Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media
People in the truck ask him what time his mom is coming by to pick him up. If a game goes into extra innings, one of the broadcasters might double check to make sure he's allowed to stay up this late.
Brad Zager, the Doogie Howser of sports production in Southern California and beyond, says he's used to it by now. He really has no choice.
At 27, an age when some are still serving an apprenticeship that doesn't get much more glamorous than picking up an ex-NFL player from the airport and taking them to a studio, Zager is probably the one the gophers are now picking up.
Zager is already in his second year as the lead producer of Fox Sports Net West's Dodgers coverage and this year, he's shouldering live game production of the weekly FSN national Pacific-10 conference football games, all of which makes for one potentially scatter-brained September.
What makes the fast-track education process even more impressive is that it has come with one major detour that even little Doogie couldn't avoid before getting his medical degree (albeit as a TV doctor): Zager never went to college, except for taking a few classes out of high school at Santa Monica College when he was just trying to figure out whether or not he even wanted to live in L.A.
``It started as a joke, but I tell everyone now that I went to Fox Sports Net University,'' said the Detroit native who moved out to live with his mother in 1996 and ended up with an internship at then-Prime Sports as a production assistant on Lakers and Dodgers pre-game shows. ``If ever there was a story of all the pieces falling into place, it's this one.''
--Adapting fast: Coming onboard as an 18-year-old with a company that was changing and expanding to what it eventually is known today as Fox Sports Net West, Zager quickly realized that if he was flexible and willing enough to find the open spots that needed to be filled, he'd not only survive but move up the ladder. During a six-year period, he absorbed all that he could as graphics coordinator, associate producer and director on almost everything the network of regional channels had going - including Big 12 football, ACC college basketball and Formula One, regularly logging more than 100,000 airline miles a year.
As a live game producer, he jumped on FSN West 2's signature High School Game of the Week three years ago and eventually earned a local Emmy award for coverage of the CIF Division II championship game between Hart and Mission Viejo.
Soon came USC and UCLA football assignments. He was put in charge of the Pac-10 basketball tournament. He landed on the Dodgers' coverage. Then the Pac-10 football package, and ...
And so much for the idea that he might be moving back to Michigan and join his high school pals at a local college, looking into becoming a sports agent.
``Somewhere along the way, this went from a job to a career, and it's really what I want to do,'' said Zager, who often works with a crew that has cameramen, technicians or stage managers who have been in the business as long as he has been alive. ``But someone once told me that you never say no to an opportunity, that you figure out later how to do it because you never know when the next opportunity will come.''
--A retro assignment: Tonight, Zager doesn't have to prepare for a Pac-10 football telecast (it's an off week) or the Dodgers-Pirates game from Dodger Stadium. To celebrate the 100th telecast of the high school football game of the week, FSN has asked Zager to produce the Westlake-Hart game from College of the Canyons (7 p.m., on FSN West, with a pregame show starting at 6:30 p.m.). Part of the special presentation tonight will be a look back at the top 10 games that the series has produced since 1997 (it started with Alemany-Notre Dame).
``That's where so many people here learned about live game production, and now we're going back to our roots,'' said Zager, who will be joined by former play-by-play man Jim Watson (now the Pac-10 football sideline reporter, who will host tonight's game) along with broadcasters John Jackson, D'Marco Farr and Christian Steckel.
FSN reporter Lindsay Soto, who started as an intern at the network about a year before Zager arrived, said she knew by the fact he sometimes stayed up all night editing a show or feature that he had the dedication - even if she and others wondered if he even had an apartment to go to since he slept at the office so often.
Soto was his sideline reporter on many high school games and said he ``treated them like it was a Super Bowl. He knew it meant a lot to the players and viewers, and he owed it to them to make the show special. He approaches every game the same way. He has a commitment that's hard to find.''
John Heffner, FSN West's coordinating producer and an essential part of the network for the past 15 years, said he could tell Zager would become a top producer because of all the never- ending questions he would pester people with early on in his career.
``He really gets it,'' said Heffner, who Zager says he relies on to keep him in line. ``It doesn't surprise me at all how quickly he's progressed. He's very creative, and, with a lot of changes in the equipment we use, he learns it and figures out what we can or can't use. He might have come along fast, but he's definitely earned it.''
SOUND BYTES
WHAT SMOKES
-- ``Viva Baseball,'' a documentary on the achievements of Latinos in Major League Baseball, airs on Spike TV tonight (9 to 11 p.m.) available in SAP. Dan Klores, who directed the documentary ``Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story,'' is both co-producer and director on this project that involved more than 100 hours of interviews with dozens of present and former Latino players, many of whom support the idea that Roberto Clemente's No. 21 be retired throughout baseball like Jackie Robinson' No. 42.
-- Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who a couple of weeks ago complained to the media that ``I can't trust you guys anymore ... it's no fun ... I don't like you guys anymore,'' seemed to try to clarify that after his weekly press gathering. ``At lot of you guys, I think, took my remarks about not being around you ... I feel bad about that. I know what kind of job you guys got. It's a tough job. I got a tough job. And once in a while, you write things that I think you're jerks, and once in a while I say things and you think I'm a jerk. OK? But that's the way it works out.'' Apology accepted. We think.
WHAT CHOKES
-- You're not looking live at neither Brent Musburger nor ABC commenting on reports that the veteran sportscaster was cited by Lincoln, Neb., police for having an open beer container while in a car near Memorial Stadium leaving Saturday's Nebraska-Pittsburgh broadcast. (Maybe he was heading to a party at Tommy Lee's dorm?) According to several news sources, Musburger faces a $144 fine for the violation. Whether or not Musburger knows it, he's become legendary to college football TV fans who've created several versions a drinking game based on his array of cliches. According to the rules posted recently on Fanblogs.com (www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/005660.php), drinks are to be taken when Musburger says things like ``pardner,'' ``folks,'' ``there's that man again!'', ``our ol' buddy Jack Arute,'' or if he calls a touchdown before the player actually scores. It comes with a warning: ``It's conceivable your whole party will be passed out with eight minutes remaining in the first quarter.''
--If the rest of ESPN's reality show that throws Dick Butkus out on an extreme makeover of a struggling high school football team in suburb of Pittsburgh is anything like Tuesday's debut, it could be a long season for viewers as well as the players. In the tantalizingly named ``Bound For Glory,'' the objective seems to be how an inspired group of kids at Montour High can frustrate the 62-year-old Hall of Fame linebacker, who ends up hiring former star defensive back Ray Crockett as an assistant and, in the upcoming episode, brings in Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisburger to help. The danger is twofold: When all the cameras go away, and Butkus goes back to whatever he does these days - it isn't coaching - and the team goes back to (or continues) its losing ways, how much of a bad taste will it leave in all their mouth that ESPN used them to for what won't even amount to 15 seconds of fame? Or, if by some dumb luck, Butkus does have success with this school, what happens when he just walks away from it because, well, that's the contract?
CAPTION(S):
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Photo:
ZAGER
Box:
SOUND BYTES (see text)
BY TOM HOFFARTH
