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The Spotter

reported on the cool gig that Washington and Lee alumna Angie Littlejohn, of the Law Class of 2009, enjoys on fall weekends.

Angie’s day job is as Furman University’s legal adviser. On the weekends (and some weeknights) she can be found in Atlantic Coast Conference football press boxes, where she pursues an avocation that she’s had since high school — as a “spotter” for Fox Sports’ telecasts of ACC football on Saturdays.

A spotter keeps the broadcasters accurate and the broadcast seamless, by making sure the announcers know which player did what on every play. All the players’ names, numbers and other information is displayed on a board in front of the broadcasters. Angie watches the plays and then points to the right player so that the broadcaster isn’t caught misidentifying someone. Here’s how she described the job in the Greenville News story:

“You memorize where every number is on that board because you have to watch the play as it unfolds and then be able to, pretty much without looking, point on the chart to the offensive person that made the catch and the defensive guy that made the tackle. Or if somebody jumps offsides, you’ve got to be able to point to the lineman’s number so that the announcer instantly knows No. 98 jumped offsides. It’s kind of intense, but it’s a release from the everyday legal work for me.”

Angie got started by providing similar player information for her father, Al Littlejohn, who was the longtime director of video productions at Clemson. While he would work in a studio away from the field at Memorial Stadium in Clemson’s Death Valley, Angie would sit in the press box using a headset and binoculars to feed him the information he needed to post the correct plays on the stadium’s video screens. Her mother, Ginger Littlejohn, also works as a spotter; last year, they teamed up, with Angie doing statistics and Ginger doing the spotting.

She continued working games during her undergraduate days as a history major at the University of Virginia. Before she joined Furman, Angie had combined her legal background and her interest in athletics as a compliance intern for Clemson athletics and as an athletic academic service coordinator at Presbyterian College.

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