Program Focuses on a Special Group of Athletes, Games

Jeff Float, who swam the third leg of the United States’ gold-medal-winning 800-meter freestyle relay in last summer’s Olympics, will be the host of a show on Channel 4 Saturday night.

Float never thought he’d be the host of a TV show. Broadcasting was never an aspiration. Still isn’t.

Broadcasting is for people who speak fluidly. Float slurs his words.

But he has an excuse. He has impaired hearing.

Float had viral meningitis when he was 13 months old and suffered an 80% hearing loss in his right ear, a 60% loss in his left. He learned to speak through years of speech therapy, and today there is only a trace of a speech impediment.

Float wears hearing-aids and is also proficient at lip reading. The combination allows him to carry on a conversation with little difficulty.

And he handles his role as a TV host fairly well. Saturday night’s show, “The Sign of Champions,” which will be televised at 7:30 p.m., previews the World Games for the Deaf, which will be held July 10-20 at UCLA, Pepperdine and other sites in Los Angeles and Santa Monica.

The show, which was previewed Tuesday night at NBC, is produced by David Butterfield, who is totally deaf. Butterfield lost his hearing almost overnight three years ago. Doctors believed it was caused by a virus.

Add Deaf Games: Some 2,000 athletes from about 30 nations will be involved, but the half-hour Channel 4 is devoting to the games is about the only television coverage they’ll get in the United States. The BBC is sending over a TV crew, but otherwise the coverage by the electronic media will be nonexistent.

These are the 25th World Games for the Deaf. They are held every four years, one year after the regular Olympics. In 1981, they were held in Cologne, West Germany. In 1977, the site was Bucharest, Romania. It was at those games that Float made his first big splash. He won 10 gold medals.

In the 1985 games, Float, 25, is an ambassador, a spokesman. The former USC star who grew up in Sacramento has retired from competition.

Early indications are that the nightly rebroadcasts of the 1984 Olympics on ESPN will not be a ratings success. The first three nights drew Nielsen ratings of 1.1, 1.9 and .9. An ESPN spokesperson said the network was figuring on ratings of around 2.0.

Add ’84 Olympics: The ESPN shows are quality productions, but one complaint is that the commentators use the present tense. This, at times, insults the intelligence of the viewers. The announcers pretend they don’t know the outcome of an event, even though many viewers do.

“We realize the problems with doing it in the present tense, but we had to go one way or the other,” producer Linda Jonsson said. “We felt if we went back and forth, from past to present, we would lose the flow and continuity and would end up with a helter-skelter situation.”

Bob Ley, the most-used play-by-play announcer in the series, said: “The key is to say less than you normally would. Where you get into trouble is when you embellish too much.”

Venom hits Vermeil: Howard Cosell, interviewed on KABC’s “Sportstalk” last Monday, talked about his pet peeve, the hiring of ex-athletes and coaches as announcers. He calls it jockocracy.

“See one NFL game, you’ve seen them all,” he said. “Only the terminology of the team differs, and they’re all the same. Of course, you might get Dick Vermeil where you got the cross block, the trap block, the zone block, the crack-back block, the co-op block and the cha-cha step, and now all of America is tuned out. Who cares about that garbage. But that’s not to pick on Dick, who was a great coach and is a great man.”

Right, Howard.

Add Cosell: Lisa Bowman, described by Cosell as having the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen, started to ask Howard about Steve Howe. “This Steve Howe situation is very painful for us Dodger fans,” she said.

“You’re not a fan, you’re a journalist,” interjected Cosell.

“I’m a fan, too,” Bowman said.

Cosell: “You can’t be both. Bud Furillo has taught you that, unrelentingly. I’m surprised.”

Cosell, who never did answer the question about Howe, must not know that Furillo is probably a bigger Dodger fan than Bowman.

Last add Cosell: KABC’s Tommy Hawkins, in a Tuesday commentary, took exception to Cosell’s attack on “jockocracy.”

The former Laker said: “The ex-jock simply gives the viewer or listener a better and more realistic view based on actual experience. As far as ex-jocks in the broadcasting industry is concerned, there are many of us who have paid our dues on a daily basis for years, and have spent as much time or more developing our broadcasting skills than we did our athletic skills. Why should we apologize for positions that we now occupy? I will admit being an ex-jock helps get your foot in the door. But just having that calling card does not sustain you in a career.”

The bright side: An NBC spokesman, on John McEnroe being eliminated at Wimbledon: “At least we may now get a final that goes the distance. Two years ago, McEnroe beat Chris Lewis in straight sets, and last year, he beat Jimmy Conners, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, in an 81-minute disaster.”

Add McEnroe: Tonight at 7:30 p.m., Channel 4 will televise a half-hour show, “Wimbledon: A Player’s Guide.” One of the players featured on the show, of course, is McEnroe.

Notes The networks have been giving Los Angeles viewers a heavy dose of Dodgers and Angels this season, and the trend will continue. The Dodgers were on ABC last Monday night; the Angels will be on NBC Saturday and then on ABC Monday night, and the Dodgers will be back on NBC the next Saturday. . . . Ratings game: The first-place Angels seem to be gaining in popularity on the Dodgers. Usually, a Dodger game beats an Angel game by several rating points. But last Saturday, the margin was only 1.4, with the Dodgers and Atlanta Braves on NBC getting an L.A. Nielsen rating of 10.4, the Angels and Kansas City Royals on Channel 5 a 9.0. On Sunday, the Angel-Royal game got an 8.1. . . . Last weekend’s USFL playoff games on ABC drew L.A. ratings of 3.1 and 2.0.

ESPN announced last week that it will televise the UCLA-BYU football game at Provo, Utah, Sept. 7, and WTBS said this week it will televise the UCLA-Tennessee game at Knoxville, Tenn., Sept. 14. . . . A reminder: Because of NCAA sanctions, USC can’t appear on TV during the regular season this year.

Platform diving and karate will be included on CBS’s “Sports Inside Out” Saturday at 4:30 p.m. . . . Monday’s Cracker Jack Old-Timers game will be on CBS Saturday at 3 p.m. . . . Jim Hill and Channel 2 won a United Press International award for a Laker special, “Michael Cooper: Family Man,” which was televised last May. . . . Howard Cosell is interviewed on the “Stroh’s Circle of Sports” on the USA network Sunday at 6 p.m. . . . San Diego’s KSDO carries Caliente results Saturdays and Sundays at 6:05 and 6:27 p.m.