The Focus

Maybe this is the moment. Perhaps this is my big "college sports are just professional sports now" realization. I've received the exact same scolding so many times – "Robert, when are you going to realize that your 'these are kids playing for their school' belief is just a mirage?" – but I've always responded by pointing to the classroom and the scholarship and the dorm room and the age. I'm going to keep saying "kids" until I can't say kids anymore.

Which is why I'm sitting here, the morning after a loss to #1 Tennessee on a coast-to-coast layup at the buzzer, trying again to get my brain to think about/write about anything but the drone. I've given up. I can't do it. I only want to write about the drone. Let that be your signal to jump off this ride immediately before I take you to "we're not thinking about the KIDS" land.

Here's the situation. With five seconds left, Kasparas Jakucionis was fouled and went to the free throw line. Make one and he ties it. Make both and Illinois will take the lead. The entire State Farm Center is on edge.

As you may know, I can't watch important free throws like that. Call me weak or whatever – compare me to someone watching a horror film through their fingers as they cover their eyes because that's essentially what I'm doing – but I just can't do it. At home, I leave the room and try to listen, usually peaking around the corner of a doorway. On press row, I stare at my keyboard until I hear the crowd celebrate or groan.

Jakucionis is handed the ball. The arena goes quiet as it always does for free throws by the home team. I stare at my keyboard to listen for a cheer or groan. And I hear... a drone? The familiar WHZZZZZZZZZ of the tiny little copter blades of a camera drone. The "swarm of 10,000 mosquitoes" sound.

Look, I don't know if Kasparas Jakucionis heard the drone at all. Even in the absolute worst case scenario – just as he went to shoot, he heard the drone, it distracted him, and he missed the free throw – it still didn't affect the outcome of the game. Had he made both free throws instead of missing that first one, Tennessee would have won 66-65 instead of 66-64.

But that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that we chose a different competition in that moment. We were trying to win some "college athletics video of the year" award over a basketball game. We thought of the content over the kids.

I really, truly believe that. I mean, I don't even know if there's a "college athletics video of the year" competition, but it doesn't matter. We went for "a drone video showing Krush flooding onto the court after we beat #1 would be SO SICK" over "the basketball is all that matters." And I couldn't write anything last night and I didn't sleep very well because of it. It bothers me to my core.

I guess I need to show you some proof here, so here are the highlights from Fox. Fast forward to the 8:58 mark and turn up your volume. This audio isn't nearly as loud as it was to my ears as I sat there staring at my keyboard, but here's the WHZZZZZ of the drone as the SFC got quiet for the first free throw:

I don't care if you're attempting to get the sickest video of the game winning free throws from above the shooter's head. I do not care if the excuse here is "that was just the drone launching up to the rafters because we were trying to get a shot of the potential court rush." There is a game going on, you're providing a distraction (for the fans, definitely; for the players, maybe?), and that just cannot happen.

This is all part of a larger debate, of course. I've mentioned it before. Team-created content has exploded in the last five years, and so when I'm at football practice trying to get a few photos, those photos are often blocked by a team photographer/videographer trying to get a shot of the same moment three feet away from the player. The technology exists for the teams to create the content, the access exists (those photographers and videographers have full access to every practice and every game), the social media platforms exist to distribute that content, so all of this was inevitable.

But drones above the court during free throws? I didn't think that was inevitable. I think it's wrong, full stop. And maybe not for the reasons you think.

I'm an Illini fan (have you heard?). Everything I do, say, or write is filtered through my fandom. I cannot watch free throws during end-of-game situations because I get too nervous. The outcome matters too much. I watched the final two minutes of the Wisconsin game in the Big Ten Tournament last year from the tunnel because I'm a cotton headed ninny muggins and I lack the wherewithal to just sit and watch the game from my press seat. I cannot explain why these outcomes are apparently life or death for me, but they are.

As a result, anyone who choses to wear "ILLINOIS" across their chest must be protected at all costs. Fans on the road with ugly chants at TSJ? I'll film it and publicize it. Fans on Twitter going after our athletes? I'll expose it. Fans trying to contact potential recruits? Don't get me started.

And when we extend an interim football coach in order to punt a coaching hire into the future I will take a "final game as seniors" photo that I took of Mason Monheim and Jihad Ward and tweet, minutes after the loss, that the administration let them down:

I know that thousands of you feel the same way. I've had enough conversations with all of you to know that "I don't know why this affects me this much, but it does" is not just my thing. Nearly every human I communicate with was living and dying with those two free throws last night.

So to take that sacred moment and interrupt it with a drone? I'm having such a hard time with that. 15,544 Illini fans respected that free throw moment so much that every single one of them went silent as soon as Jakucionis was handed the ball and an employee of the University provides a potential distraction? I get that mistakes happen and this might have been a simple "I didn't know 'as soon as the game is over' meant that I couldn't launch with five seconds left" or whatever. But that does nothing to appease my concerns that a late-game free throw isn't nearly as sacred to the school as it is to the fans.

I mean, this season there was a damn cannon fired during an Illini two-point conversion attempt. Music over the speakers has often gotten way too close to footballs being snapped and basketballs being shot. I'm sitting there, fully engrossed in the game, and the people pressing the buttons don't seem to be nearly as engrossed as I am. To the point where they're pushing the buttons at all kinds of inopportune times.

Again, this is not about the outcome of the game. We still would have lost. It's quite possible that you could ask Kasparas Jakucionis about the drone and he'd have no idea what you're talking about. Tennessee won this game fair and square because a senior on their bench stepped up while their two stars were in foul trouble and won the game all by himself.

And I want to make something else clear. As an Illini fan, I love so much of the content created by the videographers and photographers in my way. An example: when Luke Altmyer announced last night that he would be returning, they played this video on the Jumbotron. The video includes these two (fantastic) slow-mo shots:

That slow-mo shot with the flames near the player entrance? I could watch it 500 times. I love it. (And it was shot from a drone.)

My only point: content, great as it may be, can never be more important than the sport. Drone pilots never more important than free throw shooters. Cannons/two point conversions. The focus has to be on the athletes.

(And I can't believe I have to say this but by "focus" I don't mean "the drone shot from above the free throw shooter's head needs to be in focus.")