Matt Gould has been on the ice with the Stanley Cup and on an Olympic slope with Shaun White. He was on the field for Home Run Throwback and in the pits at Daytona Speedway. He’s talked with presidents and been invited to their funerals.
John DeTolla has appeared at 20 Super Bowls and 12 Olympics. He’s golfed at the U.S. Open and been part of horse racing’s Triple Crown. He was on the court with Michael Jordan and on the diamond with Ken Griffey Jr.
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Dan Bellis got between Lindy Ruff and Gary Bettman and was in the middle of Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia. He helped introduce the “Tuck Rule” and caught Phil Mickelson cheating.
All three men are proof you don’t need to be an athlete to impact the sports world.
“I can’t even believe some of the stuff I’ve been able to do,” Gould said. “I’m blessed to have witnessed some of the things I’ve witnessed.”
While fans across the globe watch history unfold on television, the Buffalo-area natives are on the scene, bringing the images to the screen. The cameramen and replay technicians grew up watching the games and are now part of them.
“I became a workaholic because this is my vacation,” said Bellis, who worked in Australia, Las Vegas, Florida and California during the winter.
Not everyone has the skills to become a professional athlete, but having an eye for the game can lead to a life that would make Forrest Gump envious. Television networks require more than just on-air talent. They need people to aim the camera, direct the shot, produce replays, type up graphics and handle miles of cable.
Gould is among those who’ve done it all. His career began by simply plugging cables into the TV truck at Bills training camp. The Eden resident has since worked as a videographer for local stations, a producer and director for the Sabres and now does freelance camera work for NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. Holding a camera has taken him around the world. It’s also led to his favorite stories.
For Gould, few things are as joyous as a Stanley Cup celebration. The players’ two-month grind turns into an outpouring of emotions. Gould is in the middle of it, usually holding the camera as Pierre McGuire interviews the winners and their families.
“You finish that night and you know you’ve been a part of something that very, very few people ever get to experience,” said Gould, whose goal is to capture the emotion while not intruding on the party. “It’s very much a dance. I’m out there with a cable so I’ve got a cable to think about, too, not tripping anybody up. You’re always listening in your ear to what’s going on from your director, but your right eye’s in your viewfinder and your left eye’s wide-open watching everything around you.”
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He needs to be even more aware at NASCAR events, especially when working in the pits.
“Cars are flying in and out of there,” Gould said. “Guys are running all over the place. You’re in a very loud environment trying to follow these pit reporters that know everything there is to know about everything and are running all over the place. One minute you’re in the guy’s pit. The next minute you’re running over to the medical center, and the next minute you’ve got to get to their garage stall. As far as activity, it’s by far the most intense broadcast I’ve ever worked on.
“You’ve got to have your head on a swivel. You’re going to make mistakes, but you just can’t make fatal ones because that sport’s legit fatal if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Being in the right place, though, is life changing. DeTolla was stationed near the final turn at the 1996 Olympics and remembers flash bulbs illuminating Atlanta’s stadium as Michael Johnson ran to gold. DeTolla was in Beijing in 2008 when Michael Phelps set a record with eight gold medals.
“All of us that were working those shows in 2008 said, ‘Well, if our TV career was to end right after these Olympics, there’s nothing we could do to have topped that,’” DeTolla said.
He discovered he was wrong. Though the Dunkirk resident has fond memories of Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal and Jordan while covering their NBA title runs, they can’t carry the saddle of a thoroughbred.
“I was always a fan of horse racing as a kid, and I never thought I’d see a Triple Crown winner,” DeTolla said. “When American Pharoah won in 2015, Belmont Park was one of the most amazing places to be on the planet that day. The roar of the crowd was just unbelievable.”
The cameraman’s job is to show the event, while the replay technicians (also known as EVS operators) are charged with preserving the action. Stationed inside the production truck, they help cut to the correct camera so viewers get the best vantage point.
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“I’ve been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time by sheer luck for a lot of these events that people still talk about,” said DeTolla, who is a union leader for the Buffalo chapter of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians. “Rarely does a day go by when I don’t see a game or a replay that I’ve worked on.”
Gould at the 2019 Winter Classic at Notre Dame Stadium. (Photo: Matt Gould)
Bellis seems to find dates with infamy. One of his first jobs was basically as an extra who held a camera cord at the 1999 Stanley Cup final. He was working at the Zamboni entrance when Dallas’ Brett Hull eliminated the Sabres with his foot in the crease.
“Every goal that had been scored like that that year was no goal – every single one,” Bellis said. “My camera guy’s like, ‘Come on, we’ve got to go.’ And I’m like, ‘We’re not going anywhere. That’s no goal, buddy. We’re not going.’
“So they’re opening the Zamboni doors and there’s about three or four camera people ready to run out there. It’s not easy when you’re holding this cable and you’re running on ice and you’ve got a camera guy running to get to position. But I remember specifically just looking around at every camera guy and every person I could see saying, ‘That’s no goal. That’s no goal. It’s no goal, no goal.’ And no one’s having any of it.
“We get in between the benches for our position and my guy’s setting up a shot. They’re bringing the Cup out, and then Lindy and (Sabres captain) Michael Peca come out of the locker room. They’re like yelling to Bettman, just being like, ‘Hey, hey, have you looked at this? This is no goal. He’s in the crease. Have you looked at this?’ And Bettman is just ignoring them, giving them the ‘I don’t hear you, even though I hear you’ thing.
“The Cup is basically being robbed from us right now right in front of my eyes.”
Raiders fans know what he means. Bellis was an EVS operator for the 2001 AFC playoffs when the Patriots’ Tom Brady appeared to fumble, which would have essentially sealed a victory for the Raiders.
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“There’s a lot of good looks at that tuck, like three or four looks, but I was one of them,” said Bellis, whose replay helped convince referee Walt Coleman to overturn the fumble call and rule it an incomplete pass. “That was another one early on where you realize that there’s a lot more going on.”
Bellis is part of the Sabres’ traveling broadcast crew in a freelance capacity, and the Fredonia resident also works golf tournaments for a variety of networks. At the 2013 Players Championship, Garcia blamed Woods for riling up the crowd during one of his shots, which he subsequently shanked. There was no live coverage of the alleged offense, so Bellis and another worker in the truck decided to track down the camera feeds of the players’ actions. They then spliced them together to illustrate the firestorm moment.
“I always thought it was cool because I was part of the group that was working on telling that story,” Bellis said.
For golf, EVS operators usually are in charge of one group of players or a couple of holes. Bellis was tasked with the 13th hole at the 2018 U.S. Open when struggling Mickelson arrived on the green.
“Phil’s out of the tournament, but we cut every shot just in case,” Bellis said. “A golf shot is usually a wide shot of a guy putting into the hole. If he makes it you cut to his face or if he misses and he’s disgruntled you cut to his face. He makes his putt and the ball’s slowing down, slowing down, and I’m getting ready to cut to his reaction because he missed. It’s just your typical, normal thing to do.
“All of a sudden, Phil starts running. So I’m like, ‘Whoa,’ and I take my hands off the dials to make sure I don’t hit the wrong button. I see him running and I’m thinking, ‘OK, he’s going to make sure that he marks his ball as soon as it stops so it doesn’t roll off the green.’
“But sure enough, I stay on the high-side view and he runs and hits his ball while it’s moving. I’m like, ‘Holy shit.’ I get on with my producer and I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re going to want to see Phil here.’ And he’s saying, ‘No, Phil’s dead, he’s out of it. We don’t want Phil.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you’re going to have to see this. Trust me, you’re going to want this.’”
A remarkable sequence on Hole 13, where Phil Mickelson was assessed a two-stroke penalty for hitting a moving ball and ended up making a 10 on the hole. pic.twitter.com/kx6ieYiOGR
— U.S. Open (USGA) (@usopengolf) June 16, 2018
“I always call it my best no cut that I ever made because I’m ready to do this routine cut to his face, and I would have missed it,” Bellis said. “That was all over the news and that was my replay. Guys definitely sit at home and you’ll make the top 10 and you’re like, ‘That was my cut, that was my shot.’ So, that’s kind of cool when you make it there.”
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What can be even better is the downtime. DeTolla has also worked U.S. Opens. On Mondays, when he helps roll up the miles of cable that line the course, he brings a few clubs with him and plays the holes. He also sees places he never dreamed he’d be.
“You just never forget sitting on the steps of the Parthenon, walking the Great Wall of China,” he said of covering Olympics in Athens and Beijing.
During Gould’s half-day off during the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018, he went back to his work spot atop the halfpipe for White’s golden run.
“I got to experience it without having to worry about the broadcast end of it,” Gould said. “I’m watching him come down, watching the entire crowd and I just took it all in. I could kind of walk around and see that whole thing from all angles. Shaun’s going by me and you’re watching history unfold in front of you.”
The number of people employed in the broadcast world is nearly immeasurable, but it’s still a close-knit community. Directors in sports talk to their counterparts in news, which has led to Gould working for the networks at the funeral of late President George H.W. Bush and manning the debate stage during the 2012 and 2016 elections.
“Mike Pence and I are having a conversation while Donald Trump is testing out his microphone. It was fascinating,” said Gould, who was in the middle of Obama and Mitt Romney during their debate. “There’s two cameras in that little black rectangle that face back at the moderator, so I was the moderator camera in that black hole right behind the two candidates. They would come in and do two days of rehearsals, testing the temperature and the airflow and all this stuff. President Obama came in and chatted us up for three or four minutes, shook our hands. We’re sitting there talking to the president of the United States.
“During the debate, a set piece fell and it sounded like a gunshot. So, we’re in this little black hole wearing all black so you can’t see us actually running the camera right behind the candidates, but there’s a curtain right next to me and there’s a secret service guy on the other side of it. That thing fell, his head pops in – we’re live – and we hear these feet running all over around backstage while Romney’s speaking.
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“President Obama turns back to us at the window, the secret service security is talking into his hand and he looks back at the president nods like, ‘It’s OK,’ and Obama turns back. That moment was … something. Bonkers.”
It’s certainly more than they dreamed possible while playing youth sports and fantasizing about the big leagues.
“It’s been a pretty adventurous life for me, I’ll tell you,” DeTolla said. “It’s been a hell of a life.”
(Top photo of Matt Gould at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea: Courtesy of Matt Gould)
