CBS producer calls Arrowhead Stadium ‘one of the great venues in the NFL’
Arrowhead Stadium opened on Aug. 12, 1972 with a preseason game between the Chiefs and St. Louis Cardinals.
In the 46-plus years since, the Cardinals have moved to Arizona and made it to the Super Bowl. The Chiefs have played nine postseason games at Arrowhead, but never been host to the AFC Championship Game.
That will change Sunday when the New England Patriots visit for what will be the biggest football game in Kansas City in the lifetime of many fans. And, despite what Colin Cowherd may have said earlier this week, Arrowhead will be loud.
And that’s just what CBS wants.
The network will broadcast the game with Jim Nantz and Tony Romo in the broadcast booth. The producer is Jim Rikhoff, who has a great affinity for Arrowhead Stadium.
“We always feel like Arrowhead is one of the great backdrops in the NFL. Its history and tradition and the fanbase is great,” Rikhoff said. “For us, it just creates more energy. So it’s something our director Mike Arnold will be aware of and he always tries to capture the energy in the crowd as well. To me, it’s one of the great venues in the NFL.”
Rikhoff, who has produced NFL games since 1998, works the network’s marquee game each Sunday.
This week’s game, however, carries just a bit more importance.
“We try to approach it exactly the same as much as we can, but the reality is it’s a bigger game,” Rikhoff said. “You have more people, more technology, more cameras, more tape machines. So I try to do it the same as every other week, but once the ball is kicked off, it’s a football game. As long as you focus on that, that’s the best approach.”
And, as fans known, when Sunday’s game starts, it is expected to be cold. However, the early forecast of temperatures dropping into single digits has changed.
The National Weather Service now is calling for the high temperature on Sunday to be 29 degrees. That’s still chilly, but doesn’t come close to the Chiefs-Titans game in 2016 when the game-time temperature was 1 degree.
Rikhoff remembers that game, because he was working at Arrowhead that day.
“It does bring new challenges, because you worry about the equipment, you worry about your people being out there, especially the people not moving around, like your hard camera operators are just sitting there holding a camera,” Rikhoff said. “If you have a mini-camera moving around or for Tracy Wolfson and Evan Washburn and Jay Feely, the sideline reporters, they’re moving around.
“But when it’s that cold, it’s a challenge and something to prepare for.”
