Covering the press conference where Jerry Sloan announced his resignation as head coach of the Utah Jazz was bittersweet. It was hard to see the end of an era. I am a huge Jerry Sloan fan. He's one of my favorite people, and a great coach, so I was very sad to see him step down. With all due respect to Ty Corbin, I truly believe the Jazz will be worse off without Sloan.
But covering the actual press conference was a rush. Dana Greene and I were at the ZBBC, and we were supposed to go live right before the press conference started to set the scene. But the press conference didn't start at 3:00 like it was scheduled, so we had to talk until it did start. We ended up yapping for almost 13 minutes. No scripts, nothing prepared, just ad libbing and relying on our knowledge. It was awesome! Then we had live hits in the 4:00 show, the 5:00 show and the 6:00 show. We were scrambling around, getting guests and interviewing them live. The producers back at the station had no idea who we were going to get, and when we would get them, so they were just flying by the seats of their pants as well. We had Jerry on live, as well as Corbin, Greg Miller and Scott Layden, plus several others on tape. It was a mad scramble, but I think we pulled it off without a hitch. I was proud of the work we did, and as Dana said later, it reminded us of why we got in the business in the first place.
A sad event to cover, but one that got the juices flowing and gave us a chance to do what we love to do.
