Just another Super Bowl Sunday on the sports desk

Some of us poor working stiffs, like me and several other sports staffers at the Bangor Daily News, spent most of Super Bowl Sunday working while the New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers played.

11 a.m.: Arrive at work to try to get a head start on the busy day. Set up our daily schedule, go through and assign a huge pile of faxes to our clerks. Check e-mails and discover the sports department has received 133 messages. Delete 119, print 14. Get the national budget from The Associated Press. Discuss national and local Super Bowl stories with assignment editor Jeanne Curran.

Noon: Our first clerk, Alex Barber, arrives for his five-hour shift. Alex, a hard-working and diligent freshman at Eastern Maine Community College, has arrived early so he can watch the Super Bowl with his dad. He dives into the pile of faxes while I dive into some staff stories on wrestling, Maine hockey and Mike Bordick.

1 p.m.: After two hours I feel like I’ve gotten a good jump on the section. It’s home to Brewer for a big turkey dinner. I know there will be opportunities for lots of Super Bowl food later, but I settle for the family dinner as it’s one of the few times during the week we actually get a chance to sit down together. Since I didn’t cook, I get to clean up. Kathy, my wife, heads to school for some preplanning work. I tease her about getting all her work done so she can watch the big game, but CBS has lost at least one viewer for the evening.

3:30 p.m.: Back to the Bangor Daily to discover that our second clerk of the day, Hannah Fernald, has arrived along with longtime staffer and newly named Maine Sportswriter of the Year, Larry Mahoney. Hannah, our newest clerk and a Brewer High School senior, has been a quick learner. She takes a pile of faxes with an enthusiastic grin and starts plugging away.

Larry does a little more fine-tuning to his stories and then joins the clerks in answering numerous phone calls of local game reports and results that will become more than 200 column inches juggled through three paper editions.

6 p.m.: I’ve made it through the rest of the staff stories. Assistant editors Dave Barber and Pete Warner – I’m glad they’re here on this busy super Sunday – also give the local stories the attention they deserve while doing an assortment of game report compilations.

6:30 p.m.: Perhaps the most important time of the night arrives as I bring in our pizza and soda. Never the most coordinated person, I manage to make it out of the car and up two flights of stairs without tripping and dropping the pizza, but I miss the opening kickoff.

8:15 p.m.: The Patriots finally score and cheers erupt from our corner of the room. Objective cheers of course. Over the last few hours we have heard from lots of nonfootball fans who have reported their games. Halftime rolls around and we ignore all of the glitz and glitter until outdoor writer John Holyoke calls his buddy, Pete Warner, and asks him if we just saw what Justin Timberlake did to Janet Jackson’s dress. Pete replies he has maybe watched about 10 plays and certainly isn’t watching halftime. Andrew Neff arrives from Blue Hill and churns out a heart-warming story on a youngster watching the Super Bowl on a new TV courtesy of the Make-A-Wish-Foundation.

10 p.m.: The Patriots take a comfortable lead. It looks like they might win by a couple of touchdowns. Good. This means the stories will come in quickly… But then the Panthers tie, then the Patriots go ahead to stay. Adam Vinatieri! We never doubted you. It’s 10:20 p.m. and we wait for three Associated Press stories, one for Page One and two for our section.

11:10 p.m.: The stories are in thanks to the skillful work of paginator Jim Goodness. The pages are on the way to the printing plant. I hope all my relatives in Aroostook County appreciate the extended deadline to get the game in their edition. Now, the real fun starts as we have to update those stories and photos two more times in the next two hours. At least, it’s time for lunch. I get my sub that I ordered in lieu of eating pizza. I discover my ham Italian that I asked to include just a few onions and peppers has only ham, cheese, onions and peppers – no pickles or tomatoes. At least the bottled water is cold.

1 a.m.: We’ve done our own version of the Super Bowl Shuffle by subbing in several stories and photos. We’ve done the same for the local high school and college games. Another NFL season is over.

When do pitchers and catchers report?

Sports editor Joe McLaughlin can be reached at 990-8229 or jmclaughlin@bangordailynews.net