The Draw Play

Redzone has commercials now. The mighty stronghold of 7 hours of commercial-free football is over. Capitalism comes for us all. I’m honestly shocked it lasted this long to begin with.

Okay with actual reason Redzone has commercials now out of the way, we can get into deep-state conspiracy territory about it. Redzone has commercials now because Scott Hanson is growing older and the prostate comes for us all. Scott would go up there for 7 hours every Sunday and spend those 7 hours swapping between games, calling things as they happen. The man is genuinely amazing at his job and I don’t think we appreciate him as much as he deserves for the job he does every week. Being an announcer is harder than it looks, and those guys only have to do it for 3 hours, and they get to sit there and do most of it off-camera, focusing on one game. Scott obviously has less detail to worry about but he and his team have come up with a fantastic ability to keep the momentum at all times for 7 hours of…formerly commercial-free football. That’s being “on” for 7 hours. That’s tough shit. I can barely be “on” for a 10 minute zoom call. Scott Hanson is a fucking professional, and I have so much respect for him.

…Outside the fact that he kind of made “not taking a bathroom break” part of his brand. That’s kinda weird. You didn’t really need to do that, Scott. You can go pee. Nobody would judge you for this. We all pee. It’s a normal thing to do, peeing. I did it right before I wrote this blog post. I’ll do it again in probably an hour before I go to bed. I like to be hydrated. I bought my wife a Stanley mug for Christmas so that she stays hydrated and also pees. Peeing is good. Some people even like it on them. Can’t say I’m into that, but power to those who are, I guess.

You can’t make the argument to me that they need you on camera at the ready every single second of those 7 hours. I’ve watched Redzone plenty in the last 4 years because there’s no better way to keep track of nonsense during the busy Sunday slate (No commercials is…*sighs deeply*…was genuinely great, too). But I see how they work. You ever wonder how Redzone seems to miraculously cut to games right before something amazing happens in that game? Because that amazing thing obviously already occurred, they teed up the replay for Scott, and Scott cuts to it and sets it up for the audience. Redzone plays fast and loose with “real” time pretty frequently. Once you spot it the first time, you’ll spot it all the time. They still mostly stay on track and it’s still a hell of a production, but some of that presentation is just magician misdirective trickery.

That’s why I think the team can very easily find a way to cover Scott Hanson for 30 seconds while he drains the lizard. Find a game that has a sustained, interesting drive going, record it, queue it up, have Scott “cut” to it, and let that drive play out in “real-time” with the game commentary while Scotty takes vengeance on the urinal cake and runs back in. You could even play pre-recorded Scott exclamations like “Wow!” or some shit. I’m not convinced they don’t already do this. You think this production team doesn’t have contingency plans for if Scott has a bad day or an emergency? They do. They absolutely do. If they don’t, it will be really funny the day Scott Hanson finally breaks.

Go pee, Scott. Take a big fat wizz. You’ve earned it.