Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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Under the Dome Five Questions With … Notre Dame Athletics Lead Sound Technician Paco Bayer Paco Bayer, born and raised a few miles from the University Notre Dame campus in Mishawaka, Ind., started working in the technical services department of Notre Dame athletics in 2005. Soon he began handling all of the lights, sounds and videos of the athletic venues on campus. Before coming to Notre Dame, he worked the master control board at Fox28 in South Bend. Blue & Gold Illustrated: What are your main responsibilities as the lead sound technician? Bayer: "We handle sound, video and lights for all of the tech systems for each of the athletic venues. We are in charge of the sound system in the football stadium, sound and lights in the basketball arena, etc." Blue & Gold Illustrated: What is a typical day during the week and when there is a game? Bayer: "During a home football week, it gets crazy. There are team management meeting that start on Tuesday, then there's stadium check on Wednesday where we check every speaker in the stadium. Then we do another whole field pre-game stadium check Saturday morning. "We have a crew of six people who oversee all of that, from the TVs in the press box to the lights on the field to the music that gets played." ▼ Blue & Gold Illustrated: What do you when the sound goes out or isn't working properly during a game? Bayer: "We all have our jobs on that crew of six — one guy takes care of the stuff on the field like the replays and headsets that the refs use, one guy in the replay booth who oversees that system, etc. "The worst thing that has happened was we had a brand new sound system — we had replaced the sound system in the offseason — and it was the day of the Bayer game when we had a stadium evacuation. We were having problems with the sound system before the evacuation so that just created even more problems. But we were able to fix it, and people were able to hear the [evacuation] messages in time." Blue & Gold Illustrated: What do you do to prepare the sound system before game time? Bayer: "With the sound system in the football stadium, we look at every speaker in the stadium. That's over 200 speakers. We listen to every sound system, we test the microphones, work with NBC. We make sure each of the TVs are working in the press box; we make sure the radio guys have all that they need. "It's a lot of testing to make sure nothing goes bad during the actual game, and if it does we know what we have to do to get it fixed. We have spares of every piece of the equipment of the system so we can replace things fairly quickly." Blue & Gold Illustrated: What is the best thing about your job? Bayer: "On football game days, I work for Notre Dame athletics, and it doesn't get much better than that. "We are part of the whole Notre Dame game-day experience, and we try to do our best for the fans. That is pretty exciting." — Staci Gasser Click here to listen to Blue & Gold Illustrated's complete interview with Bayer.