There's a cold wind blowing the stars tonight ...

If you missed the second half kickoff of Saturday's USC-Notre Dame, don't fret. Nothing happened.
Which completely sucked for Burbank's Brian Batter.
He won the internet vote on KSPN-AM 710 to make the live call of that play, based on an audition phone call he made to the station during its "You Make the Call" contest leading up to the big game.
And when it came time for Brian to actually make the call at the Coliseum booth with play-by-play man Pete Arbogast and colorman John Jackson ... well, we'll let him tell the story:

"The whole experience was great. We had to run the stairs up to the press box since the coaches were using the elevators, which made things a little lively. I made it into the booth just as halftime started, and had a few minutes to gather myself before I was introduced. After going over the highlights JJ gave up his headset to me, and Pete continued to talk for what seemed like an eternity. Waiting for the intro I thought that Booty’s Jekyll and Hyde performance in the first half would make good chatter so while the teams lined up for the kick I recapped JD Booty’s up and down 1st half. Before I could exhale, the kick was off, I called the play, and it was done."

What happened was the Notre Dame kicker did some kind of lame pooch, sending the ball out of bounds on the Irish sideline at about the Trojans own 30, so that ended the play as USC took the ball at the 35 yard line to start the second half. If it was the other way around, surely USC kicker Troy Van Blarcom would have kicked it through the end zone.

Sure, it was our dream that this whole promotion blow up in everyone's face -- that's just our sick way of dealing with live radio -- but even we felt badly about how Batter's 15 minutes of fame was cut to about 15 seconds.

On Monday's Steve Mason and John Ireland show, Batter said joking that he "got jobbed" by that kick. Arbogast summed it up after his live call by saying it was "a little anti-climatic, but what the heck."

As for how Arbogast received him, Batter told Steve and John: "John (Jackson) was nice, but with Pete, it was like a cold breeze blew through the room. The engineer was helpful and the producer was nice ..."

But Pete.... A tough guy to warm up to. Go figure.

Since Batter only got a few seconds of airtime on that call, Mason and Ireland have invited him to come on their show sometime soon and read the questions for the "Big Show Interruption" segment. Batter has agreed.

"Maybe then I’ll get more than 35 seconds!" he said. "I can’t thank the folks at 710 ESPN enough for putting this whole thing together."