Doesn’t matter what it is: draft pick, nervous jury verdict, new sherbert flavor. When camera crews collect in corridors waiting for something solid to be said, one can almost taste the inquietude. Hey, you’d get antsy too if the only thing standing between you and a late breaking live report is a constipated bailiff or weak-ass wi-fi or some other such obstacle about to derail your deadline. Why it’s enough to make you punctuate your displeasure with microphone jabs or at the very least look up from your game of Angry Birds and ask when the hell we’re gonna light this candle. Me, I stick to fidgeting, ’til my verbal tic surfaces and I begin using thirty dollar words when any old utterance would do.  

That’s usually when someone rolls their eyes or suggests I go wait by the urinals until word comes down from the town elders as to where they’re gonna build that new moratorium. It’s a mental rash no ointment can quell and one nicely crystallized by Lenslinger Institute graduate Geoffrey Levine. When I asked him what the hubbub was all about he mentioned something about UNC officials facing sanctions from the NCAA. I dunno, must be some kind of code talk. Guess that’s how they do it in Capital City. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to tie my competitor’s shoelaces to his tripod. Otherwise he won’t tuck and curl properly when I push him down that stairwell we’re gonna pass in the mad dash to the satellite trucks. Hey, ALL’S FAIR in love and journalism, right?

Right?