A Nextel Cup broadcast

Sporting News, The, June 10, 2005 by Matt Crossman

Clipboard in hand, Walter Cox walks around the garage area, darting in and out of haulers, stopping or getting stopped constantly. Everybody at the track knows him.

Yet to race fans, Cox is unknown. His work is not. He's an off-camera pit road reporter, and his words and information come out of the mouths of the guys in the booth as well as Steve Byrnes, his on-air reporting partner on FOX. (Cox works with Matt Yocum on NBC.)

Cox's job is to know who everybody is, what everybody. does and what's going on during a race. If the guys in the booth need to talk about the right rear tire changer, they turn to Cox to find out who that guy is.

Cox always has a notebook full of stories in case of a rain delay or extended caution period. He says 80 percent of what he gathers never makes it on air. Cox and his sources use hand gestures to communicate when the noise of a race overwhelms conversation. Even if you could hear what's being said, you might not understand it. Cox listened recently as crew chief Matt Borland and driver Ryan Newman discussed an upcoming pit stop. Borland called for one round of wedge adjustment and then yelled. "Texas lady, Texas lady."

"When he started hollering that, I thought he was going nuts," Cox says. "But other teams have guys listening in to see what they're going to do." Texas lady meant the team would change two left-side tires. (Note the T's and L's.)

With a round, red, cherubic face, Cox is the kind of guy you feel comfortable telling stuff, which makes him a great reporter. But there's more to his skills than that. What makes Cox even better at what he does is he's just so happy doing it He says he laughed the first time he heard how much he would be paid to work a race. Not because of the amount but because he was getting paid at all. He says he's do it for free.

The best seat in the racing house is in the broadcasting booth. At Bristol, it is six stories up, commanding a view of the entire track.

From here, broadcasting veteran Mike Joy, former crew chief Larry McReynolds and three-time Cup champion Darrell Waltrip watch the action.

Keeping in mind the technology involved and that the three guys talk constantly off-air to the production booth, there's nothing complex going on here. See race, describe race. Not that there aren't difficulties along the way.

On a weekly basis, D.W. does the prerace show down in the Hollywood Hotel, in the infield. When that segment ends, Waltrip throws on a tie, runs out of the hotel, jumps on a golf cart and heads for the booth. He has to make it there before the race coverage starts. At the Bristol spring race, the cart slowly climbs a steep hill, making the trip l-o-n-g. Waltrip shakes the cart to make it go faster. He reaches the booth just in time to get miked and go live.

At 0.533 miles, Bristol is one of the smallest tracks on the Nextel Cup circuit. Even at that size, it's far bigger than any venue in any other sport. At Daytona (2.5 miles) and Talladega (2.66), TV crews must cover an area the size of a small city. And it's not just the track. There's action in the pits and in the garage and wherever angry drivers emerge from damaged racecars.

To prepare, FOX's 70-person setup team spends two days laying 30 miles of cable, placing more than 30 cameras (NFL games have 12 to 18) and hooking up more than 120 microphones. Each race is different in size and scope. The number of people working a race often swells to more than 100, and at Daytona's Speedweeks it topped 300.

You've probably seen the inside of the production trailer or something like it. Two rows of caffeinated people face a wall of screens. But seeing it on TV doesn't convey the energy. The trailer crackles. It's no place for the nervous.

The driver in the trailer is director Artie Kempner, and the crew chief is producer Neil Goldberg. Crew members are everywhere. They work together, coordinating camera shots, reporting and graphics to produce if not a seamless broadcast, one incredible in scope.

In most every other major sport, the action takes place when the ball is in play. Not so in racing. The action can happen anywhere at anytime. That makes commercial breaks a pain, but those breaks, during which the cameras continue to roll, provide a chance for the TV crew to show off.

At Bristol, Rusty Wallace cut a tire during a break. In about a minute, FOX found a shot of Wallace's tire going down, filmed his pit stop and followed his re-entry to the race, then edited that all down to a few seconds of need-to-know stuff. When coverage resumed, Mike Joy narrated what had happened. It seemed like a walk in the park.

In that case, it paid to be good. Sometimes it pays to be lucky. In the same race, Tony Stewart spun completely around--at the moment his car was on TV. Goldberg pointed his arm at the screen, hand wide open, holding it there, willing the shot to perfection like a conductor demanding a note be held, held, held, held ...

This isn't meant as a veiled insult, but did you know the guys in the infield Hollywood Hotel--Chris Myers, Jeff Hammond and Darrell Waltrip--rehearse before going on the air?