Showing up late, early deadline, sweating it out till the end...

I'm an extremely superstitious person, I think it is the old baseball player in me. Anyone who knows me, knows I've never been on time for anything in my life. However, when I shoot football it's different, I'm early, like at least an hour early. I guess it's my way of appeasing the photo gods or something. Plus it's nice, considering the frenzy behind high school football in Texas it allows me to relax and clear my head, look for features before the game etc. On Thursday though, I had an assignment that needed to be shot before the game and it was running late. The worst part is it was kind of a stretch and difficult, one of those you need to make something out of nothing assignments.

Well, by the time I got something usable and sent my photos while I was driving to the game (driving and editing photos is not recommended), it was the end of the first quarter. Time was flying by and neither team was doing much, mostly running the ball for short gains. The second quarter was nothing more than a few mediocre shots. The only good thing about this is halftime came quick, and the game was on pace to be over by 10pm. Which was good considering Thursday deadlines were earlier than normal football deadlines on Fridays.

By the middle of the third quarter I had a few decent defensive shots. The end of the game was setting up to be pretty good. Cooper got the ball with a couple minutes left and was looking to make a long drive down the field. Now, my job as a journalist is not to care who wins. I'm pretty stoic on the sidelines, I think it's extremely unprofessional to cheer during a game I'm covering. But on the inside I always have an opinion of who I want to win. Which is always dependent on what is in my camera. If I have a great shot that would tell the story of a win or a loss that's usually the way I'm leaning for the outcome of the game. In this case it hadn't happened yet, but I knew there would be a great celebration should Cooper make it to the endzone. I positioned myself down the sideline, in preparation for a winning touchdown. The problem was on the second play there was a fumble. This pretty much ended the game Cooper had no timeouts, all the other team had to do was sit on the ball. Oh well, ya win some ya lose some. I'm still pretty sure it was the photo gods pissed off at me for showing up late.