Direct Pitch For Perfect Holiday Gift

It’s Christmas morning and maybe you still haven’t gotten the Significant Sports Geek in your life the right gift. There’s always time and your friendly neighborhood columnist, of course, has the answer.

DirecTV.

It’s the greatest invention since the wheel.

And Man’s greatest temptation since Eve.

What other medium would allow you to watch Michael Jordan on one channel, a replay of the famous Celtics-Lakers 1984 NBA Finals Game 2 on another, a conversation with Fuzzy Zoeller on another, the Baja 1,000 from Mexico on another, then call SportsChannel New York between midnight and 1:30 a.m. to take part in the live discussion (I swear I’m not making this up), “Mike Keenan: Genius or Head Case?”

And before anybody says I’m a sexist pig for presuming only a man would buy a Digital Satellite System, let me suggest I have done my research. About 85 percent of the geeks who buy these things are men, and about 85 percent of those men want the sports packages.

In fairness I should point out that DSS changes your life irreversibly. The phrase “We’re not getting that game here” disappears from your conversation. Never again - NEVER do you have to say, “I’d give anything to watch that Knicks-Jazz game in Utah.”

NEVER AGAIN are you held hostage by that silly NFL rule that causes you to miss every great game in the league because the Redskins play that Sunday at home. If there’s an NFL game being played, it’s on. All of ‘em. You want to watch Michael Jordan 81 times? Do it. You want to watch the Jets 16 times? Do it. You have a jones for the Calgary Flames? Knock yourself out, big boy.

The first 195 channels offer pay-per-view movies for less than you can rent them at the video store (plus no late fees). And there must be another 50 movie channels in the DirectTV and USSB packages.

One channel is devoted exclusively to westerns, another to mysteries, another to action flicks, another to love stories, and another to what they call “True Stories” in which every movie seems to feature Valerie Bertinelli.

Now, let me tell you a true story, which happened Thursday night. I rushed home to watch the Bullets-Clippers on one of the 14 channels exclusively reserved for the NBA League Pass. One problem. It ain’t on. The NBA doesn’t allow DirecTV to show the home team in your market, so as to let local channels stay in business. I understand the kindness, but I was ticked off for a few minutes until I started to channel surf. Now, surfing the DSS can lead to drowning, seeing as I’ve got about 500 channels.

The 300s are your sports channels. After watching more of the Grizzlies-Mavericks than I want to admit, I stopped at 303 NewSport for about 20 minutes and watched “Scoreboard Central,” which is a real poor man’s “SportsCenter.” I caught a conversation with Fuzzy Zoeller on 304, The Golf Channel. Fuzzy, for some unknown reason, was showing the host how he whistles while he plays. I simply couldn’t stop for long on 305, the Classic Sports Network, because I would have watched the Celtics-Lakers 1984 Finals until daybreak. I skipped past 306, SV or Speed Vision, which is totally devoted to high-speed extreme sports, and 407, OL, which is Outdoor Life.

You have to stop at 309, Sports Channel New England, and 310, Madison Square Garden, to check on the Boston and New York teams. On 313, Empire Sports (Western New York and Pennsylvania teams not in Philly or Pittsburgh), Thurman Thomas was taking calls. Sports South had on, of course, racing. First the Baja 1,000 and then National Arena Cross where the “color guy” was telling the play-by-play man how “ruddy” the track was. I caught two rounds of a junior welterweight fight on 318, Sunshine Network, between Hector Quiroz and Johnny “Wild Wild” West.

Having fallen behind in my college hockey news, I watched a few minutes of “College Hockey USA” on 320 to see how the Minnesota Golden Gophers had fared in home-and-home battles with St. Cloud State. SportsChannel Ohio will give you Big Ten women’s volleyball now and then, but hey, it was 1 a.m.

I was just starting to get ticked off again about the Bullets not being on when, lo and behold, the onscreen guide told me if I could hold on until 1:30 “Bill Bates Spotlight” on Fox Southwest would be coming on. You never know where a guy might pick up tidbits before the Cowboys-Redskins clash, right? A man’s wrist would be tired by now, except Sony’s remote (which is the size of a telephone) uses what is essentially a “mouse” to let you scroll and click on stuff. Nothing scintillating was on Fox Rocky Mountain or Fox Arizona (no more Barkley Show), so I went to 331, Fox Sports West, where darned if they hadn’t just shown …

The Bullets.

But since it took me 2 hours to surf, I’d missed the whole game. Bill Walton was signing off from the Sports Arena. No problem, the 2 a.m. ESPN “SportsCenter,” Fox Sports News, and CNN-SI “Late Night,” were all coming on with Bullets-Clippers highlights.

Okay, it ain’t cheap.

You can buy a basic unit for $349 to $399, and the high-end Sony deluxe (so that she can watch, say, Encore Love Stories while you watch arena motorcross at the same time in the same house without drawing battle lines) goes for $699. It costs $200 to install, unless you’re Bob Vila and use the do-it-yourself kit. All told, you’re going to lay out (once) between $600 and $1,000, depending on which system you get.

The NFL Sunday Ticket is $159 for next season, but you get every game that’s not on Sunday night TNT/ESPN or Monday night. The NBA League Pass is $149, but you get 1,000 games. NHL Center Ice is $129, but you get 500 games. ESPN’s college football and basketball packages are $79 each, but you get 100 football games and 450 basketball games.

You know what you get on cable: excuses. You know what you get on the network affiliates: reruns of Erkel.

For $300 a year, I get the NFL and NBA. For $10 a month, I get 26 regional networks. Pro-rating EVERYTHING I subscribe to movies, sports, all the stuff you see on cable like CNN and Lifetime the whole thing is about $76 a month, which is what I was paying for cable, which pales in comparison.

Now ask yourself, isn’t your Significant Sports Geek worth that? And if the answer is no, think of this: At least he’ll be at home.