Given all the major football games that recently have been, or shortly will be, played in the Big Easy, that town's rocking and rolling indeed -- and good for them.
There's also big bucks involved. Michigan and Virginia Tech just got done with the Sugar Bowl as I write this. In a few days, the New Orleans Saints will host the Detroit Lions in an NFL playoff game. A couple days after that, Louisiana State and Alabama come to town for the so-called college football national championship game.
In the course of little over a week's time, consider what will happen there. Motels, hotels, car rental outlets, taxi drivers, bars, restaurants, night clubs, souvenir shops, stadium concessionaires, parking lots, and probably other businesses that aren't occurring to this feeble mind right now, stand to make a fortune with the constant turnover, not to mention jacked up prices to begin with. One would think everybody in New Orleans would be tickled pink over their good fortune, right?
Maybe not. There's one job that has to be done, and the people that do it probably aren't happy at all.
That would be the folks that chalk the field inside the Superdome. It's something most fans never even notice, and take for granted, but consider their take on all this. Here's what one of them might have to say:
First, I have to get rid of all the NFL stuff from a few days ago. Then I have to put the "All State Sugar Bowl" logo in the middle of the field. In one end zone Michigan, and the other Virginia Tech, with BCS logos in both, to boot. You think all this color stuff is easy with the micro-specs those bowl guys insist on? It's like they expect me to create a Rembrandt for the TV cameras. What those geniuses don't seem to understand is....
When those damned kids clear out of here, I have to erase all that nonsense anyway, and go back to the NFL thing. That one I pretty well have down pat, but here's hoping some suit in New York doesn't get the not so bright idea of making me chalk a Detroit Lions thing in one end zone, just because it's the playoffs. I never know about those guys. Sometimes they come up with good ideas, and other times I think maybe
THEY should be the ones that are drug tested.
Regardless, when THAT game is over, another thundering herd of college crazies will head this way. Time to "disappear" the NFL stuff again. I'll be given a new set of colorized specs to put something about LSU in one end zone, and Alabama in the other, along with some more BCS junk, or something about the national championship.
I hear All State is sponsoring that game as well. Maybe they have a monopoly around here since Katrina. Beats me, but I'll have to create yet another "masterpiece", while sticking to brain surgery parameters. The next day, I'll erase that one too. You'd think a "masterpiece" would last longer than that, but what do I know?
As much trouble as all that is, there's something a lot worse.
Most people don't notice those little one yard stripes, known as "hash" marks. Two sets of them run down the entire field, and I put there there. The problem is -- they're set wider apart for college games than pro games. There's 160 of the damn things. When they go from pro game to college game, back to pro game, back to college game, and maybe back to another pro game, that's a whole lot of little marks I have to erase and redo, over and over again.
While everybody else in this town is getting rich, I'm putting down little chalk marks on a field that will be played on by millionaires, or a lot of college brats that soon will be. I am not a happy camper.
Perhaps All State is the right sponsor. If this keeps up, it might not be long before I turn into the real life version of that guy they're featuring on their commercials right now, that's running amok everywhere tearing up things. It seems like a weird ad campaign for an insurance company to run, but hey, that dude's getting rich too.
And I'm getting really, really sick and tired of this chalk thing. Do this. Do that. Hurry up. Make it perfect. Erase it. Do it again, and make it even more perfect. Forget about overtime pay because it isn't happening. Those hash marks are a centimeter off. Redo those. And speed it up.
Nope, not everybody in New Orleans is happy.
I never thought of that, but somebody has to do it. Great article.
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