Sparks of Madness
- Sean Fitzpatrick
- Mar 28
- 5 min read
Creative Fire For An Otherwise Mundane Job
Arizona senior guard Anthony Dell'Orso found himself in the one place you don't want to be in a four-point game with 5:55 remaining in the Wildcats' NCAA second-round game against Utah State: Trapped in a corner.
Two defenders stifled him with frenetic defense. Aggies fans screamed. Dell'Orso twisted and managed to find a slight sliver of daylight, snaking a pass to teammate Ivan Kharchenkov at halfcourt. Kharchenkov spotted a streaking Jaden Bradley on the fast break and seamlessly fed him the ball for a high, arcing layup at the other end, as the whistle blew for the foul and eventual completion of the three-point play.
Utah State comeback over.
Except what I saw was: "Dell'Orso is trapped by flickering flames in the corner, breaks the glass and feeds the emergency fire hose to Kharchenkov and passed up to Bradley to douse the flames with a showering fast break waterfall high off the glass for the rinse and repeat three-point play."
That's just the way my brain has worked, ever since I parlayed a throwaway high school typing class into a seat two chairs down from legendary University of Arizona coach Lute Olson on press row at Wildcat basketball games.
Before the advent of digital stats, the play-by-play typist was literally the (basketball) court stenographer: Creating a running, chronological account of every action in a basketball game every 10 to 15 seconds. I was responsible for documenting by clock time every scoring play, substitution, free throw, turnover, running score and score differential (with the help of my incredible spotter Bill Davis) - first on an IBM Selectric II typewriter (went through a ton of correcting tape) and later on a laptop computer.
It's never been a glamorous job, but it certainly gave me the best seat in the house for some of the most iconic moments in basketball history, such as the legendary confrontation between Lute and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
As a diehard basketball fan and pickup player gifted with nimbler fingers than feet, I quickly found myself becoming bored with the standard workmanlike accounts, such as "Kerr 15 foot jumper right side." My passion for hoops naturally oozed unconsciously into my play-by-play, resulting in lines such as a player called for traveling doing the "soap bar in the shower shuffle" and an Arizona three-pointer becoming a "three-of-a-kind for a full house."
Much to my surprise, my self-amusement soon turned into minor celebrity status with appreciation and frustration from local and national print and TV media. The culmination was a sidebar inclusion in Sports Illustrated's "Scorecard" section (my mom bought 10 copies).
I occasionally pushed the boundaries for some of the more conservative readers (such as my Arizona/UCLA lead-in, "I'm so excited, I think I'm getting a Wooden..."), but I enjoyed the perks of two paid trips to the Maui Invitational to work on the stat crew in paradise.
With the advent of digital stats, however, I found myself suddenly downsized by technology on the stat crew. The computer could now auto-generate the traditional, boring-but-very-functional play-by-play based on the statistician inputting data into the system.
I wasn't going to give up my courtside seat and job without a fight, though. UA sports information director Tom Duddleston and I thought that fans might want to enjoy the "extreme play-by-play" online, along with a text document of the halftime and final box score. Thus, before ESPN.com started posting live stats and play-by-play, the interactive (and some might call entertaining) feature, "Courtside with the Cats", was born.
The digital feature proved to be extremely popular with fans, but eventually the "evolution" of digital live stats, combined with the economics of college athletics, reduced the stat crew size and pushed it out of the very monetizable courtside location and several rows into the stands in the corner.
I certainly never made money doing it, but the two UA basketball season tickets I received were more than worth the effort (as well as the love of the game).
My rabid Wildcat fan buddy and gifted visual designer (and frequent recipient of said complimentary basketball tickets) Ward Andrews and I often talked about how cool it would be if we could generate real-time visualizations of my play-by-play descriptions to share online or via text. Of course, such efforts previously would require creating images in advance to use with pre-planned descriptions.
Not as much fun.
Until this season. The convergence of AI tools such as ChatGPT and an historic Arizona basketball season has revived the fire in my old passion. I've found myself deep in AI prompts, tweaking an often "whack-a-mole" design direction of play-by-play visualizations.
During a game earlier this season, I saw the light bulb go off for ChatGPT after I asked it to generate a third play-by-play description in Arizona's game vs. Utah: "Arizona’s No. 8 Ivan Kharchenkov leaves a Christmas ornament dangling on the tree to No. 10 Koa Peat for the alley-oop dumpster slam."
After generating the image, ChatGPT enthusiastically asked, "Want to keep running this as a full illustrated `metaphor playbook' for Arizona hoops? This series is absolutely working!"
ChatGPT has been a serviceable design assistant, accuracy and spelling be damned.
For the firehose visualization, I went through three prompt adjustments. Each one seemed to add another inconsistency or error that didn't exist previously, but at least the final was better than the first one.
ChatGPT took its own shot at creating metaphors:
🎨 Literal Playbook — Next Drops
Here’s a tight slate of ready-to-render metaphors, grouped by theme. Pick one (or a bundle), and I’ll generate the next illustration immediately.
✈️ Aviation / Travel (continuity hit)
“Denied boarding at the rim”
Defender stopped by a TSA agent at the restricted area while the scorer strolls through.
“Holding pattern from deep”
Shooter circling the arc in a small prop plane, fuel ticking down… then green light.
“Red-eye dagger”
Late-night three shown as a glowing airplane window slicing through a dark arena.
I might be biased, but I think I still have a play-by-play job - for the moment.
Sean Fitzpatrick is a digital strategist, journalist, musician and singer/songwriter. He's currently available for freelance or permanent gigs - or perhaps a sync licensing deal. Reach him at sean@digitalthatfitz.com or sean@musicthatfitz.com.
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