Dallas Empire head coach and general manager Ray "RamboRay" Lussier confirmed Wednesday that his team's Call of Duty League championship match against the Atlanta FaZe on Sunday was not played live, and coaches were unable to watch the game while coaching.
"All we had access to was the comms," RamboRay said in an interview on the ESPN Esports Coach's Corner program. "I was sitting there, listening, which is the most stressful s*** you've ever been a part of. To literally listen and wonder, what's the score right now, what's going on. Sounds good, sounds like we're out-rotating them. Like in Search (and Destroy) you can know, the guys are hype, we won a round, but in respawns you had no idea until the end when they get excited -- OK, I guess we won."
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RamboRay compared it to listening to a sports game on the radio with the players mic'ed up. Though he acknowledged that most of his work is done in preparation of the games themselves, it certainly added a new layer of challenge to overcome, particularly when analyzing strategy between maps. RamboRay said he was in a Discord call with Mike "hastr0" Rufail during the final as both tried to pick up clues as to how the ongoing games were going.
"We're asking each other, are we winning?" RamboRay said. "One of our sound cues, towards the end of the game, someone is going to say, 'Oh, this is really good time,' and that means they are edging towards that point where the game is really hard to lose."
RamboRay also confirmed that most of the postseason, including the grand final, was played in advance.
"Because of all the delays they had during the playoffs to make sure teams weren't getting booted off and whatnot," RamboRay said of the CDL. "That was the way they went to deal about it, which ended up working out really well, and props to the league for doing that."
The full one-hour interview with RamboRay, where he also discusses James "Clayster" Eubanks's departure from the team due to the change from five to four starters per team for CDL Season 2, is available on YouTube.