Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 16, 1991 TAG: 9103160101
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The NFL's expanded playoffs will continue to make a major impact on college sports television. The diminished Nielsen ratings for college bowls are evidence that changes are coming. The bowls are surrounded by - and could conflict in the future with - the final NFL regular-season weekend and the wild-card games.
Some college administrators also are discussing a potential change in the basketball season that would boost TV opportunities and dramatically change the season's structure.
Because the NFL playoffs dominate weekend sports television through January, fewer college basketball doubleheaders are aired although conference play has begun. The NFL will extend its 16-game schedule over 18 weeks starting in 1992. If the NFL returns to a weekend break between the conference championships and Super Bowl - as expected - Super Bowl XXVII won't be played until Feb. 7, 1993.
Don't be surprised if a proposal surfaces before the next NCAA Convention to move the start of basketball season to about Dec. 20, with the NCAA Final Four being pushed back until the second or third weekend of April. That way, regular-season conference play wouldn't begin until late January at the earliest.
The NCAA Tournament would conflict with the opening of baseball season. That would be less of a negative for the colleges than fighting the NFL playoffs. Such a move would be an easy sell to college presidents because athletic directors and coaches will tell academicians that players would miss class time for road-game travel only in one semester. The season wouldn't conflict with December exams, either.
Television would not balk at such a move. For CBS Sports, which has the NCAA Tournament rights through 1997, the only major event that would conflict with an April NCAA is golf's Masters.
\ The programming duo at WDBJ - director Kay Hall and assistant Lisa Schmitt - deserve praise for getting North Carolina's NCAA Tournament opener on locally Friday night.
When CBS made the original game assignments, Channel 7 was to air Georgetown-Vanderbilt at the network's regular NCAA prime-time start, 8 p.m. Hall and Schmitt knew WDBJ's viewership in the ACC region would prefer seeing North Carolina-Northeastern at 7:30, although that meant giving up a half hour of local-station time.
WDBJ programmers requested the UNC game. It took a couple of days of convincing the CBS people, but Channel 7 got it, preempting "Jeopardy" and its local advertising. A CBS executive said WDBJ was the only affiliate to ask for the UNC game, which was scheduled to be fed to North Carolina stations, two South Carolina affiliates and Norfolk.
It's great when a station not only knows what viewers want, but then works to get it, no matter the difficulty.
\ CBS will cut its NCAA announcing teams to four for next week's regionals. The network says its regular-season announcers are being evaluated with the special NCAA hires to see which voices advance.
Jim Nantz and Billy Packer will work one regional; James Brown and Bill Raftery another. If CBS brings back Verne Lundquist and Len Elmore over any one of several other teams, then the announcing "competition" is bogus.
Dick Stockton and Billy Cunningham, a former NBA analyst for CBS before he became a part-owner of the Miami Heat, were superb during Thursday's first-round shows. So were Sean McDonough and rookie Bill Walton. At least one of those teams should be at the regionals.
\ It's almost football season again? The World League of American Football makes its debut next weekend, starting its Saturday and Monday dates on cable's USA Network and Sunday games on ABC Sports.
The 10-team WLAF, which includes three clubs in Europe, will bring several technical innovations to the game. Quarterbacks and coaches will wear two-way receivers, and home viewers will be plugged into those conversations. There is no instant-replay officiating.
The WLAF is being operated by 26 of the 28 NFL teams (minus Chicago and Phoenix), and the announcing talent on USA includes NFL quarterbacks Boomer Esiason, Dan Marino and Warren Moon. The USA play-by-play men include ACC basketball voices Tim Brant and Brad Nessler. ABC's WLAF announcers are Brent Musburger and Dick Vermeil.
\ ESPN's growth in 11-plus years is reflected in the 1990 Sports Emmy nominations. The cable network received 21 nominations, six more than NBC and only one less than CBS. ABC was tops with 35. Home Box Office got six and Turner Broadcasting two.
The nominees for host/play-by-play are Dick Enberg and Bob Costas of NBC, Greg Gumbel of CBS, Jim McKay of ABC and Chris Berman of ESPN. Nominees in the analyst category are Dan Dierdorf and Dick Vermeil of ABC, Tim McCarver and John Madden of CBS and ESPN's Joe Theismann, who will visit Roanoke on Monday for an American Heart Association fund-raiser.
A special, lifetime achievement award - richly deserved - will be presented to Lindsey Nelson.
ESPN will televise the Sports Emmy Awards show live April 3 at 9 p.m.
\ On the air: As of Friday, Cox Cable Roanoke had 110 orders for Monday's pay-per-view heavyweight bout between Mike Tyson and Razor Ruddick. That's a decent number considering that most pay-per-view boxing buys aren't done until fight day. Cox is charging $34.95 in advance and $39.95 Monday. The 9 p.m. show also will be aired at the Salem Civic Center.
by CNB