Stuffing yourself full of turkey, mac and cheese and other fixings while watching football with family and loved ones is a Thanksgiving Day tradition. Most Americans look forward to it.
Adam Jones of 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston likes the idea too. During The Adam Jones Show on Thursday night though, he said his experience personal experience covering the Patriots on the holiday showed him that the holiday is no fun for broadcasters.
“I had to work the ‘butt fumble’ game whatever year that was. It was the most miserable ever,” Jones said. “You’re loaded up with turkey. I had to sit there and do the postgame, loaded up with turkey. All I wanted to do is fall asleep, the game was horrible, it was just the worse. Just the worst.”
The Patriots will take on the Vikings this year on Thanksgiving night. That means everyone at The Sports Hub will be on duty on the holiday.
If you thought Jones’s experience is bad, Jeremy Conely, the producer of Patriots, Bruins, and Celtics games on The Sports Hub and frequent contributor to the night show, said he won’t even have the opportunity to get “stuffed” with turkey, chalking it up to having to leave the state to visit family.
“Good thing for me, I won’t be loaded up on turkey because I won’t be seeing my family.”
Jones offered up a solution to Conely’s problem, either have a Zoom call with Howie, the show’s producer, or just buy some food from Boston Market.
While some, like Jones, may think working the holiday is a bad time for everyone, others at the national level view the assignment as an honor. People like former NFL sideline reporter Alex Flannigan and Sunday Night Football director Drew Esocoff said broadcasting on Thanksgiving feels mostly like another primetime game with just a bit more promotion behind it.
That could be a matter of the national stage. It could also be that the production schedule of football on television doesn’t give broadcasters the chance to stuff themselves the way a radio schedule does.