DATE: Wednesday, April 30, 1997             TAG: 9704300796

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

TELEVISED SPORTS COME OF MIDDLE AGE (YAWN)

I was born too soon. For this, I should be thankful.

If I had grown up on cable TV the way it is in 1997, with its never-ending selection of games, tournaments, bouts, races, pre-game shows, post-game shows, early highlights, late highlights and overnight highlights (sponsored by FedEx, no doubt), my adolescent life would have been on vertical hold.

As a sports-mad kid, I'd answer my mother's persistent dinner calls by saying, ``The game's almost over. Just a few more minutes, Mom.''

Now, I'd have to say, ``Just three more games after this one, Mom. And then the postgame, wrap-up show. Stick dinner in the refrigerator and I'll microwave it after you've gone to bed.''

In other words, my parents would not have allowed me to live past the age of 14.

What kind of life was it, anyway, GeneratioNext Kids must wonder, before the advent of remote control and round-the-clock sports?

You can see why their perspective would be different. Sunday, a conspiracy of network and cable operations beamed America five NBA playoff games, back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

American appetites for televised sports have grown at the same rate as our brains have atrophied. For in the era of the rabbit-ears, 20 quarters of NBA play represented about three weekends of TV. Now sports engulf us in 12-hour tidal waves that include golf, tennis, boxing, soccer, baseball, figure skating and two or three kinds of motorsports.

How do today's sports-mad boys and girls do it? Not watch TV, which they do quite well, but get through life? How do they get their homework done?

Not that adults are masters of self control. How many of us have attended a wedding that had the unfortunate timing of falling on Kentucky Derby Saturday, or was scheduled for the same afternoon as an important NBA playoff game?

Have you seen what the all-grown up sports-mad boys do? At the reception, they wander away, looking for a television. Haven't we all attended receptions in which a portable TV set was plugged in off to one side or in another room?

Suddenly, you look around and the men have disappeared. They're huddled around the tube.

Speaking of weddings, who conceived of the idea of the Classic Sports Network, a divorce lawyer?

Classic Sports can be addictive. But I wonder about its staying power. Monday, it featured a rerun of Mike Tyson's victory over Pinklon Thomas. A few more of these and the network may have to forfeit its right to call itself classic.

At any rate, when you factor in the countless baseball games on cable, the college basketball, hockey and all the rest, the average sports-mad boy has at his disposal more live and taped action in a single year than somebody from the rabbit-ears generation did in his first 20 seasons on Earth. And people wonder why SAT scores are down.

Still, not everything is so different from the way it was. If you're hoping to doze off, no one has ever improved on TV golf as a nap aid.

If you're watching a women's aerobics competition, you need a date. If you're keenly monitoring the progress of a triathlon, you need to check your medication.

But if, come Saturday morning, you sit in front of three consecutive fishing shows, you have nothing to worry about. You're already dead.

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