Was a time I actually wanted my Carolina Panthers to make it to the Superbowl, but after seeing what a Baltimore news crew had to endure after their team did, I’m kinda glad Cam Newton and the boys continue to suck. God forbid they ever get that far, lest I be forced to point a camera at a nervous co-worker while hundreds of unhinged degenerates try to crush our live truck. What makes an otherwise lucid group of young people devolve into hysterics whenever their team wins a title? Is it alcohol? Or the NFL’s three-day pre-game show? Perhaps it’s the ghost of Mayberry’s rock-throwing ruffian, Ernest T. Bass, wreaking his vengeance for missing out on the whole Poetry Slam movement? Whatever the cause, it’s nothing this wordy camera-nerd will ever understand. But enough about my hobbies, let’s go to the videotape!

It’s unclear what we’re seeing in the above clip. Is it a true copy of the live shot as viewers saw it? Or is it a desperate field recording made by a news crew hoping to explain how their brains came to be eaten by hollow-eyed zombies? My guess is the latter, but maybe I just don’t want to believe a TV station would send two unprotected souls into such a predictable maelstrom. You’re right – that would NEVER happen. No way any affiliate would insist on placing their employees in the path of destruction just so their anchor team can have advise the youngsters to ‘stay safe out there’. Next thing you’ll tell me they send TV reporters to stand in the path of a Category 4 hurricane with little more than a few Red Bulls and a wireless microphone. Oh, wait…

But who CAN wait when you’re about to ripped limb from limb on regional television? God knows it always makes me antsy. With that in mind, I will give that FOX 45 lady props for keeping her cool, considering ten seconds into her live shot, grown-ass men were dancing on top of the truck like Michael Jackson outside a California courthouse. “Eee-HEEE!” On second thought, make that “DROP THAT MICROPHONE AND COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!” That’s what I would have been screaming had it been ME underneath that particular camera. Hey, I’m all for showing folks the way, but when ravenous (get it?) sports fan envelop me and my gear in a sea of techno blood lust, I kind of lose my religion. That’s me in the storm drain…slashing at passing ankles with a rusty Leatherman while I scream Judas priest lyrics. (Hey, it’s MY meltdown!).

Speaking of meltdowns, the FOX 45 crew did anything but as shirtless fools shimmied up the mast of their live truck. Ya know, I’ve spent hundreds of hours beneath such a thing and never once had the urge to strip to the waist and man-hump it. Then again, I’m a tangential sports fan at best. I don’t fully grasp the agony of defeat, not to mention the thrill of going mental with a few hundred of my closest friends, all because a group of pampered millionaires won a few new imaginary girlfriends. But I digress, which rhymes with ‘egress’ – something I’d seek at the first of a mob coming my way (pitchforks or not). Alas, the crew in question stood their ground, far longer than they should have, simply because someone safely ensconced in a TV station control room was getting their rocks off at the sight of all those tools on parade.

Now back to you…PLEASE!