Haden Does a Great Job Calling a Great Game

There will be talk of last Saturday’s USC-Notre Dame game for years, and maybe lost in all the lore will be the job Pat Haden did as the NBC commentator.

Haden is one of the best football commentators, and he has never been better than he was Saturday.

Here was Haden on Reggie Bush:

* “He’s the 1st Amendment with hips. He expresses himself in his own way.”

* “He’s a little bit like Barry Sanders. Every time he touches the ball, you hold your breath.”

* “If you’re a defensive back, it’s like Dante’s nine stages of hell trying to tackle this guy.”

When a USC trainer was shown draped over Bush and helping him stretch, Haden said, “That would be illegal in certain parts of Utah.”

Lest one think Haden, a former USC quarterback, was partial to the Trojans, he wasn’t. He played it right down the middle.

The only bad thing was all the confusion at the end. At first, Haden missed the fact that Matt Leinart had fumbled the ball out of bounds while trying to dive into the end zone. But so did a lot of other people, including play-by-play announcer Tom Hammond and everyone in the NBC production trailer.

Haden, however, was the first to notice it, adding that the clock should have been stopped and the game wasn’t over. The big mistake was made by the Notre Dame timekeeper.

Haden was criticized in Tuesday’s New York Times by TV sports columnist Richard Sandomir for not noticing that Bush had given Leinart a shove in the back when he scored on the game’s final play. Was it legal?

Sandomir wrote that Haden and Hammond should have addressed the issue.

Haden defended himself when he spoke at a Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment Commission luncheon in Pasadena this week.

“It never would have even come up if Reggie hadn’t said something,” Haden said.

Tennessee Titan Coach Jeff Fisher, another former Trojan, was asked Thursday by Fox Sports radio’s Andrew Siciliano if he had ever seen anyone called for anything like that in the NFL.

Fisher said he hadn’t. “You can push, but you can’t pull,” he said.

Was It Really a Feature?

A penalty flag should have been thrown on NBC for the halftime feature that had Notre Dame Coach Charlie Weis giving a tour of the school’s new training facility. Weis pointed out, among other things, the big-screen TVs and the places students could play video games.

This wasn’t a halftime feature as much as it was a recruiting film, delivered to the nation, courtesy of NBC.

Baseball Takes Back Seat

Lou Piniella, who did a fine job in the Fox booth during the first two rounds of the baseball playoffs, was scheduled to join Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for the World Series.

But because of the threat of Hurricane Wilma in Florida, Piniella, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ manager until this month, will miss at least the first two games. He needs the time to prepare for a possible evacuation and help friends prepare as well.