Rams’ Battle for First Leaves Fans Battling a Television Blackout

The Rams, 5-2 and in second place in the NFC West, will play Atlanta, the division leader with a 5-1-1 record, Sunday at Anaheim Stadium. A big game, right?

Not big enough to even come close to selling out in time to be televised locally. The game fell 13,720 tickets short of a sellout at 1 p.m. Thursday, the deadline for lifting the blackout. A sellout is 67,820.

So the pro football lineup in Los Angeles Sunday is this: Raiders at Houston on Channel 4 at 10 a.m., with Don Criqui and Bob Trumpy reporting, followed by mighty St. Louis (1-6) at Dallas on Channel 2 at 1 p.m., with Tom Brookshier and Dick Vermeil reporting.

The Monday night matchup on Channel 7 is a good one: Washington (6-1) at the New York Giants (5-2).

Speaking of good matchups, ABC offers Penn State (6-0) vs. Alabama (7-0) at Tuscaloosa, Ala., Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

CBS will televise the Trojans’ game at Stanford at the same time.

By the way, CBS’ college football is beating ABC’s in the national ratings race, 7.5 to 6.6. But that’s mainly because CBS had Miami-Oklahoma earlier in the year.

ABC figures to close the gap this weekend with Penn State-Alabama. CBS will televise USC-Stanford to most of the country, but the South will get Clemson-North Carolina State.

WTBS, which usually televises a Southeastern Conference game at 9:30 a.m. PDT on Saturdays, will televise a Big Ten game this Saturday, Minnesota at Ohio State. WTBS asked permission to bypass the SEC because the only conference game available to the network was Vanderbilt (1-5) vs. Mississippi (4-2-1).

Auburn (6-0) vs. Mississippi State (6-1) was not available to WTBS because ESPN is televising that game at 4:30 p.m.

A poorly timed television timeout during last Sunday’s Ram-Detroit game got somewhat overlooked because it had no bearing on the outcome, but it sure could have.

With 1 minute 10 seconds left in the first half and the Rams ready to punt, Detroit was handed an extra timeout by an official who granted a request by CBS to get in a commercial just then. As things turned out, the Lions were unable to score before halftime.

Those watching the game from a satellite dish were privy to what was going on. They knew John Robinson was furious because announcers Verne Lundquist and Pat Haden were talking about it (off the network) during a commercial break.

“Do we touch this?” Haden said to Lundquist.

“I think we have to,” Lundquist said. He called it an “inadvertent television timeout” on the air.

During another commercial break, when it appeared that the Lions would not score, Haden said: “Boy, we lucked out there.”

Add dish: It was reported in Tuesday’s Morning Briefing that during another break, Haden and Lundquist were talking about the possibility of a three-way tie in the NFC West if both the Rams and 49ers were to win, when Lundquist said: “What happens if the 49ers and Atlanta wind up in a tie?” And Haden said: “UCLA goes to the Rose Bowl.”

What wasn’t reported was that the announcers liked the line so much they repeated the sequence again on the air. It wasn’t as funny the second time, since it wasn’t spontaneous, and viewers in Detroit were probably confused.

Ratings game: Through the first four games, the World Series ratings were 6% higher than a year ago. The national Nielsen average through Game 4 was 25.3 this year. It was 23.9 last year.

The playoffs, somewhat surprisingly, drew higher ratings last year. The National League championship series drew an average rating of 15.4 last year, and this year it drew a 14.9. The American League series average was 15.8 last year and 15.6 this year.

In college football, CBS, with Iowa-Michigan last Saturday, beat out ABC, with Alabama-Tennessee, 7.1 to 5.1, in the national ratings.

Broadcast Notes NBC is gearing up for the Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita. The network’s four hours of coverage will begin at 11 a.m. PDT. . . . Last year’s Breeders’ Cup at Aqueduct will be reviewed on ESPN next Tuesday at 8 p.m., and this year’s races will be previewed by the cable network at 9:30 a.m. race day. . . . College football Nov. 1 includes: Florida State at Miami on CBS at 9 a.m., Ohio State vs. Iowa on WTBS at 9:30 a.m., Oklahoma vs. Kansas on ABC at 12:30 p.m., Penn State vs. West Virginia on ESPN at 4:30 p.m., USC at Arizona on Prime Ticket at 6:30 p.m. . . . Next Thursday, ESPN offers Fresno State-Cal State Fullerton. The Thursday night game the following week will be Fresno State-Nevada Las Vegas.

CBS will televise Sunday’s America’s Marathon-Chicago on a delayed basis. The coverage begins at 11:30 a.m. on Channel 2 and at 11 a.m. on San Diego’s Channel 8. More than 12,000 runners will compete. Heading the men’s field are Toshihiko Seko, Charlie Spedding and Ahmed Saleh. Ingrid Kristiansen heads the women’s field. . . . ABC will televise the New York City Marathon Nov. 2 live at 7:30 a.m. PDT. . . . Joel Meyer’s “Sports Line” show on KMPC will be expanded from 1 to 1 1/2 hours Nov. 4, running from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wouldn’t it be better to start it at 5 p.m. and wrap it around Jim Healy’s 5:30 show? . . . ESPN take note: Mark Spitz was a guest of Bud Furillo on KABC’s “Sportstalk” the other night and did an excellent job of explaining the somewhat confusing America’s Cup. Spitz, an accomplished sailor, knows his stuff.

“Sports Lifestyles,” the new syndicated show on Channel 7 Saturday afternoons, will have basketball’s Reggie Theus and sports video producer Dick Meyer this week, at 5 p.m. On Nov. 15, the show will take an off-the-field look at the Dallas Cowboys’ cheerleaders. . . . Talk about inconsistency: The Rams have had a different announcing team almost every week on television. This Sunday, on the blacked-out telecast, it’s Verne Lundquist and Joe Theismann. Jack Buck was scheduled to work the game, but he’s doing the World Series for CBS radio. They’ll have yet another announcing team--Al Michaels and Frank Gifford--working their next game. It’s a Monday night contest at Chicago Nov. 3.