The best six seconds in sports

There is nothing more enjoyable – or perhaps the more accurate adjective is “painful” – than watching a sideline reporter attempt to interview BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall just before halftime.
Little does the interviewer know that no matter what question is asked or how that question is phrased, the interviewee will offer up pretty much the same answer.
It could be a brief one-liner containing the word “consistency.” Or there’s the one about “executing at a higher level.”
Of course, if Broncos’ in a real giving mood, he’ll throw in the whole ball of wax and wax a bit poetic about consistently executing at a higher level.
Week after week
Game after game.
Calling forth memories of Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, the scene on the sideline is again repeated.
But if Bronco’s all about consistency with his team, he may as well set the standard by demonstrating consistency in his media interviews. He executes his answers the same week in, week out, regardless of circumstance.
Thus, it unfolds.
1:47 p.m. – The first question is asked.
1:47 p.m. and four seconds – The first brief, seemingly prepared answer is given.
1:47 p.m. and five seconds – The reporter, thrown off by the abrupt answer, stumbles a bit. There’s a pause.
1:47 p.m. and seven seconds – A second question is put forth.
1:47 p.m. and 10 seconds – Broncos’ second answer is complete. The minute the coach speaks the last of his coach speak, his lips snap shut and turn slightly downward, almost LaVell Edwards-esque.
1:47 p.m. and 12 seconds – Now the real quandary arrives. Does the reporter end the interview after all of 12 seconds. Should the reporter thank Bronco and send things back up to the guys in the booth. Or, bravely, and maybe unwisely, does the reporter daringly toss out a third query?
1:47 p.m. and 13 seconds – Bronco looks poised to run into the tunnel. Halftime is only 20 minutes long, after all, and now only 19:47 of that remains. He’s anxious to leave. Anxious to get on to more important duties in the locker room, like making key defensive adjustments or visiting the lou.
1:47 p.m. and 13.5 seconds – His face does nothing to hide his feelings.
1:47 p.m. and 14 seconds – The third question comes.
1:47 p.m. and 16 seconds – Yes, the third answer, somehow, winds up shorter than the first two.
1:47 p.m. and 17 seconds – Beaten, the reporter gives a Mona Lisa smile. Bronco is thanked. He nods and runs to the tunnel. With a look that’s part perplexed, part quizzical and part amused, the reporter sends it back to the booth.
Seventeen seconds. A new record for a three-question session.
Sitting before the tube, we shake our heads. Some of us laugh. Others just smile.
Bubbly, Bronco is not. Talkative and chatty need not apply as his descriptors. But he’s not trying to make anyone’s job tougher.
It’s just Bronco being Bronco. He’s the first to admit he’s a private person. He doesn’t relish the spotlight or the incessant and repetitive questions from the media.
But could there be another motive behind his terse answers?
Word is the Guinness Book of World Record’s next edition will contain a new entry: Shortest college football halftime television interview.
Bronco may not enjoy the spotlight. But he enjoys a good joke.
And finding his name and photo in the record books with the words “six seconds” by his smiling mug is the perfect way to spice up the offseason.