Production trucks in sports television are organized chaos. There are thousands of decisions made for every telecast, an orchestra of producers, directors, editors, audio and camera operators working in sync. If all goes well, you’ll never know what happened. You’ll just come away from the broadcast feeling satisfied.
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With 26 seconds to go in the first half of No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson’s historic upset over No. 1 Purdue on Friday night — FDU led 30-29 at the time — CBS Sports producer Bill Thayer started thinking about the prospect of history. It was a location he had visited before. Thayer was in Charlotte on March 16, 2018, working as the associate director on the game broadcast when No. 16 UMBC shocked No. 1 Virginia.
With the possibility of history repeating, Thayer started to cue up a flashback of UMBC’s victory as the first half was coming to a close. He informed play-by-play broadcaster Andrew Catalon and analyst Steve Lappas that the UMBC highlight was coming after an ad break.
“I said to them during commercial, ‘I might do UMBC here,’ and sure enough, to his credit, Catalon hits me on the talk-back and said, ‘Wait, wait wait! It’s too early. It’s too early!’ He talked me down because I was getting too into the moment. But at that moment, I felt like I did during UMBC-Virginia, where I was said to myself, ‘This could really happen.'”
It did happen. Fairleigh Dickinson made history with a 63-58 win over Purdue, becoming just the second No. 16 to defeat a No. 1 in the men’s tournament. “I can’t believe I’ve actually been a part of both 1-16 upsets in some role,” Thayer said.
Inside the production truck at Nationwide Arena in Columbus along with Thayer was Andy Goldberg, who is in his 35th year at CBS Sports. Goldberg has directed the NFL, college basketball and golf for the past two decades and has worked 32 NCAA Tournaments in some production capacity. Thayer was assigned the two night session games Friday in Columbus (Jonathan Segal was the producer for the earlier games) while Goldberg, the announcers and the rest of the crew had a grueling four-game assignment for the day including USC–Michigan State, Vermont-Marquette, Memphis-Florida Atlantic and FDU-Purdue.
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“The challenge was getting ready for FDU, who had just played in the First Four,” Thayer said. “We didn’t know if we were getting them or Texas Southern. You have to learn this new team quickly. We knew a focus would be on how are they going to stop (Purdue center) Zach Edey. That’s one big story because they are a very short bunch and the player of the year is 7-4. Can they contain him? Andy and I discussed using an isolation camera on Edey and making sure our crew was always aware of him with and without the ball. Everyone was on top of it all night long.
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“Part of the beauty of the tournament is that we do crash courses on these teams,” Goldberg said. “We did watch some film on FDU. We were able to watch the First Four game, and luckily, I had had some familiarity with Fairleigh Dickinson because Steve Lappas’ son used to be an assistant coach there. So I was a little familiar with them, but not like Purdue. Let’s be honest about that.”
I asked Thayer and Goldberg to take readers of The Athletic inside the production truck’s perspective on what it was like during the key moments of the historic game. The Fairleigh Dickinson–Florida Atlantic game on Sunday night (7:45 p.m. ET approximate tipoff, truTV) will be the last game they work of this year’s tournament as they move on to other assignments.
Fairleigh Dickinson 19, Purdue 13
10:13 left in the first half
Thayer: I was thinking at the point about the first two possessions of the game. Purdue tried to get it into Edey, and there were three or four guys around him. It looked like he was walking through mosquitoes in the summer. They were all over him. I was thinking then this isn’t going to be easy. FDU was prepared and athletic. Then at the other end, FDU got it and isolated a guard for a drive. In the truck we were like, you know what, these guys can make some plays. Those first two plays of the game really gave me a moment of pause. I was like: They are prepared they could make life difficult for him.
Fairleigh Dickinson 32, Purdue 31
Halftime
Thayer: Halftimes are a little longer in the NCAA Tournament — 20 minutes instead of 15. Everyone had just worked two games, so you want to let people catch their breath, get a break and recollect. But at halftime, I was talking through with (Lappas) about what we are showing for halftime highlights. I was getting an “Edey is struggling” package together. (Lappas) had the idea of Purdue turnovers being a major story, and our tape room was already all over that. (Sideline reporter) Jamie (Erdahl) was waiting to talk to (Purdue coach) Matt Painter off-camera because there’s not a lot of time coming back to shoot an on-camera interview. She’s going to get something good from him because she always does. Then Andy and I went through the mechanics of what we’re going to do in the second half. You could sense things in the truck: If Purdue doesn’t come out big here, this is going to be tight the rest of the game.
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Purdue 46, Fairleigh Dickinson 41
12:09 left in the second half
Goldberg: I would say when Purdue was up by five, you kind of felt like, “This is going to be the run.” But it didn’t happen. So we started to look for nervous people in the crowd that could end up on the air. Around the 10-minute mark, I started feeling seriously that this could happen.
Fairleigh Dickinson 54, Purdue 53
3:07 left in the second half, TV timeout
Thayer: At this point, you of course have to chronicle the game, but you also have to think broadly. Our graphics team is pumping out stats with a focus on something historic. We had a tape of the UMBC game for context. We’re trying to show a broad view, but also why is this happening, what does FDU need to pull this off, and what does Purdue need to do to pull this off? Our entire crew stuck with the game and followed through on their assignments. After the game, I went back to our tape room and shook the hand of every one of our operators because they stayed calm. We had excellent replay sequences, and Andy’s cameras helped you feel the tension in the arena. (Erdahl) chimed in our ear that it was getting loud inside the arena because all the fans (for) the next game were filing in and supporting Fairleigh Dickinson.
Fairleigh Dickinson 61, Purdue 56
1:04 left in the second half
Goldberg: I’ll sing the praises again of our entire group, our technical crew and our production crew. We have such an experienced group in all levels. We make a concerted effort to put our best people on these events, and there’s a reason for it. There was no sense of panic. At that moment, you’re trying to capture the energy of the arena, but you’re also trying not to miss any of the action. Both Bill and I are making decisions on documenting everything properly and giving you the sense of the building. That 3-point shot (by Sean Moore) was when you thought this might happen. Hopefully, viewers at home got a sense of that.
MASSIVE 3 AND FDU ARE UP 5 pic.twitter.com/QX9xAofhbz
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 18, 2023
Fairleigh Dickinson 63, Purdue 58
Final
Thayer: Catalon and (Lappas) knew what this meant. It’s almost an easier moment for me as a producer. I just sit back and turn it over to Andy and let him and his cameras cut the pictures and have the audio and pictures tell the story for us.
"FD YOU BELIEVE IT!!!!!" pic.twitter.com/tr53NWkXx0
— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) March 18, 2023
Goldberg: We have plans, and you try to execute that. The beauty of having those timeouts at the end is I could communicate to all the cameras, and Bill and I could communicate. I was giving a directive to certain cameras. You want shots of losers and winners, the benches, the crowd. We did that all very rapidly, but that was all by design. Whether it was executed to perfection, that’s always easy to critique. On top of having arguably the biggest tournament upset in history, you also had the college basketball player of the year in potentially his last game. We were aware of showing him. We had some amazing stuff backstage that we planned because that’s not part of normal coverage to have all those cameras backstage for a first-round matchup. We made efforts to make that happen and it proved to be very beneficial.
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Thayer: One of the tricky parts of the tournament is you end one game and generally you’re picking up (the) next one. Thirty minutes between games might seem like a lot of time, but for us, it’s not. We try to give people breaks, but at the same point, we have to cover warmups for the next teams, we have to rehearse opens, we have to cover locker rooms. There’s a lot happening. In that moment after the game, it was a blur. All of a sudden we’re onto the next game. Those 30 minutes felt like they went by in two minutes. All week, I had expected Florida Atlantic and Memphis to potentially be the best game of the first round. When I did the UMBC-Virginia game, that was the last game of the day. It ended, and we went to (a) restaurant and relaxed. But for this one, we’re going right to Memphis-FAU. I credit everyone who had already worked three games that day for keeping up their level of energy and professionalism. We come off of this major emotional high after doing FDU-Purdue, and covering it so well, and right away we’re doing it again. But everyone just rolled into it seamlessly. The next game came off very well. And we had a wild fourth game of the night between FAU and Memphis! What a night.
(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
