Scott Hanson works alone for about seven hours every Sunday, moving between games without a commercial break. Hanson has now spoken about doing that job while managing a painful injury, including how it disrupted his sleep during the week and what it took to stay on air.

“There was a time, it was probably a decade ago, let’s just say 2016, mid to late December, my buddies in Southern California said, “Hey, they got snow up at Mammoth,” and I love to snow ski,” Scott Hanson said on Up & Adams Show with Kay Adams on October 30. “So I took a day, and I said, okay, it was like Wednesday, and I went skiing with my boys. I bit it. I took a bad, bad spill. I tried to brace myself for the fall, and my elbow went right into my rib cage and just crunch, crack.

“And I was like, “Oh,” you know, and I’m down and whatnot. Finished the rest of the ski trip. Well, it got worse for three straight days. That Sunday, I’m going in to do Red Zone, and I broke my routine. I ate a little bit more breakfast than I usually do. I drank a little bit more liquids than I usually did, ’cause I wasn’t sleeping at night with this painful rib injury. And would you know, Kay, that was the last time I took a bathroom break on Red Zone.”

Scott Hanson has been running NFL RedZone since 2009. Every Sunday he guides fans through seven straight hours of live football, from 1 PM to 8 PM EST, and not one commercial interrupts him.

He hasn’t gone into much detail about his injury, but he has talked a lot about the streak that it ended. For years he never stepped away during the show, until the injury changed that. Speaking with Jake Marsh in September, he joked that “the biggest talk shows in sports is fascinated by my bathroom habits.” He described the moment the streak finally snapped.

“I broke my routine, and in the late window of Red Zone, I told my producer, and he goes, “What?” And he’s thinking I’m talking about one of the games that we’re watching, and I go, “I got to go to the bathroom.” And I hear him and the entire control room through his microphone in my earpiece go, “OH!” Like that. Like, “What? Is the streak coming to an end? What?” I used the men’s room. I came back. I tweeted out, “I just took my first bathroom break in 6 years or whatever it had been.” That tweet was like the most shared tweet in the United States or something like that, I want to say.”

Holding a streak like that takes serious planning. Hanson controls everything he can, from when he eats to how much he drinks and how much sodium he takes in, so his body stays out of the way once the show starts. His meal is scrambled egg whites, a turkey burger patty with no bun, a bowl of mixed fruit, blueberry muffins and, most important of all, a side of Kalamata olives.

“Salty so I can retain water so I don’t have to go to the bathroom during RedZone,” he said.

Not every injury stays behind the scenes, though. One that did make headlines came during Peacock’s Gold Zone coverage of the 2024 Olympics, when Hanson got a little too fired up cheering for Team USA.

He shared a photo of his bloody left hand and explained that he had smacked the desk so hard he hurt his knuckles. It happened as American swimmer Luke Hobson won silver in the 200-meter freestyle. Whether it’s a rib, a cut finger, or a streak on the line, Hanson keeps showing up for his seven hours every Sunday.

The post “I Wasn’t Sleeping at Night”: Scott Hanson Recalls Hosting NFL RedZone With a Painful Injury appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.