The closing act for CIF last night was 'Sports Action Team.'

Not sure how under-the-radar it is, but a number of Chicago improvisors (including Niki, far right, who I was in James Jackson with) did two seasons of a largely-improvised syndicated Sportscenter parody show on some NBC channels. A big achievement.

My favorite story (heard third hand) about the production of the show is that studio kept telling them they needed to add more diversity to the cast by adding a Hispanic actor. Rather than recast anyone, they took Nahnson's character (far left) and simply changed her last name to Hernandez. Her character wasn't Hispanic, was never referred to as Hispanic, certainly didn't look the least bit Hispanic, but her name was Katie Hernandez. They never got another note about it from the studio after that.

I'm not sure if there's going to be a third season (I get the sense that there's not) but it still airs, and the cast improvised a live version of the show for the festival.

There had been a rumor circulating for a while that they were going to get Mike Ditka to appear with them for the live show (even last night someone cryptically whispered, "I think it's true. That person that people were saying is going to be here is going to be here."). Mike Ditka appeared on their television show numerous times, he was practically a recurring character, but he never did show up at the Lakeshore last night.