There’s No Cover on Sidelines

It happened on sports TV in 2003 ...

Pandora’s box, opened: It all began with ABC scratching its head, trying to figure out how to boost those flat “Monday Night Football” ratings. Firing Dennis Miller didn’t much help. Neither did hiring John Madden. How about some eye candy on the sidelines? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

And so, the concept of Lisa Guerrero, lingerie model-as-”Monday Night Football” sideline reporter, was born.

Quickly, it was determined that Guerrero couldn’t get by on looks alone. No, she needed cue cards.

As the season wore on, Guerrero’s on-air time lessened as ABC took a stab at damage control. But, by year’s end, it was clear that a new mood had taken hold on the sporting sidelines of America.

Last week, Fox Sports Net’s Bill Macdonald hysterically bailed out of an interview attempt with Nicole Richie, co-star of the Fox reality series “The Simple Life,” when Macdonald asked her to name her favorite Laker. Richie blurted out a not-so-simple reply: “Kobe [Bryant], because I want him to have sex with me.”

The next night on ESPN’s New England Patriots-New York Jets telecast, Suzy Kolber tried to interview Joe Namath about the current struggling state of his former team.

“I want to kiss you,” Namath told Kolber, twice. A few days later, Namath apologized to Kolber, saying he had been a little too “full of some Christmas cheer.”

Moral of the story, not that anyone at any network is necessarily listening:

If you choose to peddle sex on the sideline, don’t be surprised when it sells.

How to land a job in sports TV without really trying: Keyshawn Johnson began 2003 by telling hundreds of media types during Super Bowl week that he was through talking to the media, thus assuring his personal media blackout would garner maximum media coverage.

He caught six passes in the Super Bowl, none of them for touchdowns, but his Tampa Bay Buccaneer teammates scored six in a 48-21 victory over the Oakland Raiders, thus granting Johnson the ultimate media platform to tell everyone he was just joking, just give him the damn microphone.

Then, when the going got tough during the Buccaneers’ title defense, Johnson split -- fed up with his me-first-and-forever act, the team de-activated him midseason -- and fell, feet-first, into an NFL analyst’s gig at Fox.

(Programming footnote: In Johnson’s best season with Tampa Bay, 2001, he caught 106 passes for 1,266 yards and one touchdown. This season, Johnson watched Buccaneer teammate Warren Sapp, a 303-pound defensive tackle who occasionally lines up on offense as an eligible receiver, catch two touchdown passes.)

Rush, no gain: Often, you get the sense that ESPN programming decisions are made long after last call of an executives-gone-wild pub crawl. Rush Limbaugh, NFL studio analyst? How many shot glasses were sacrificed in order to serve up that brainstorm?

Is it just coincidence Limbaugh showed up for work waving a red flag, his little gimmick for interrupting the pregame show discourse?

As expected, the experiment blew up in ESPN’s faces, though sooner than most expected. (Halloween was the over/under.) Limbaugh’s three-ring-circus radio style was never going to cut it on television, even at Sports Clowns R Us, and when the veteran carnival barker played his tried-and-tired race card at the expense of Philadelphia Eagle quarterback Donovan McNabb, you knew the shutdown was minutes away.

(Programming footnote: The Eagles were 1-2 when Limbaugh suggested the national media were propping up McNabb because they had a vested interest in having a black NFL quarterback succeed. Since Limbaugh’s early October resignation, the Eagles are 10-2 and McNabb is headed back to the Pro Bowl.)

The NFL loves us, the NFL loves us not: What is the NFL going to do with ESPN? Every April, the network sends the league round-the-clock valentines during draft weekend, where every coach and personnel director is treated like the second coming of George Halas (“Nice pick, Mooch!”) and every head-shaking selection is given the benefit of the doubt (“Could be a reach, though his upside is unlimited!”).

It’s the longest-running free advertisement in U.S. sports television. Or maybe not entirely free.

That might have been the bill coming due late in the summer when ESPN trotted out its seamy pro football soap opera, “Playmakers,” which dwelt in more dark, depressing material than the standard San Diego Charger season video.

The NFL, of course, immediately hated the show and is pressuring ESPN to forgo a second season.

ESPN is waffling on the issue, saying it might not have room for “Playmakers” in a 2004 schedule packed with “special programming” to celebrate ESPN’s 25th anniversary.

Meanwhile, Hall of Fame linebacker Lawrence Taylor sat down with Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” to plug his tell-all book about a wild career of sex, drugs and opposing-player bounty hunts that makes “Playmakers” look like a reality series.

Yes, Masters, anything you want, Masters: Working on a year-to-year contract with the Masters, CBS covered the tournament exactly the way Augusta National Country Club chairman Hootie Johnson wanted it covered.

With Martha Burk and the National Council of Women’s Organization picketing and protesting the club’s lack of female membership, CBS ignored the controversy altogether and televised the tournament as if Johnson were running the production truck.

Mike Weir won the Masters to claim the champion’s green jacket. With its toadying brand of non-journalism, CBS slinked away in a somewhat different hue: yellow.

You know, in a way, he might just have a point: Disturbed by the coverage of some October Laker unpleasantness -- News flash! Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal don’t always get along! -- Fox Sports Net NBA analyst Jack Haley went on the air and declared, “I am not a member of the media.” This immediately conjured numerous potential punch lines (only room for one in this paragraph) and earned Haley an on-air journalism lecture from studio colleague Van Earl Wright, who had to inform his sidekick, oh, yes, Jack, you actually are.

Instructor, teach thyself: A few weeks later, Wright, apparently forgetting the objective-reporting chapter in his Journalism 101 textbook, turned up on a Fox Sports Net telecast wearing a gold and purple Kings replica throwback jersey.

This time it didn’t matter: With a baseball All-Star game and a new wrinkle to pitch, Fox drove regular viewers screaming from the room with its 24/7 “This Time It Counts” overkill. Fox built its inexhaustible ad campaign around the fact that the game’s winner would receive home-field advantage in the World Series. That went to the American League by virtue of its 7-6 triumph over the National League.

Three-and-half months later, the New York Yankees, with home-field advantage, lost to the Florida Marlins in the World Series. The Marlins clinched the title in Game 6, which was played at Yankee Stadium.

Point, counterpoint: CBS football analyst Deion Sanders called “Playmakers” the closest thing to NFL reality that he had seen. When Bob Costas mentioned this to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue during an interview on HBO’s “Inside The NFL,” Tagliabue quipped, “You know, Deion says a lot of things which are unique to Deion’s reality.”

You have been warned: So, when ESPN cancels “Playmakers,” will it be because the network doesn’t want to lose the NFL after the league’s current television agreement expires after the 2005 season?

Or is ESPN really planning that much 25th anniversary programming?

ESPN Executive Editor John Walsh told USA Today that the network plans to plug its 25th anniversary “as many times as humans will allow. It’s ESPN. Are you kidding me? Have you ever heard of ESPN under-doing self-promotion?”

TV-radio columnist Larry Stewart is on vacation.