Blogcast w/Chris Graham: Weather delays on TV

I’ve become the king of weather sports broadcast weather delays of late, not that you would know that.

Because what do we do on-site when your game is on weather delay: nothing.

The crew has to get the cameras indoors, so they’re scrambling. What I do, as talent – ha, what I do, talking about sports, takes talent! – is sit there, waiting for the OK to even be able to go back outside.

We had two VMI soccer games in the past week go into weather delay. The longest: two delays lasting a total of just under three hours on Sept. 1 for a women’s soccer broadcast.

At least that was on a Saturday, meaning we could fritter away our free time in the press box watching college football on our phones on ESPN3.

The men’s soccer game on Friday also went into delay. There wasn’t any college football on Friday.

A random visitor showed up to tell us that he’d run into the visiting team that morning, and to complain that the team had a lot of foreign players, which, this is America, what’s with all the foreign players?

At the risk of agreeing, I’ll say that, I can kind of see the point he was making, but then, what if the answer is just, our soccer here in the States just isn’t good enough?

(We debated that one after he left. Consensus: the U.S. women rock.)

At least the previous Saturday, we had some soccer parents from upstate New York to talk Buffalo Bills football with. Good folks, though being Bills fans, you can’t help but feel sorry for them.

I also now know way more about NCAA rules governing weather delays than I ever thought I would. The key is having the Weather Channel app, which gives you up-to-the-second details on lightning strikes.

The skinny: a lightning strike within 10 miles means a 30-minute delay.

I’ve already logged more time in weather delays this fall with soccer than I did combined in six years of calling Valley Baseball League games on the Internet radio.

And now with Hurricane Florence bearing down on the East Coast later this week, I think it’s a solid bet that I won’t be broadcasting the VMI football game Saturday afternoon.

Here’s to a dry autumn.

Column by Chris Graham