While Mike Ditka said during Sunday’s pregame show “it’s time I took my show on the road,” it was more of a mutual understanding between the former Bears coach and his new NBC bosses that landed him in the Arrowhead Stadium broadcast booth.
When Ditka signed with the network, “he wanted to do a few games,” said a NBC spokesman. “We just looked for an opening and figured Buffalo-K.C. was a good game to work.”
And work he did. Talking so fast he sounded like a 45 r.p.m. record on 78, Ditka fought for air time, sometimes stepping over Marv Albert’s play-by-play.
A vast improvement over Joe Gibbs (last week’s NBC showcased analyst), Ditka, however, always seemed in a rush to make a point, no matter how small or large the point was. He needed to slow down and become more concise.
Obviously, like all good football teams, Ditka and Albert used halftime to make adjustments and the second half went more smoothly. Ditka’s next NBC booth assignment is the Jets-Redskins game Dec. 11 with Bob Costas.
For the most part, the Bills-Chiefs telecast was an entertaining capper to the weekend. And probably captured more Chicago viewers as the afternoon wore on because CBS didn’t switch out of the 49ers’ rout of the Rams until early in the fourth quarter.
Head start: As all good football junkies know, the Thanksgiving weekend starts early. And Friday was no exception, with a college game on WLS-Ch. 7 and a high school playoff contest on SportsChannel.
Unfortunately, both games were about as competitive as your average Road Runner cartoon, although play-by-play man Mike Leiderman did his best to keep the prep telecast entertaining.
There was some time to listen to sports talk radio. Ah, talk radio. Nowhere is there more misinformation spread (especially about how network TV works) than on local sports talk radio. And Friday was no exception. WSCR-AM’s Mike North (with the aid of WLS-Ch. 7’s Jim Rose, who should have known better) was ranting about why ABC was showing the Florida State-Florida game on pay-TV. One problem. It wasn’t scheduled for pay-TV. Never was.
By Friday afternoon, ESPN found itself in a bind as the Maryland-Georgetown basketball game spilled over into the start of the West Virginia-Boston College football contest. And then the hoops went into overtime, highlighted by analyst Larry Conley pointing out one official’s mistake after another. Hey, c’mon guys, don’t you know there’s only about 8 million basketball games between now and April?
By Friday night, the football telecasts had ended (thanks to Chicago Cable, which can find two channels each for WBBM-TV and the same local access MUTV, but not one for SportsChannel-Plus) and basketball took over. Gee, a whole night with Bill Raftery, Dick Vitale and Red Kerr creating their own version of the English language.
On Saturday, the Florida State-Florida game was on radio-with the added pleasure of baseball’s Harry Kalas showing off his versatility by doing the play-by-play on the Mutual broadcast. While this was going on, ABC was having sporadic audio problems with its Penn State-Michigan State telecast. Which was too bad because Mark Jones and Tim Brant did a fine job in the booth. Also, ABC had the funniest shot, of four people trying to help Michigan State lineman Bob Denton change jerseys.
NBC showed at halftime of its Bayou Classic telecast there’s more to a game than just football with full coverage of the hard-working, high-stepping marching bands from Southern University and Grambling State. Marching bands rarely get their TV due these days because of legalities involving music rights fees.
Listen up: SportsChannel not only has a new studio set but has added two technological features, including stereo broadcasts whenever possible. In addition, Bulls and White Sox games can be heard in Spanish via a simulacast from WIND-AM on the secondary audio pgramming feature available on some TVs and VCRs.
And the envelope please: Selection shows are big on the ESPN schedule the next few weeks, starting with live coverage of the World Cup Final draw at 2 p.m. Dec. 19 from Las Vegas. Put together by Dick Clark Productions, the 90-minute program includes live performances by Barry Manilow, Vanessa Williams and Julio Iglesias. ESPN will carry 41 of the 52 Cup matches, including the opener June 17 at Soldier Field.
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The World Cup show will be followed by the Pro Bowl team announcements at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 28. ESPN has joined the NFL, Radio Shack and USA Today to give fans their first chance to vote for the Pro Bowl teams. The votes of fans, players and coaches will count one-third of the selection process each; the fans’ choice decides ties.
And finally: ABC, in conjunction with one of its advertisers, is handing out bald caps to each fan attending Monday night’s Chargers-Colts game. Better they should hand out paper bags.