a GameDay look-a-like contest going on. There's a lot of interesting costumes and signs in the crowd including one supporting center Ousmane Barro for Pope, numerous play-on-words referring to Pittsburgh and ESPN, and one that says Marquette has given up losing for lent. Two of the more creative: "Gray's Anatomy", describing Pitt center Aaron Grey in a not-so-flattering manner and one that says "Brittney Spears is Crazy for Marquette".
9:42 a.m. -- Under the stands, Kristin Pinkowski is with the Marquette band. Getting up at 7 a.m. to play when there's an 8 p.m. game the same day isn't the greatest part of college, but doing it for "GameDay" is worth it for the senior.
"It's awesome," Pinkowski says. "A lot of my friends at Big Ten schools haven't had GameDay there, so this is really a cool experience to play on ESPN."
9:47 a.m. -- Sitting in with the band this morning is a familiar face to longtime Marquette fans. Former standout Jim McIlvaine likes to pick up the drumsticks and join in whenever he can. The current color commentator on Golden Eagle radio broadcasts says it's a good deal: the band members get kringle in exchange for letting him in on the fun.
"I played in high school, but since I played basketball after my freshman year I couldn't play in the pep band," McIlvaine explains. "Now is my chance."
McIlvaine is blown away by the crowd at the Bradley Center this morning. While he was part of the team that started the program's turnaround, student support was much different in the early 1990s.
"It's leaps and bounds," he says. "People can't even begin to realize how much bigger this is than when I played 10 to 15 years ago. The Al, the students' support, and everything is bigger now."
* * *
9:49 a.m. -- Phelps just gave students a 10-minute warning they don't need; these guys are ready to roar.
9:59 a.m. -- The band starts playing "Ring Out, Ahoya," the fans are going nuts. On the floor, you cannot hear anything. How in the world can the hosts do a live broadcast?
"It's a lot of thanks to technology," Rece Davis says. "My headphones allow me to hear the show, but we still get the noise in there. You feed off the energy, but you need to have good focus."
* * *
10:07 a.m. -- Just when you thought the Bradley Center was rocking, video of Tom Crean appears on the broadcast. Not many people on the planet could get this much of a reaction from the Marquette fans in attendance.
10:11 a.m. -- It was bound to happen, sooner or later, in a segment previewing the day's games video of the Wisconsin Badgers is shown on the big screen. Boos from the crowd are nearly as loud as the cheers Crean received moments earlier.
10:13 a.m. -- Retired Marquette Athletic Director Bill Cords just got to the Bradley Center. It's the joys of retirement, Cords says.
"I can just come and enjoy the experience," he says.
10:18 a.m. -- The fans -- some of them -- really want to see Erin Andrews. Sorry, guys. She's at the Kohl Center. Mike Kinsella and some of the Marquette players are shaking hands with members of the 1977 team, who are seated near the set.
10:27 a.m. -- During a taped segment, the crowd has actually quieted down a bit. Don't be fooled, a crew member says; it's like the calm before a storm.
* * *
10:33 - Almost on cue, the crowd springs to life when Crean walks out onto the court. After the break, he leads Bilas and Hubert Davis -- along with some of his own players -- through a demonstration of one of his plays.
"That's a lot of information to digest," Bilas says. "Let's try to run the play."
The crowd gets excited when the drill leaves the ball in Crean's hands, but the coach has no plans to shoot -- no matter how much the crowd wants to see him drain a three.
"On national television, are you kidding me," Crean says later. "I'd never have heard the end of it."
"But I had good form, though!"
Crean has been beaming all morning. Seeing the sea of gold in the Bradley Center, he's reminded of his early days at Marquette.
"This is a special group of fans," Crean says. "One of my first events at MU was called ‘Coffee, Crean, and Doughnuts' and I think about 17 people showed up on a Sunday night in the Union. I knew we had a lot to build, and here it is."
If the 2003 Final Four put Marquette on the national map, "GameDay's" visit solidified its placement. Short of a national championship, this day is shaping up to be one of Crean's proudest moments.
* * *
As the show progresses, the fans are still rabid. There's not a single down moment - not even during commercial breaks. A student dressed in a homemade Duke jersey with Bilas' name draws the ire of fans when he tries a half-court scholarship shot.
"We beat Duke, we beat Duke," they chant.
He missed. They cheered.
* * *
10:55 a.m. -- The show is winding down, so it's time for Katz -- a Wisconsin grad -- to report on the days games. More boos as he discusses matchups in the Badgers-Spartans game coming up, and there are more boos for Phelps, who picks the Badgers to win.
10:59 a.m. -- In the final moments, it's time for the hosts to pick their winners: Hubert Davis goes with Pitt, while Phelps and Bilas fire up the crowd by picking the Golden Eagles.
11:01 - Show over. Phelps takes the microphone again.
"You guys were absolutely awesome," he tells the crowd. "This was the best yet."
11:43 a.m. -- All the segments have been taped; the crowd is filing out of the building after getting autographs from the hosts. Sacks and his team will go grab some lunch and unwind for a bit.
"We kind of go clear our heads," Rece Davis says. "Sometimes, we'll go grab a quick workout or rest up and we'll be back here to watch games and start getting ready for the shows tonight."
Davis won't be working out. A luggage snafu left him without extra clothes, so he supported the local economy by picking up a dapper pinstripe suit.
While most people are going their separate ways, there's no break for the crew. They will have to take down the set and put together a stage set in the corner of the floor. They only have a few hours to get the job done, because Marquette will clear the arena when it's time for the Golden Eagles' pre-game walkthrough and shoot around.
* * *
It's a little after 4 p.m. now -- more than 12 hours after the day got started -- and there is already a line of students waiting to get into the 8 p.m. game. Most of them never went back to campus, one usher explained. They simply came out after the GameDay broadcast and got back into line at 11:30 a.m.
"It's College GameDay," said sophomore Nick Papachristou, who'd been at the Bradley Center since 3 a.m. "We all live for Marquette basketball, so it's worth it. The last home game of the year, ESPN ... it doesn't get bigger than this."
To keep warm during the nine-hour wait, Papachristou said fans would take turns running across the street to warm up in the Turner Hall lobby to warm up.
"Until they kicked us out," he said. "I called my mom and she picked up 24 burgers from McDonald's for us."
* * *
Back inside, the stage is set. The crew is doing some last-minute fine-tuning while Hubert Davis tapes some cut-ins for SportsCenter and the rest of the GameDay cast is in the workroom, watching the afternoon's games and planning for the 7 p.m. CST live broadcast.
"A lot of what we talk about is based on the game we're leading into," explained Rece Davis. "But we watch what's going on, find the key players and moments and get an umbrella of what we want to talk about."
Shortly after 5 p.m., a booming and familiar voice is heard in the hallway. It belongs to Dick Vitale, who draws the attention of everybody when he enters the room. The small talk is pretty straightforward -- a couple of laughs, some quick shots back and forth and then the basketball talk begins. Vitale eats, sleeps, and breathes the college game.
"I love the loyalty," Vitale explains. "The love that fans and players have for their school is special."
What's also special for the 67-year-old broadcaster is a trip to Milwaukee.
"I love coming here," he says. "Every time I come to Milwaukee, I think of Al McGuire, and how special his teams were. I learned so much from him, all of us did."
Vitale explained that in 1976, McGuire brought the Warriors to face his Detroit team and escaped with a victory at the buzzer. A year later, it was Vitale and the Titans that got the last laugh, beating Marquette at the buzzer at the MECCA.
"After the game, Al came up to me and said ‘Young guy, we just played 80 minutes and tied'."
The Golden Eagles and Crean impress Vitale. He thinks they're one of the hardest working teams in basketball, and the proof, he says, is in their record. Of the Conference USA teams that moved to the Big East, Marquette, at 20-12, has the best record.
* * *
6:50 p.m. -- The hosts are on the set, getting their makeup touched up, testing their microphones, and going over their notes. There's no formal script - the guys know the topics on the rundown and basically ad-lib much of the show.
"We make ourselves notes," Herbert Davis said. "We have an idea of what we want to talk about and go with it."
7 p.m. -- Showtime, again. The guys take a quick look at tonight's game, but talk a lot about the day's action. Texas looked good, Wisconsin could be back in the hunt for a No. 1 seed and Winthrop punched its ticket to the Big Dance.
* * *
With tipoff approaching, the show wraps up and tosses to play-by-play guy Dan Schulman and Vitale. They're raving about the atmosphere in the building and how most of the fans have been here since the wee hours of the morning.
In the front row of the student section, O'Connell is back again. He ditched the suit for some warm layers during the six-hour wait to get back in the building.
"Don't worry," he says. "It'll be back in a few minutes."
* * *
With the game now underway, it's time to relax a bit. The GameDay team will handle halftime duties, but for now ... they're on the set, watching the game like regular fans.
Stacks is seated at the edge of the stage, feet dangling and he's being wowed by the Golden Eagles' performance. Hubert Davis is leaning back and watching Crean and Pitt coach Jamie Dixon work the sidelines while Bilas is standing, paying close attention.
8:59 p.m. -- Halftime, and the nation is watching "GameDay" at the half live from the Bradley Center. But for the first time all day, nobody in the building is paying attention. There's a good reason why.
9:02 p.m. -- The lights are dimmed as a video airs in tribute of the '77 team. Not one player is absent as each is introduced to a sold-out crowd. Butch Lee and Bo Ellis draw the biggest cheers, and a moment of silence in honor of McGuire is interrupted with respectful cries of "Give'em Hell, Al."
Al -- who didn't like funerals and preferred to buy somebody a drink while they were alive - wouldn't have had it any other way.
Ellis takes the microphone and thanks the crowd for its support and appreciation. He draws cheers when he calls his teammates "a group of true Warriors" and nearly blows the roof off the joint when he says they are "Warriors forever".
Ellis has spent most of the day around the building and says his old coach would have been proud.
"To see how much this school still loves him and remembers us is touching," he says. "This is just such a great program ... a great family."
He credits Crean for continuing the legacy his team started.
"To get the kids involved like this," you have to give Coach Crean credit. "This is what college basketball is all about."
* * *
10:19 p.m. -- Game over. Marquette wins, 75-71. The fans have had a long day, but thanks to the final score, a good one. Dominique James notched 10 assists while Wesley Matthews had 20 points to lead both teams.
Not much left for the GameDay crew; they'll tape a couple segments for late SportsCenters and pack up before heading back to the hotel for some much-needed rest. The crew, meanwhile, still has a couple hours left breaking down the set and loading up the trucks for the next trip.
* * *
"It's a lot of hard work, but it makes for a great college basketball experience," Sacks says. He acknowledges, without playing favorites, that the crowd was among the best the show has seen in three years.
Crean is pretty sure this isn't the last time GameDay comes to town.
"With our crowd, and the young talent we have, I would think we might see them again in the future," he said.
* * *
Saturday taught a lot of lessons and reinforced others. Few sports inspire the passion and loyalty of college basketball. With Championship Week and the NCAA Tournament just weeks away, fans are at a fever pitch. The tradition, the history, the rivalries and fan spirit make the sport what it is, and in turn make "GameDay" a unique experience.
"You couldn't ask for a better atmosphere than we had for this game," Matthews said. "ESPN, the students, the ‘77 team ... it was awesome."
For Crean, it was a perfect end to a perfect day, with a Bradley Center record 19,021 on hand; the largest college basketball game in the history of the state.
"ESPN thought enough of us and our fans to pick this as a destination for them," he says. "To have this in Milwaukee is special. For people to be sleeping out side and not even go back home this morning, and be how they were tonight was amazing. It's just awesome. It was great day for Marquette."
Behind the scenes, it's impossible to fully and accurately describe the amount of work that goes into the production. Just about everybody interviewed throughout the course of the day said that it's a labor of love. Tiring, exhausting, and at times, headache-inducing, but it is a one-of-a-kind - and very tiring -- experience.
