Just Shoot Baby!

Well, no disrespect to the late Al Davis, but he has a point. "Just win baby" may be his legacy, but the message is one we call all benefit from. As it just so happens, the last Raiders game that I covered, I was cruising the sidelines pregame complaining to myself how much I HATE shooting pregame. I was just telling myself I should go sit down until the game started when I saw Cleveland Browns runningback Payton Hillis stretching in front of me. I will freely admit I didn't know much about him, but I did remember he was on the cover of the Madden video game this year. He wasn't really doing anything, and I figured I would get some killer action shots of him during the game, so I was about to walk on by. Then I told myself to "Just Shoot Baby!", so I quickly raised my camera and had just enough time to fire off two frames.

It turns out Hillis was recovering from an injury, and after about one series re-injured himself and was out of the game. So much for my killer action shots. Later as I was going through the pictures, cursing his injury, I was about to delete the two shots of him I did take as they were pretty lame shots by my eye, but remembering my older post about uploading everything, I went ahead and uploaded the shots.

Well, It seems Hillis hasn't played since that game. And one of the "lame" shots I took of him seems to keep popping up all over the place. It has been used many times on SI.com and a couple of other sites. Mostly on a fantasy football injury report, but hey, it still pays. So in addition to telling myself to upload EVERYTHING, I now remind myself that pre,during, and post game, to just shoot baby!

Payton Hillis in his last game vs. Oakland prior to re-injuring himself