When Dan Hampton was talking about his upcoming debut as television analyst, the former Bears defensive end said, ”What you`re really doing is a radio broadcast.”
How prophetic.
Midway through the second quarter of Friday night`s Bears-Dolphins game, WMAQ-Ch. 5 lost its picture from Joe Robbie Stadium.
”My first big crack at television, and the picture goes out,” said Hampton. ”Very nice.”
Not that nice.
Hampton`s opening was, well, shaky. It took him most of the first half to get over using ”I tell you what” to begin every sentence.
Blame it on opening-night jitters.
But Hampton, once he got past the cliches, and play-by-play man Don Criqui, once he found a spotter, improved as the night wore on. And on.
Hampton contributed his share of insight, even criticizing the Bears`
conservative offense and comparing wide receiver Glen Kozlowski to ”the dog that gets hit by a car; he`ll be down for a while but he`ll be right back in there the next day.” But the best line of the night came from Criqui.
While promoting next week`s Bears-49ers game in Berlin, he said, ”That`s a bad place to send (NBC analyst) Paul Maguire-where they sell beer in two-gallon steins and let you drive as fast as you want.”
There will be other days for Hampton, who while not another Dan Dierdorf yet, showed promise.
”I`m very excited about it,” Hampton said about his new career. ”Once you`ve been inside a team for 12 years, there`s a lot you can offer. I`m going to be candid, offer some humor and some insights.”
Hampton spent a couple of days in New York recently at the seminar NBC Sports executive producer Terry O`Neil runs for football announcers.
”They didn`t talk much about the talent aspect,” Hampton said. ”If you didn`t have any talent, you wouldn`t have been in the room. He (O`Neil) wants you to be dynamic and insightful but have fun doing it. After all is said and done, it`s still a game. And games are supposed to be fun. You don`t have to make it into a rocket-science format.”
Friday night`s telecast, despite the bumps, was more fun than rocket science.
– Nearly halfway through CBS` $1.06 billion baseball contract, the consequences still are being felt. Even at NBC Sports, where President Dick Ebersol blames the agreement-but not necessarily the network-for other skyrocketing rights fees.
”I think Peter (Ueberroth, the former commissioner) made this deal as kind of his Washington`s (Farewell) Address,” said Ebersol. ”Instead of talking about the future of the sport and how to grow the sport, he was thinking of what the biggest triumph Peter Ueberroth could have and what could put dollars in the pockets of the owners. It didn`t have anything to do with growing baseball. Supply and demand tells you that you just can`t throw a ton of supply on the table.”
Ebersol pointed to a recent weekend when the Pirates played the Dodgers in L.A. CBS televised the Saturday afternoon game and had abysmal ratings. Perhaps, Ebersol said, because the two teams also played each other the night before. On ESPN.
”If you`re seeing those two games,” Ebersol said, ”two companies shouldn`t be paying that amount of money for the rights.”
CBS officials said at the time the reason for paying twice as much as the previous baseball contract was that it wanted exclusive coverage of the sport`s ”jewels” to help pump up its fall programming.
”When the jewels were on two of the three broadcast networks,” said Ebersol, ”it became obvious that it was in neither`s best interest to program against each other. Because if you programmed against the World Series one year, you had to sell on that rating the next year. So you had two of the three networks having a vested interest in keeping baseball strong.
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”Now, when it went to one network, you had NBC, personified mostly by
(entertainment boss Brandon) Tartikoff, who loved baseball as much as anyone in this building with the exception of (Bob) Costas, furious. He`s so competitive he made up his mind within two weeks, while baseball was still going around celebrating, to buy up a bunch of Jackie Collins and Danielle Steele movies and he proved how vulnerable (baseball) was.
”The World Series lost last year-to regular TV fare. . . . So these jewels aren`t jewels anymore. Who would have thought at the start of the `80s that the NBA Finals would have higher ratings than the World Series and All-Star Games? . . . Baseball just sold out. It went for the bucks.”
As for CBS, Ebersol said it was ”unfairly blamed” for a lot of baseball`s woes.
”CBS did not ask for the death of `The Game of the Week,` ” Ebersol explained. ”The (contract specifications) called for 12 in-season games. That was what baseball wanted. Baseball killed it itself.”
Ebersol is glad NBC doesn`t have baseball under its current terms. He said he already has had to cut nearly 40 jobs in his department, and if he had baseball, he would have to cut more.
– Weekend wonderings: Top quote was Dolphins rookie (and Northwestern alum)
Richard Buchanan telling WGN`s Randy Minkoff, ”I never got to play (against) Northwestern; I never got a week off.” . . . The best bickering occurred between WGN Radio`s Chuck Swirsky and Hub Arkush on the Bears postgame show.
”We`re going to have to find a way to get you involved in this locker room show, Chuck,” said Arkush, sounding slightly miffed.