There's only one place where you can see Jay Bilas talk smack to Charles Barkley, Jim Nantz cry, and where Barbaro, Dale Earnhardt, Jim Jones, Boom Boom Mancini and the Brooklyn Dodgers do battle in a bunkhouse stampede for the ages (da Bums won).
This is the Sports Emmy Awards in the Rose Theatre at New York's Lincoln Center.
Last might, several dozen sports television stars you know well joined several hundred producers, directors and suits you've never heard of to watch angellic brass trophies handed out in 30 categories. In a non-Olympic year (these awards were for 2007 programming), the races are always wide open and tensions high.
"I don't care how many of these you've won," says annual play-by-play contender Joe Buck of FOX Sports. "Your heart races a little faster the moment they start to rip that envelope open to reveal the winner."
"And if they don't call your name it sucks," says Charles Barkley, who lost to Cris Collinsworth in the Studio Analyst category...again. "Everybody tries to act all cool about it, but I don't. A loss is a loss."
And to win, honestly, is a bit of a confusing mess. Most of the winning programs have a staff of dozens and at least six of those are in attendance. Before their category comes up, the veterans have already decided who among them will actually go up on stage and handle the thank yous. But most winning groups follow their spontaneous cheer with a panicked scramble to figure out who gets to go up, who stays in their seats and who gets to talk. This isn't the Oscars, where Jack Nicholson needs no entourage.
Every winner gets one trophy on the house. Everyone else on the winning team gets a certificate with an option to buy a golden lady for $250. Not surprisingly, most are willing to plunk down the cash for such a killer office ornament.
Those who made the march up are escorted off stage left and into a makeshift photo studio in one of the Lincoln Center's group dressing rooms, where they reunite with coworkers, most of whom are now sweating and out of breath from running down three flights of stairs to get there.
Unlike the Prime Time Emmy's, there is no media gauntlet ("Everyone who cares about this is already here," quipped one PGA Tour Productions official). But there is a photo session with the Emmy, though the bossy photographer in the tacky plaid suit seems determined to kill the buzz of the moment.
"Hey dude," one producer from victor NASCAR Media Group shouted to another, pointing at the Emmy. "Toss her over to me. If Herb Tarlek yells at me one more time I'm going to hit him over the head with it."