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I had a bad experience in the Eagles' locker room

Velcro is evil.

Media scrums: Not for the faith of heart
Media scrums: Not for the faith of heart
USA TODAY Sports

I've been covering Eagles training camp every day this offseason, both for Philly.com and here at BGN. In case you're unfamiliar with the stuff I've been doing for Philly.com, part of my job there is to do quick, 2-3 minute videos every day after practice. I talk briefly about practice, and then it will cut to video of Chip Kelly at the podium, Michael Vick outside in a media scrum, Jason Kelce in the locker room, etc. Quite often, I'll be holding the Philly.com microphone in those media scrums while the camera operator is filming the video.

Here's a picture of me doing one of my little video hits, with photography credit going to Brandon here at BGN. Look at that professional form!

Jimmy_medium

As you can see, there's roughly a 15-foot cord connecting the microphone to the camera. What you can't see is the Velcro band somewhere in the middle of that cord that allows you to wrap up the cord and keep it in a neat and orderly fashion when not in use.

Yesterday, media had locker room access, and we were interviewing players. As I explained above, I had the microphone. While one player was speaking, I was standing in the back of the scrum, so I had to reach the microphone over the heads of the other members of the media to get it close for audio.

During the course of any 5-10 minute interview, there's a lot of shuffling that goes on in these media scrums. Someone's arm might get tired, so they'll switch hands with their recorder, or reporters might come and go. So you're actually moving the microphone around quite a bit to adjust for the movement. And there's more movement than you would imagine.

Anytime I moved, something was rubbing up and down against my leg. I just figured it was the pant leg of another reporter, and since I was trying to pay attention to what the player was saying, I didn't bother to look behind me to see what it was.

After about a minute or two of this mystery object rubbing against my leg, I turned to see what it was.

Apparently, the Velcro strap on the microphone cord had snagged an errant jock strap belonging to a large lineman, and its essence had been dusting my bare leg. In horror, I tried to to kick the jock strap off with my other foot, as the camera operator was nearly in tears laughing at my misfortune.

Let's just say my right calf got some extra attention the next time I showered.

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