You've heard more renditions of the National Anthem than any person living, have eaten more stadium hot dogs than Joey Chestnut, and can recognize every pro athlete in America, even the ones who play little-known sports like Australian Indoor-Rules Quidditch. You're a sports camera operator, and you bring athletic events of all stripes to the masses chillin' on their sofas at home or eating hot wings at their favorite sports bar.

There are multiple flavors of sports camera operators, each with very different jobs and responsibilities:

• Electronic News Gathering camera operator: "Go mobile" is your motto. With your camera on your shoulder, you may find yourself on the field one day, at a press conference the next, and shooting one of those feel-good athlete interviews the day after that.
    
• Live sports camera operator: You're assigned to cover specific shots at athletic events, be it of the end zone, the pitcher's mound, or center court. You shoot whatever the game's broadcast director tells you to shoot, and you do it quickly and precisely every time.
    
• Studio camera operator: You sit in the studio, filming the talking heads. Hmm, this gig doesn't sound as fun as the other two.

The television audience at home never gives a thought to your existence; it's like the game appears on their TV by magic. However, without you, there'd be nothing to watch on Saturday afternoons and Monday nights, and pro sports wouldn't be nearly as lucrative an industry as it is.

Sports camera operators have been around for decades, but they grew in importance with the invention of channels like ESPN and the streaming video revolution on the Internet. Suddenly, there were all these new providers of sports content, which led to more content being developed, which led to sports fans at home demanding more content—you get the picture. 

 It's the Circle of Life, and television networks, advertisers, and sports teams and leagues have cashed in big time. Without you, the NFL would be up Impecunious Creek without a paddle.

You don't need a college degree from a fancy film school to be a sports camera operator, but you do need to have technical expertise with a camera, duh. Luckily, nowadays you can start picking up that expertise in the cradle. See, previous generations of camera operators had to learn the craft using hideously expensive and primitive home video cameras the size of shoeboxes. 

Today, you can get a tiny one for a couple hundred bucks and have high-quality footage online for the world to see in a matter of minutes. Progress is a marvelous thing.

Keep in mind, however, that while you may have some truly gnarly sports clips under your belt by the time you leave high school, you need to accrue some work experience before any television network will consider hiring you as a sports camera operator. 

Try finding a job as a production assistant, a control room operator, or a plain, old-fashioned camera operator at a studio to build your résumé. You can also work freelance on the local sports circuit to pad your footage portfolio.

As far as personalities go, you love sports. Love. Them. You're just as happy filming a tennis or a water polo match as you are the World Series or the Super Bowl. You're also a hard-working, high-energy individual. You'll have to hustle to get a work schedule that'll keep you in the black, and there may be some times of the year where you're traveling all over the country, filming different events.

You'll need to be a good listener, able to follow the broadcast director's instructions perfectly as soon as they're relayed to you. You'll have to be focused, not only on the game you're covering, but on what your exact job is as the operator of a camera assigned to catch specific shots. You respond to the stress of capturing images that will be seen by millions of people with a confident tip of your hat, which is unadorned by a team logo, of course, because you shoot for several different teams and/or TV networks.

See, that's the thing about being a sports camera operator: You're strictly freelance. You aren't employed by a particular network, like ESPN or CBS. While you may end up getting hired to cover all the games of a particular team, you may also be brought on by a network when there's a once-a-year spate of events going on, like the BCS bowls. You might also be hired to cover something truly random, like a poker tournament.

At any rate, because you're freelance, it's a little difficult to pin down how much you might make annually. Do you have the kind of reputation that puts you in demand with the big networks? What network are you freelancing for? What sport do you get hired to film? Are you filming a college, semi-pro, or professional match? How many gigs do you have each week? 

One way to nail down higher contract rates and procure medical and retirement benefits, which you don't have as a freelancer, is to join the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. That's the union that covers sports camera operators.

While the median wage for camera operators falls right at $40,000, some who film sports may earn as much as $100,000 to $150,000 a year. Yeah, those numbers are all over the place, but remember: There are a ton of factors that affect your earnings in this field.

This is perhaps the biggest problem with this career: It doesn't offer much real stability until you become a go-to operator for the big networks. Moreover, this job will probably be available to fewer and fewer people as the years go on. 

Robot cameras have become increasingly common in sports coverage, not only because they can be used to film shots (from right above the twenty-yard line, for example) that are simply impossible for human camera operators, but because they can be operated by computers programmed to identify and then film motion. 

This is great for sports fans, who get to see exciting new images of their favorite athletes and amazing plays, but not so great for sports camera operators, who actually need to earn a living.

If you love film and cameras but sports just hold your attention, you could always pursue a career behind the lens in the film industry or regular TV broadcasting. Or, if you adore sports but aren't so hot with cameras, you could become a professional athlete or coach, or work in some other capacity for a sports team or league.

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