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10 Questions ABC college football reporter Jack Arute
Posted: Saturday November 27, 1999 11:45 PM
As our Fanatic strolled the field prior to kickoff Saturday, he came across ABC's Jack Arute, one of the most respected college football sideline reporters in the business. Jack graciously took a few minutes out of his preparation for "10 questions" with CNNSI.com: 1. Jack, you've done several Georgia Tech games now. Are you a Joe Hamilton fan? I absolutely still think Joe Hamilton should win the Heisman. I absolutely respect Ron Dayne, but his accomplishments are over a period of years. I'm very impressed with his leadership and he's a joy the be around off the field. He strikes me the same way Ricky Williams did last year. 2. Anything special you will do today to cover his final home game? I don't think I have to do a lot. It's going to be very emotional out there, We just have to watch. I still have some Alvin (S.C., Hamilton's hometown) stories I can throw out, some good vignettes, but he's pretty much written the story himself and we're just looking over his shoulder. 3. It seems like every week you get in something on the condition of the turf. But it's gorgeous here and the turf looks fine. What do you do? Nothing today. It's not necessarily that you do something on the field every week. If you're the sideline reporter, it's up to you to take a look and see what's important enough that it's going to affect the game. But today, you take a look at the field, it's fine, so you move on to something else. 4. Having to be out on the sideline all game, will you enjoy the weather today more than the cold of Ohio State-Michigan last week? No, I really enjoy rivalry games no matter what. Because I'm on the sideline, I feel the ebb and flow of the emotions. You can forget the records when rivals play -- look at Ohio State last week, who thought they would come so close? 5. What's the one thing you see on the sidelines that viewers watching on television don't get watching the game? Teaching. I've never ceased to be amazed at the amount of teaching that goes on throughout the game. We in television tend to focus on the image of Steve Spurrier throwing down his visor, but I see players coming in, coming out, and coaches teaching the game all the way through. But I don't know how we can better capture that on TV. 6. Last year, you broadcast two bowl games on the same day in Hawaii. Will you be spending Christmas in paradise again this year? No, I've got Christmas off for the first time in 16 years. Now, you know I'm the only announcer in football history to do two games in two different venues on the same day. I once did a game in Ann Arbor (Mich.) during the day and then drove to East Lansing for the night game. 7. How much does working in college football cut into your holidays? Obviously, you traveled here for Thanksgiving. You don't really get to have holidays, other than bringing your wife with you. But who cares, I get to do this (pointing at the fans pouring into the stadium). This was always my dream, how many people really get to say they lived out and fulfilled their dreams? 8. During the Florida State-Georgia Tech game, you became the first to interview a coach during the game. How did you pull that off? It's trust. I've been trying for 10 years to get someone to trust me enough to want to do that. Hey, back when I did radio I called Bobby Bowden's first bowl game, the Tangerine Bowl. Through the years we talked about what kind of things we could do. You gotta keep raising the bar. For the Sugar Bowl, Lynn Swann and I will each cover one of the teams, and I chose Virginia Tech. I'm meeting with Frank Beamer in a couple weeks and I'm hoping he'll agree to let me live with the team for a couple days, let people see what that bowl experience is really about. No one's ever done that. 9. So you'll be traveling for New Year's. Any Y2K concerns? No, but I did see that movie (on NBC). And I figured, if the movie could be that bad, the actual thing couldn't be any worse. 10. Between football and auto racing pit reports, is it safe to say you're the leading combined expert on reporting on both? I'd like to think so. I'm more proud of the fact that I helped define the role of the sideline reporter than anything else. It's like that Mambo song -- what is it, a little bit of this, a little bit of that? It's a little bit of humor, a little bit of untold stories, a little bit of Xs and Os. And I'd like to think, after 16 years of doing this, that I was instrumental in defining what is exactly that we do.
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