Back on November 14th, right before the second intermission report was to start, the light kit popped. That is not a rare instance. What is rare, is to have that “pop” result in a firework effect and have a piece of the red hot bulb land in the announcer’s mouth. I was that announcer.

I spat out the piece immediately and grabbed a bottle of water to douse my burned tongue. Painful? Yes. So much so, that Paul Gaustad could tell something was up before his intermission interview, but the show went on.

The bad luck continued on the Friday after Thanksgiving when another lighting kit crashed (no explosion this time) and caused a sponsorship banner to fall on top of me 30 seconds prior to a return from commercial. Ron and Mike did a great job to recover with five seconds to spare. Mike commented after “you must hate Philly”, my response “I’m getting close”.