He Asked for a Hike and Was Told to Take One

When Dave Diles was hired at $52.50 a week as a reporter for the Associated Press in Louisville in 1951, he was thrilled.

When he was making $100,000 a year as a sportscaster for ABC in the summer of 1981, it wasn’t enough.

Diles said during an interview the other day that he learned through a friend, a secretary who had access to salaries of other ABC sportscasters, that he was making far less than most of his colleagues.

According to Diles, Jim Lampley, his co-host on the “Prudential College Scoreboard,” was making $280,000 at the time. People such as Keith Jackson, Frank Gifford and Jim McKay were all making more than $500,000. Diles said Bill Russell and Billie Jean King, under contract but not doing anything, were making $100,000.

So Diles asked for about $200,000.

The result? Diles’ 20-year career with ABC Sports ended shortly after that.

Then in 1982, Diles, who besides working for the network was also a sportscaster for the ABC affiliate in Detroit, quit that job, mainly because of back problems.

Diles moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 1984, after having been hired by Golden Gaters Productions of San Francisco as the host of “The Race for No. 1,” a syndicated football show carried by 180 stations and seen on Channel 7 Saturdays at 4 p.m.

The show, based in Los Angeles last season, is now done at a studio in San Francisco, but Diles still lives here. “The Race for No. 1,” which is sort of an expanded “Prudential College Scoreboard,” is done in 11 or 12 half-hour segments, with different parts of the country getting different segments--all live.

“Sometimes I’m on camera for five hours at a time without a break,” Diles said. “It makes it kind of tough on the kidneys.”

Diles has published five books. His first was about Duffy Daugherty, former Michigan State football coach. He later wrote biographies on Denny McLain, Archie Griffin and Terry Bradshaw. He also wrote a religious sports book, “12th Man in the Huddle.”

Now he’s working on his sixth book, an autobiography. “I’m going to call it ‘Confessions of an Almost Superstar,’ ” Diles said.

Diles bases the title on his never quite making it big as a network sportscaster, although at one time he thought he would make it big. He said that Jim Spence, senior vice president of ABC sports, once told him he would eventually replace Jim McKay.

Said Spence this week: “Dave did a very good job for us, but I don’t remember telling him that. I would say he was among those we have considered as possibilities over the years.”

So what happened between ABC and Diles? “We just didn’t want to pay Dave what he was asking,” Spence said.

Then there was what Diles calls “the dinner.”

Every year in Chicago, when ABC Sports threw a black-tie affair for some of its major sponsors, Diles traditionally did a roast.

Even though he wasn’t under contract to ABC in 1982, Diles was asked to work the affair again because of the job he had done in previous years.

“Naturally, I would crack jokes about people,” Diles said. “About Roone Arledge, I said: ‘Roone is sorry he couldn’t be here tonight; he’s having a personality bypass.’

“I also said: ‘Roone is now the president of both sports and news, so he has two offices from which not to return phone calls.’

“Then John Severino (former president of ABC) appears at the mike. He says: ‘When I worked with Dave Diles in Detroit he was a (bleep). He’s still a (bleep), and that’s why he’s not working for ABC now, and that’s why he never will.’

“That quote is what I’m leading with in my book.

“Anyway, the place went silent. The next couple of speakers barely said a thing. Then Howard Cosell takes his turn. Howard and I had always been close.

“Howard says, ‘David Diles, we’ve been friends for 19 years. But your bitterness is showing through and it’s not becoming.’ Howard had decided to take Severino’s side.”

Apparently, Severino, who had never before been at this affair, didn’t understand that it was a roast.

Other ABC officials later apologized to Diles.

Spence, who was at the dinner, said that what happened, as unfortunate as it was, really didn’t affect Diles’ career with ABC because Diles and the network never agreed on contract terms anyway.

Diles was born in Middleport, Ohio, a town of 2,900, the youngest of five children. He speaks fondly of his childhood and believes that growing up in a small town gave him strong values.

He currently owns a 26-acre conservation farm back home. “It has 17 bird feeders, 7 deer feeders and a 3-acre lake full of bass,” he said.

It’s a nice place to get away and forget. And Diles, 54, has more to forget than just a career gone awry.

On April 1, 1978, his first wife, Jean, died after a four-year battle with cancer. Although Dave and Jean had been divorced in 1970, he was with her almost constantly in her final year. It cost him his second marriage.

“The day after Jean died, I asked Evelyn for a divorce,” Diles said. He and Evelyn had been married for 11 months. “I wanted to wipe the slate clean, to start anew.”

Diles said he and Evelyn got back together later and dated for three years, but never remarried. “She found someone else,” Diles said. “They were married four months after we broke up. I still love her, and would drop everything in a second if she would take me back.”

Diles, pondering a thought, said: “I don’t want to give you the impression I’ve had it tough. Jean and I had two wonderful children. There’s Beverly, who is 26 and married, and David, who is 24. They mean more to me than anything.

“If I can leave them with an everlasting memory, as my father did for me, then my life will have been full.”

Notes NBC will devote four hours of coverage to Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup at Aqueduct, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Dick Enberg and Dave Johnson will be co-hosts of the telecast, with Pete Axthelm, Tom Hammond, Harvey Pack, Brough Scott and Sharon Smith providing analysis. The race caller is Tom Durkin. . . . The Breeders’ Cup will be discussed in a one-hour special tonight at 8 on Channel 56. Santa Anita’s Alan Balch is the host. . . . This is the NBA’s 40th season, and CBS will toast the occasion with a half-hour special, “Quest for the Crown: the NBA’s 40th Season,” Saturday at 3 p.m. Pat O’Brien is the host of the show, which features a look at Patrick Ewing, an interview with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a feature on the league’s top seven rookies, and features on Spud Webb, Atlanta’s 5-5 1/2 guard, the Lakers’ Mitch Kupchak and Phoenix’s Walter Davis.

The Clippers will make their first television appearance of the season Saturday night at 7:30. Their game with the New York Knicks at the Sports Arena will be on Channel 5, with Phil Stone and Tommy Hawkins announcing. . . . The Lakers, in order to get the most out of Chick Hearn, use him and Keith Erickson on both radio and TV in what is called a simulcast. But sometimes problems arise, such as the other night at Dallas. Both announcers did halftime interviews without properly introducing the interviewees. Presumably, they were identified with graphics on TV, but radio listeners were left to figure out for themselves what was going on. It was disconcerting, too, to radio listeners when Hearn asked director Susan Stratton to show a picture of the new backboards being used in the NBA this season. . . . ESPN will present “America’s Cup ‘87: Bring Back the Cup” on Sunday at 7 p.m., the first in a series of programs leading up to the network’s live coverage of the America’s Cup final in January, 1987, off Freemantle, Australia.

UCLA, which has been on television for all but one of its football games this season, has a bye this Saturday and will play Arizona at the Rose Bowl the following Saturday. That game can’t be televised live, because Arizona is banned from TV this season but will be shown on tape-delay at 10:30 p.m. on Jerry Buss’ Prime Ticket Network. . . . Prime Ticket will televise a women’s volleyball match, UCLA vs. San Diego State, on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m. The announcers will be Lynn Shackelford and Ann Meyers. . . . All in the family: Jorge Jarrin, who does the traffic reports for Jetcopter 790 for radio station KABC, is the son of Dodger Spanish language announcer Jaime Jarrin.