1097852 Many people wonder what we do in those last few minutes before SportsCenter goes on air. They wonder this in the same way they wonder what Boeing workers do in those last five minutes before using a rivet gun on the wings of a 777 airplane. I hope they are concentrating on their jobs at Boeing far more than we are. <p> <object width="440" height="361"><param name="movie" value="http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/player.swf?mediaId=3721444"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/player.swf?mediaId=3721444" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="440" height="361" allowScriptAccess="always"></embed></object> <p> Usually, with five minutes to go I would be flipping the pages in my Eddie Vedder-like notebook to see if I'd written down any new and better phrases to drop into the show. Or I might be yelling across the room to the researcher to find out just how in the world I'm going to say the name of an ice hockey player whose spelling looks something like ZNXZCBAZ&D on the shot sheet just handed to me by the production assistant. The production assistants are supposed to add phonetics on the particularly hard names or on the 40 man roster call-ups in baseball. But when faced with ZNXZCBAZ&D...the production assistants are taking wild guesses anyway. There's supposed to be some kind of official pronunciation guide to all players on all teams from all nations but who has time to log on to a computer when there are less than five minutes to air? The other thing we do in those last five minutes is make sure our chairs are adjusted height-wise so that one of us doesn't look like Manute Bol and the other a kindergartner. This is why people always say "You're taller than you seem to be on TV." Of course I am. On TV I am six inches tall. But for now I don't have to worry about five minutes to SportsCenter because for now I'm not doing any SportsCenters. I only have to worry about five minutes to SportsCenter in the make believe world. If this show goes down in flames, maybe I will have to worry about those five minutes. That's unless the SportsCenter people now hate me for having gone off and played make believe with my friends. It was really fun, those six weeks, making believe. true 2008-11-25T10:59:41Z 73148 1 2008-11-25T10:59:41Z