Jo Blogs: Behind the scenes at sports events

Posted By Jo Gunston on Feb 4, 2021 in Home, Jo Blogs

One of the most watched sporting events in the whole wide world takes place this weekend. The Super Bowl. More than 100 million Americans watched the spectacle… I mean game, last year, with a further 50 million tuning in across the globe.

Trouble is, I don’t like it. Not the Super Bowl per se but football, or American football as we persist in calling it in the UK to differentiate it from actual football. Or Aussie Rules, which I think they just call football too.

Anyhoo, if you’ve lived in a bunch of different countries like me, and have an interest in these things, like me, you learn these nuances.

Another example, because I know you want more of this, we call field hockey just hockey in the UK, and ice hockey is, well just that. But head to Canada, for example, it’s just hockey for the cold version, and field hockey for the grassy one. I know, fascinating.

Anyway, we’re getting in a right old pickle here. Point is, I don’t like American football. There, I’ve said it. Twice now.

Talkathon

As regular readers well know, I’ll go to any and every sport going, so when I lived in Florida, it was a trip to see the Miami Dolphins at their… oh no, was it really called Hard Rock Stadium then? I don’t remember that, I had to look up where they played, and don’t begin to ask me the opposition.

Even with random sports I can get the general gist but to me, it was just a muddled number of players on the field, who kept swapping, and standing around, and occasionally there was some action.

Now I like cricket, so pots and kettles and all that but perhaps the situation was made worse by asking a fella near me to explain what was going on. So he did. For hours.

Nevertheless, I do remember the atmosphere, the lovely weather and the copious amount of food being eaten, which is pretty much going to happen this weekend as the Super Bowl is taking place in Tampa, Florida so the weather and the food will be there; the crowd, not so much thanks to ‘rona.

But the atmosphere from the few fans who are there – 7,500 of the 22,000 attending will be frontline emergency healthcare workers who have been given free tickets to thank them for their work during the pandemic – and eyeballs on the game will still be phenomenal.

Halftime madness

So what, I ask you, would it be like to work on the famed Super Bowl Halftime Show? The 12-and-a-half-minute entertainment snapshot that has seen the likes of Prince, Beyonce and well, Coldplay, perform?

Well I had no idea but after getting back in touch with a former gymnastics team-mate and doing the whole, ‘What do you do now?’ malarkey, turns out said mate is the associate producer of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, amongst other things. You know, like the Oscars and VMAs.

So I chatted with her about it, writing it up for this here blog, and you know how she described the day? Stressful? Pressurised? Worrying? Chaotic? Nope. “Joyful,” she said. “It’s a joyful day,” which honestly is a lovely way to describe such a mad event.

Little and large besties

Another former gymnastics team-mate, Stacey, had an equally cool behind-the-scenes sporting experience, which turns out to be equally handy for me in putting together this ‘ere sports blog.

Her daughter, then eight-year-old Autumn, took some behind-the-scenes footage while filming an ad with 6ft 8in American footballer Calais Campbell.

The teeny gymnast, part-time actor and schoolkid hosted a tea party for the then Jacksonville Jaguars player, for the brand Fanatics. In the video, filmed by her mum, Autumn is shown rehearsing her lines, giggling nervously at the thought of meeting Calais and doing her homework in the hotel room. Autumn is just brilliant – oh to have had that confidence at eight, right?

Studio lights

Not to be outdone by my gymnastics team-mates, I’ve also headed behind the scenes of sport events. Sky Sports invited me to write about the system in place for filming 3D footage at a rugby match. Yeah, whatever happened to 3D, does anyone still do that or has it gone the way of Google Glass?

I was writing the piece for a magazine, which unfortunately went bust before I had time to even write it, so I’ve never actually used this content. Now’s a good a time as any right?

The match was at Twickenham, a famous rugby stadium in London, and it was an Autumn International (no, not the Autumn mentioned previously…). I was watching England v Argentina men’s match, then the women’s match straight after. It was a November day and by the end of it, the photographer Graham Snooks and I were flipping freezing.

I also took some behind the scenes footage when I was a dancer at the London 2012 opening ceremony, but honestly, if I start going in to how wonderful that experience was, I’ll never stop. So I’ll just leave this video here and see you here next week, yeah?