They forgot FOX...could this have been for a reason?
I know I had my fill of chip and dip, and bad football!
ESPN Scores In A Bad Bowl Business
Tim Ferguson, 01.02.03, 10:30 AM ET
NEW YORK - I spent much of the holidays--indeed, many Saturdays in the fall--watching college football on TV. And never have I been more grateful for ESPN.
This all-sports cable sister to broadcast network ABC (and majority owned by The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS - news - people )) brought a level of sophistication to coverage of the season's secondary bowl games--it aired 20 of them--that has rescued them from the amateur-hour coverage of old (remember the "MizLou" telecasts?).
I know, there are too many bowls and some of them shouldn't survive--I read that in The Wall Street Journal. And I won't weep if the likes of the Mazda Tangerine Bowl get squeezed out. But for a lot of schools that are too small or academic to contend for the big matchups that come after New Year's, this bit of gridiron is the only post-season play to shoot for. ESPN did it justice, overcoming a few fumbles along the way.
As a channel (really, four channels) for jocks and junkies, ESPN brings an informed sophistication to the backwater bowls. Sure, its announcers indulge in their share of sports puffery (plenty of "brilliant" moves and great "athleticism"). And there's an unhealthy dose of shilling from the booth for these commercially hybridized contests (the Poulan WeedEater Bowl is no more, so my favorite now is the Chick fil-A Peach Bowl, which at least sounds tasty). The names are a mouthful and the play-by-play guys seemingly had to keep mouthing them (no wonder, considering the game sponsors are also broadcast sponsors) while pretending not to notice how often the comp-seat "fans" deserted the stands after one good toddy.
But most of the games themselves were good, if not "uncredible." That bit of mangled hyperbole was blurted out in the booth during San Diego's Holiday Bowl--sorry, the Pacific Life Holiday Bowl--and who can fault an occasional Dubya-ism amid three hours of live thrills and spills. The nice thing about ESPN's crews is that they are comfortable enough together that they'll rib each other over such a miscue, as the guys in San Diego did. (Some pairings are still a little strained: When Steve Levy tried a little bonhomie at the "ConAgra Foods" Hawaii Bowl, suggesting that analyst Rod Gilmore could be nicknamed "Happy," as in the title character of the dumb Adam Sandler movie, Gilmore grumbled that he wasn't much for nicknames. Levy, basically a hockey man himself, was on thin ice there.)
College football now being a business--though rather like Nantucket Nectars to the NFL's CocaCola--errant players and referees rightly come in for on-air criticism. The replays reinforce it. Coaches, too, get knocked--if more gently. Perhaps that's because so many of their cashiered brethren are now broadcasting. But it's worth suffering a little coziness to get the ready knowledge of a Bill Curry, for example. The vet of Georgia Tech, Alabama and Kentucky keeps his wit and wits about him while diagnosing the action.
Coaches are now a constant camera study on the sidelines, too--celebrities who can make well over $1 million a year. (ESPN even agonizingly covers some of their post-game press conferences.) Still, there is drama and poignancy here, and among the players as well. Courageous fools in uniform are guaranteeing themselves lives of perpetual pain with wracking injuries--and they aren't even ensured an NFL salary annuity.
By the way, ESPN sidelines correspondents such as Adrian Karsten were able to cut through restrictive new rules on player-condition disclosures to give quick accounts on the busted bodies. Karsten also offered a frank (and accurate) early view that Tennessee had shown up flat for its New Year's Eve matchup with Maryland.
ESPN's tchnical capabilities are first rate. The fact that News Corp.'s (nyse: NWS - news - people ) Fox Sports is not involved in bowl broadcasts means you get some of the quickness it brought to the medium without that network's over-the-top antics. Hooray! But why the hackneyed shots of screechy cheerleaders, bench-resting halfbacks and literal clowns in the stands mugging like eight-year-olds? On the field that behavior now draws a yellow flag.
Edgy as today's announcers can be, there were telecast gaps one can only attribute to fear of offense. For example, after an initial touchdown that might have given a lift over favored UCLA in the "Sega Sports" Las Vegas Bowl, the New Mexico coach sent a gender token out to try the point-after kick. Sure enough, she kicked the ball like a girl and it was blocked. New Mexico surrendered the edge and lost. This stunt was an insult to all concerned and the play-by-play commentary on ESPN barely scratched that surface.
Speaking of insults, there were the commercials. One drawback of the bottomless pit of cable television is that you sit through the same ad repeated multiple times. (The fact is that college football telecasts of all sorts suffer from this. Note to self: gotta get TiVo.) However, I'd generally rather watch a Nivea for Men spot for the eighth time than catch another obnoxious, raunchy release from Coors (does the brewer family sign off on those?).
When the final whistle sounded in the Outback (Steakhouse) Bowl on New Years Day, however, the ESPN scoreboard showed plenty of field goals and a few touchdowns--and also its highest ratings week ever. The cable guys turned it over to ABC for the so-called BCS contests, the ones that draw the real ratings. These culminate in Friday's Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, but the heartiest college fans have already had a filling dip of the chip.
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