Score One For The Peacock

When an executive named Bob Basch� left NBC Sports recently to join Atari, the joke within TV circles was that he was moving up in the business—from the fourth network to the third. That kind of black humor no longer applies to NBC Sports, whose extraordinary coverage of Sunday's Super Bowl may be remembered by a nation of football fans long after words like Rigginomics fade from their vocabulary. Certainly neither CBS nor NBC has ever done a better job with the Super Bowl. Dick Enberg can forget his theory about television usually looking good when the score is 28-27 and always looking bad when the final is 28-0. No asterisks on this TV game. So insightful were Enberg and Merlin Olsen, so revealing were the replays, and so disciplined was the overall direction that NBC would have looked brilliant if the score had been 56-zip.

Much of the credit for the boffo performance—totally unexpected considering NBC's lackluster coverage during the NFL playoffs—goes to Olsen and Coordinating Producer and Director Ted Nathanson. This may have been Olsen's last appearance on NBC. After the game he became a free agent, and he is negotiating for next season with ABC and CBS as well as with RCA's peacock. He couldn't have jacked up the bidding for his services any more shrewdly. Not only was his commentary typically intelligent and almost prescient, but in effect he also served as the telecast's deputy producer by advising the truck which players deserved isolation on replay cameras. The result was an outstanding series of replays, especially of battles along the line.

During its playoff coverage preceding the Super Bowl, NBC had overused its technological toys and forced so many replays onto the screen that games seemed to lose their continuity and pace. In fact, in the previous two weeks alone, NBC had missed the start of at least 12 plays by cramming up to five replays between whistles. During the Super Bowl, though, Nathanson used only 106 replays—far fewer than the record 147 NBC resorted to in the 1979 Super Bowl. Nathanson's mind was on the game and not on cheerleaders seeking Hollywood auditions or rainbow-haired patrons mugging for the camera. Why show goof-balls when you can focus on Dolphin Cornerback Don McNeal slipping on John Riggins' game-winning touchdown? Why show babies on mommies' laps when you can show Joe Theismann tipping the ball from touchdown-bound Kim Bokamper's hands? This is the Super Bowl, Nathanson clearly realized, and not a Family Circle special entitled How to Pacify Belinda in Big Crowds.

Until last week, CBS seemed to have a lock on the award for best football television in this postseason. One major reason was that marvelous devotee of the Boom! Whoof! Bam! school of announcing, John Madden. He has become something of a phenomenon in sports TV these past four years, and not just because he practices sound effects and breaks through a paper wall on a beer commercial. A jewel of simplicity and clarity, Madden is more consistently enlightening than any other pro football analyst on television, including the gifted Olsen. Madden is forever telling you something you didn't know about the sport, yet he never talks down to you. He's also the kind of guy who doesn't call sweat perspiration, which helps account for his entertainment value.

While Madden narrowly eclipsed Olsen this year as preeminent analyst, Enberg defeated Summerall in the play-by-play sweepstakes with room to spare. Summerall is clearly the game's second-best announcer, but one of his main strengths, a reluctance to intrude, can become a weakness. His delivery is so cool and dispassionate that he sometimes drains drama from a game. Granted, we don't need Ray Scott's Voice of Doom from years past, but Enberg's spirit and enthusiasm are welcome. He also does a better job of telling us the down, yardage and tackler, and he keeps better track of players entering the game. One can't depend on graphics—especially misspelled graphics—as an information bank. During the Jets-Raiders game NBC identified New York's Marty Lyons as Mary Lyons.

Finally, we thought we'd sum up this TV season with a few choice clich�s heard round the dial the past few weeks. So close are NBC and CBS in quality of coverage that "it's a game of inches" ( Olsen). Enberg, Olsen and Nathanson are "not too shabby" ( John Brodie). Both networks have cameras "literally" everywhere (literally all announcers use this word nowadays), but only CBS's pre-game show is "right on the money" (Hank Stram and Jack Buck). Now, as Enberg has often said, "This season [or half or game] is history."