On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television A PIGSKIN IN EVERY POT BY MARVIN KITMAN One weekend last November, while more than 250,000 people assembled in Washington to demonstrate against the Vietnam war, President Nixon...
...Nobody rushed to defend him...
...The recent practice of hiring former professional players to explain the game on television has complicated football considerably...
...Discussion programs, football's primary competition on weekend afternoons, may be more enlightening, but their producers' techniques are 30 years behind the times...
...It's hard work, and my family suffers...
...the occasional interesting athlete merely makes the people interviewing him seem ordinary...
...The loss, however, is more than compensated for in the audio part of the show, beginning with pre-game interviews of players on the field...
...99 per cent of the time he is loathsome, but 1 per cent of the time he asks good questions...
...When Kansas City won the Superbowl last year, the language used by their brain trust became fashionable...
...Reporters who were grilling Senator Hugh Scott (R.-Pa...
...Like the Vice President, his conclusions were often right while his facts were wrong...
...The scramble after these retired athletes "is the product of a mentality that would hire a patient to advise at his next operation," Sports Illustrated has observed...
...It's a shame that fans like the President and myself always have to invent reasons for spending time in front of the set during the pigskin season...
...The intended function of expert analysis, though, may be to make the game seem so complex that viewers can't understand it...
...And his advisers probably nag him all weekend about chores that need doing around the White House, too...
...I must admit I am ambivalent about abc's ace reporter...
...But a more important reason for its use is that tv football fans really want it (a lot of them pay $5-10 to attend Monday afternoon luncheons in New York just to hear announcers like Kyle Rote repeat all that very complicated stuff about "stack defenses" and "red dogs...
...It may only mean the quarterback has forgotten the play he originally called in the huddle," Namath explained...
...Still, abc Sports has consistently been the first to implement new techniques in televising football...
...Jargon makes the announcers appear to be very involved...
...The Purdue-Ohio State game was on...
...Sometimes I think television was invented for football...
...I used to feel bad about being an outcast, until I heard Joe Namath offer his view of football announcers...
...If every sportswriter was writing puff pieces about football, the first one to say anything critical would seem terrific...
...He is the Spiro Ag-new of sportscasting, both admired and hated by millions for his attacks against the sports establishment...
...Every Saturday and Sunday is a fine afternoon for watching football on television...
...One of these innovations has been to give us football announcer Chris Schenkel, who is heard on NCAA Football...
...A lot of folks just aren't used to hearing that kind of talk on tv sports shows...
...Having to watch 10-12 hours of football every weekend is part of my job...
...and NFL Today (cbs, Sundays, 2 p.m...
...Cosell had a bad night, miscalling plays and trying to upstage his associates, Keith Jackson and ex-quarterback Don Meredith...
...If producers used a split screen, a politician's past record could even be documented while he spoke on some major issue...
...Although abc's NFL Monday Night Football has only been on the air since September 21, this brilliant newcomer has already taken its place alongside the other great programs: NCAA Football (abc, Saturdays, 4 p.m...
...That's the way we tv football fans like it...
...If the abc innovation continues to be such a success in the ratings, it might lead to a football game every night of the week...
...Weekend television viewers have long known 'about the artistic superiority of football...
...Cosell is a good influence on the medium, a model for another way to cover sports...
...Presenting football in prime time finally gives viewers a true diversity of programming...
...My guess is the President would have watched the Ohio State-Purdue game even if the antiwar crowd had not been in town...
...Vince Lombardi used to say that football is a simple game, consisting of blocking and tackling...
...Back to you, Keith," the on-the-field interviewer says, and we are up in the booth for what is known in tv football journalism as "expert analysis...
...Give Saturdays and Sundays back to television, I say, and let them figure out what to do with it...
...Indeed, the very lack of it may actually make Cosell sound better than he really is...
...The process of running down the field to catch a pass is widely assumed to be a ritual comparable in intricacy to the Japanese tea ceremony...
...He's the one who always seems to be two plays behind the action...
...The new abc football show on Monday nights is leavened by the occasional views of Howard Cosell, who over the years has developed something of a reputation as a fearless reporter...
...Watching a game at home, you miss only the bad weather and the roaring crowd...
...one never knew what kind of show to expect...
...The big news in the medium this season is that for the first time the networks have scheduled a football game against the tougher competition of weekday evening entertainment shows...
...That's what abc probably was alluding to when it called itself "the network of innovation...
...The unbelievable cuts and head fakes we have always thought essential to completing a pass often simply aren't there...
...As it was explained to me, when Green Bay was the pigskin capital, the expert analysts used the verbiage of the Green Bay coaching staff...
...The truth is that Nixon was right...
...I have tried to think of a show that uses television more creatively than do the Saturday and Sunday football contests, but the only thing that comes to mind is the bowl coverage in January...
...Then the jargon changed...
...Stop-action video tape, cameras mounted on cranes high above the end zone and aerial views from Goodyear blimps are other examples of abc Sports leadership...
...Their hunger for jargon is probably the same as that of hippies for their private words: You're left out...
...Football telecasts regularly use many visual devices which would help discussion shows, such as the instant replay...
...This detracts some from the mystery of the game...
...In fact, Monday night football is the best thing that has happened to television since cbs invented the football doubleheader, circa 1968...
...He may not even have what it takes to be a football, announcer...
...On a day off last season, the New York Jets star heard an expert analyst say the quarterback was calling an "audible" (a change of play made at the line of scrimmage in response to a change in the defense...
...Cosell is a personally obnoxious man, insufferably pompous...
...All politicians talk very fast, and the viewer often has trouble grasping a statement that covers both sides of an issue...
...They are quite ordinary people who are made no more interesting by being interviewed...
...On Television A PIGSKIN IN EVERY POT BY MARVIN KITMAN One weekend last November, while more than 250,000 people assembled in Washington to demonstrate against the Vietnam war, President Nixon stayed in the tv den at the White House...
...The initials, they also used to say, stood for the Almost Broadcasting Corporation...
...There are two major networks, it has been said, and abc...
...Producer Chuck Howard introduced the split screen, slow motion and instant replay at the 1967 Army-Navy game...
...When watching the pass pattern on slow motion cameras, though, it frequently turns out that the receiver is not that fancy...
...For sheer piquancy," a Washington Post editorial commented, "we have not heard the likes of that since Marie Antoinette...
...There is no way for an announcer to tell when a true audible is being called...
...A couple of seasons back I finally learned that when the analysts said, "Lamonica is a very good technical quarterback, but not a good head quarterback," they simply meant "Lamonica can throw, but is not very smart...
...I've been meaning to rush to the President's defense on that incident...
...But with the bowl games, the hockey, basketball, and baseball seasons on tv, I've just been too busy...
...A lawyer until he turned to sportscasting, he has a good mind--which right away puts him light-years ahead of the other members of his current profession...
...The major innovation achieved by NFL Monday Night Football is the use of nine cameras (other networks use five or six...
...But these electronic advances can be a mixed blessing...
...As a tv critic, I am in a better position to defend myself against spoilsports...
...on a Sunday afternoon press conference program last season, for example, were not able to call time-out and ask him how it was possible to simultaneously give and deny Israel Skyhawk jets, as he seemed to be arguing so forcefully...
...Only in tv sports journalism could that ratio make for success...
...Cosell was the target of much criticism after the premiere of NFL Monday Night Football...
...Basically, what makes so many people unhappy with Cosell is that he is not reticent about offering criticism...
...The medium transmits the action on the field in far greater detail than the eye can catch at the event itself...
...It's about time they broke up the weekend pigskin ghetto...
...It was the most unstable of the networks...
...It was a fine day for football," he was quoted as saying after the game and the demonstration ended...
...With an instant playback of the Senator's remarks, the viewer could at least have watched the fancy footwork again...
...It will change again next season...
...College Football '70 (abc, Sundays, 12 noon), National Football League (nbc, Sundays, 1 p.m...
...Some critics say he may be figuring out his income tax up in the booth...
...What they are giving us is simply radio with pictures...
Vol. 53 • November 1970 • No. 21
