By Michael Schiavetta (M.A. '07)

When you watch the NCAA Final Four this March, you’ll see much of it through the lens of Sal Augugliaro (B.F.A. ’78).

The CBS Sports cameraman has helped shaped countless memories of professional sports during a career spanning three decades and multiple continents. In his world, where anything and anyone can instantly be the center of attention, a steady hand and cool head are often the best talents when working in front of a live audience of millions. 

“You can’t get nervous or think about it too much,” says Augugliaro. “Instead, you have to be 100 percent focused while listening to the broadcasters and directors at the same time.”

Bringing home the excitement of live sports has provided thrilling and unexpected experiences for the NYIT graduate. He has shot five Super Bowls for CBS Sports (including Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during the 2004 halftime show), and has spent the past 13 years covering NCAA Final Four men’s and women’s basketball and nearly 30 years covering PGA tournaments and U.S. Open tennis.

He has earned numerous Emmy awards, including a technical award for his camerawork at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, and for his coverage of the PGA tour in 2010.

The most recent Emmy was the George Wensel Technical Achievement Award for his 3-D camerawork at the 2010 U.S. Open in Flushing, N.Y., the first worldwide broadcast of its type in professional tennis.

“We shot the foreground and the background at the same time,” says Augugliaro. The process, he adds, is similar to how our right and left eyes focus and process objects in our line of sight to provide depth. This was accomplished by attaching additional cameras to his main one, so whenever he panned left or right, or zoomed in and out, the extra cameras captured the same object. When combined, the images provided an optical sense of depth. 

The award recognizes his work in live sports’ next great frontier, but Augugliaro’s start in television began in the hectic and more two-dimensional world of daytime soap operas at ABC and CBS. Filming the dramatized tribulations of soap opera characters is somewhat different than the unpredictable world of live sports, he says, but there is common ground.

“You need to have a good eye and be able to handle a camera and pedestal,” says Augugliaro. For him, shadowing actors is no different than tracking the quarterback before he makes the big pass.

His work in daytime soaps has had its own share of memorable episodes behind the scenes and in front of the camera. In 1980, during his second year as a TV cameraman, he won his first Emmy—Outstanding Achievement in Technical Excellence for a Daytime Drama Series—for All My Children. Augugliaro also filmed Meg Ryan and Marisa Tomei as the young actresses made their debuts on As the World Turns. 

But he claims to have been present for another, more momentous occasion in the annals of daytime television history—this one involving legendary soap opera star Susan Lucci: “I was there when Erica Kane got married for the first time.”

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