Games No Game Show, Costas Says
Bob Costas won’t be rephrasing as many of his answers in the form of a question this year at the Atlanta Olympics.
That’s the sort of mistake he made in Barcelona as NBC’s prime time host in 1992. He got a little too carried away with Jeopardy-style trivia at the opening ceremonies.
“No question Alex Trebek would have been impressed, but I should have backed off a little,” Costas said.
Costas said he felt “a little bit like the guy determined to ace the test,” and he wasn’t sure “what combination of pageantry and geopolitics” was appropriate.
NBC televised the Barcelona Games to the United States virtually all on a tape-delayed basis. About two-thirds of prime time from Atlanta will be live.
“Patience in a live Olympics is the ultimate virtue,” NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol said.
Out takes
HBO will begin its 22nd year of Wimbledon coverage on Monday with a new look: an all-woman broadcast booth of Mary Carillo, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King. They will do men’s and women’s matches.
Carillo, in her first assignment for HBO, will do play-by-play when those three are together, and what must John McEnroe think of that? McEnroe, who is working for NBC at Wimbledon, once questioned Carillo’s ability to call a men’s match, saying men were more qualified to analyze the men’s game.
“I told John before we announced this that I was going to refer to the team of Mary, Martina and Billie Jean as his worst nightmare,” HBO executive producer Ross Greenburg said. “He laughed and said, ‘Please don’t do that.’ So, here, I’ve done it again.
“We have fun with John. He’s a friend of HBO, a longtime friend of ours at Wimbledon. I anticipate him coming up the hill and sitting with us in the truck and listening to all of our announcers. And he will be critiquing me in my ear.”
Responding to a question about possible technical innovations, Greenburg said: “Hey, this is Wimbledon. There will be no blue glow around the tennis ball.”
Maybe the oxygen is too thin up in Bristol, Conn., or maybe there’s just too much Deep Woods Off in the air.
For a special edition of ESPN Total Sports magazine this month, seven “SportsCenter” anchors were asked to name their favorite athletes to watch, and Bob Ley picked Bulgarian soccer player Hristo Stoichkov.
Not Michael Jordan, not Barry Sanders, not even Hideo Nomo - but Hristo Stoichkov, who probably is best remembered from the 1994 World Cup for his theological observations after Bulgaria lost to France: “God was Bulgarian, but the referee was French.”
Nomo was Charley Steiner’s No. 1 pick, Chris Fowler chose Jordan, Mike Tirico liked Sanders, Keith Olbermann picked Eric Lindros, Linda Cohn picked Mark Messier, and Chris Berman chose Junior Seau. All those picks must have been made before Kari Kreitzer won the national synchronized swimming championships.
CBS will show the Michigan 400, the first of its nine scheduled NASCAR races this season, on Sunday, using 38 cameras - 20 in seven different race cars; one each in turns 1, 3 and 4; three on the roof at Michigan International Speedway; three pit-crew minicams; five in stationary positions in the pits; three for unmanned speed shots; and one in the blimp.
Fox will put Sunday’s World Bowl between the Scottish Claymores and Frankfurt Galaxy on network TV for the first time since ABC televised it in 1991. Kevin Harlan and Matt Millen will provide commentary.
The game will be televised to 126 countries in 11 languages, 10 more than Millen speaks fluently, give or take one or two.
Westinghouse CEO Michael Jordan, the one who can’t dunk, was at the National Press Club in New York answering questions about CBS the other night and, when asked about getting NFL games back, said: “We’re very committed to getting back to football in any shape, way or form. And we’ll spend a lot.”