Put It On The Board... Yes!
With alums Lozano and Szynal in control, sports fans get more than the score when they check the board.
By William Meiners ('96) / Photography by Corey Minkanic ('04)
High above the gawking crowd, seated before a wall of small televisions tucked into a seventh-floor room, Sergio Lozano (’90) calmly quarterbacks cues into a headset. Lozano is the director of scoreboard operations for the United Center. It’s no small operation. When the Blackhawks play, he’s directing up to 16 people—four camera operators, CG character generators, replay operators, directors, switchers, and a slew of other technically sound individuals. Make that 18 folks when the Bulls play. All for the show within the show—the show 20,000 fans are watching play out across the United Center scoreboard.
Chicago sports fans have long managed to entertain themselves irregardless of the talent levels of the teams placed before them. They’ve shown up in droves for the (mostly) afternoon games at Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs—barren of a World Series title now for nearly a century—if only for a beer (or several), a brat (or two), and a seventh-inning sing-along to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” And long before da Bears, Jordan’s Bulls, and last year’s stunning White Sox, the Chicago sports aficionado could honestly claim that he, or she, took to the various fields and stadiums just for the shared experience of the crowd.
These days, however, the crowd may be a little more demanding regarding what it considers worthwhile entertainment. Remember the old line about going to a boxing match and having a hockey game break out? At a late-September Chicago Blackhawks preseason game, one might have sworn that a fashion show had busted loose in the United Center. Sure, with the power-play goals, the fierce board checking, and the nosebleed fights on the ice, even the fans with the nosebleed seats got to experience some old-time hockey. But from the Ice Crew (the spandex-clad female skaters who clean up ice shavings with snow shovels during timeouts) to the scoreboard watchers looking for their own mugs displayed at superhuman size before God and everybody, the spectators’ present game-day experience could be a testament to attention
deficit disorder.
“Basically, we’re putting on a show for 20,000 fans in the arena,” says Lozano, who earned a B.A. in Television from Columbia College in 1990. “It involves directing the game, shooting the game with our own cameras, showing our own replays, along with stats and graphs, and entertaining the fans during timeouts.”
With much of the show pre-scripted after working closely with representatives from the other teams, Lozano’s crew’s challenge is to take the script and produce it from a video standpoint. “We create whatever needs to be created,” he says, “making sure we have the right graphics for certain shots.”
On this September Sunday, when the Hawks are just warming up the preseason ice, the Chicago White Sox are playing their last game of the season at U.S. Cellular Field. Directing the scoreboard operations there is another Columbia grad, Jeff Szynal (’83). From a two-tiered room perched above the press box and behind home plate, he orchestrates the efforts of some 22 to 25 technicians on a day he describes as the most “non-normal game” of the year, with much of the scoreboard activities focused on end-of-the-season fan appreciation and giveaways.
For both alums, the prestigious director positions mark the culmination of work begun even before their days in Columbia’s studios. In the ’70s and ’80s, Szynal, then Lozano, each took eagerly to the same television production class at Curie Metro High School on Chicago’s South Side. “One of my goals was to be the next voice of the Chicago Blackhawks,” says Szynal, who discovered that although he lacked the pipes for radio, he had a passion for the camera work that takes place behind the scenes.
An earlier graduate of Columbia’s Television program, John Stephens (’77), taught Szynal, then Lozano at Curie. He recalls their enthusiasm: “They did something that everybody should do, and that is start when they’re young enough.” The early start for Lozano and Szynal, according to Stephens, came when they took advantage of the equipment at a brand-new high school, where they first began shooting sports with portable cameras. It was “gorgeous equipment,” Stephens says. “It was like walking into CBS or NBC. And they were smart enough to really see a future
in it.”
Szynal’s career began to take shape while he was still at Columbia, when he started freelancing at places like the CBS affiliate in Rockford, and shooting sporting events for a brand-new network called ESPN. “Though I learned a lot of this in hindsight,” Szynal says, “my Columbia teachers had first-hand experience of what the business was all about. They were also excellent teachers who cared for their students.”
After graduation Szynal returned to Curie to assist Stephens in the television production class that so inspired him. He started a television club for students. “I taught them how to announce, shoot, and do a live production,” Szynal says. He would also first cross paths with Lozano there.
Szynal began working home games for the White Sox in 1984, juggling that with his teaching schedule and some work for the Board of Education. As the old Comiskey Park was standing on its last legs at the end of the 1980s, Szynal was offered a position that would take the video scoreboard to new levels in the new Comiskey Park, which opened in 1991. (It was renamed U.S. Cellular Field in 2003.)
Meanwhile, Lozano was finding his own success. He held an internship with NBC sports while in college, and started working with Szynal and the Sox shortly after graduation. And as the old Chicago Stadium gave way to the United Center in 1994, Szynal recommended Lozano for the director position in the new home of the Hawks and the Bulls.
They still work together from time to time, with Szynal occasionally behind a camera at the United Center, and Lozano running replay at Cellular Field. Game days for both men can be long, and the off-season offers a chance to discover and install the latest technologies to push the entertainment value further. After all, as Szynal maintains, “People have found that sports are a place of entertainment, more than a sporting event.”
For two lifelong Chicago sport fans well versed in the art of video entertainment, this bodes well for job security in positions they love. Though Lozano doesn’t get much of a chance to cheer for his Bulls or the Hawks when they’re playing at home, “There are certain moments of a game you can enjoy,” he says. “But everyone has their role in our production, so you want to keep everyone in line. We take great pride in the show we put out there.”
Szynal boasts of a similar allegiance and philosophy when it comes to working with the White Sox, his favorite baseball team. Baseball lacks the near-constant action of hockey and basketball, so Szynal, who’s also the team’s official historian, says they work hard to keep the fans interested between innings. “Our job is to educate and entertain the fans,” he says. “They’re here first and foremost for the game, but we supplement that game with interesting facts, trivia, and music.”
On the South Side, the last home game is a winner for the crowd as the Sox beat the Seattle Mariners 12-7 in a slugfest, and a bunch of fans walk away with appreciation tokens announced on the big screen. But a World Series repeat—within the week—would prove itself out of reach.
On the West Side, one season is turning to another. The Indian summer weather outside feels a little too warm for a hockey game, but the Blackhawks fans inside the half-crowded stadium seem pleased with the scoreboard operations. Just before the national anthem, a video montage shows a rapid-fire history of the Hawks, one of the six original National Hockey League teams. The final score finds them superior tonight to the Minnesota Wild, with a goal count of five to two. And though they probably don’t keep stats for it, smiles by the hundreds—a few of them even old hockey-busted—have splashed across the enormous United Center screen. There’s little doubt that these good times are especially gratifying to a couple of Columbia grads pulling the technical strings in studios behind the scenes.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
William Meiners (’96) earned an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing, and makes a living as a senior writer for Purdue University’s College of Engineering. He’s also the editor-in-chief of Sport Literate, a Chicago-based literary journal that had its genesis in a graduate class at Columbia. Meiners’s trials and tribulations as a 40-year-old immersion journalist impersonating a rookie semi-professional football player for the Lafayette Lions can be found here. Corey Minkanic (’04) holds a B.A. in Photography from Columbia, where he studied under Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John H. White. He credits White not only with teaching him the keys to being a great photographer, but also how to live life to the fullest.
