Volleyball : TV Opened Its Eye While Many Fans Shut Theirs

Some say that a sport has made it into the mainstream if it is shown on television. Let us welcome, then, men’s volleyball to the mainstream. And pray that the sport doesn’t drown in the current.

The Gatorade USA Cup international tournament, jointly produced by the Forum and International Management Group last week, was a coming of age for volleyball.

ESPN and Prime Ticket took turns televising the matches, most of them on tape-delay. They also took turns bending the rules of the game. Further, at least partly in the interest of television, the Forum dictated late starting times and decreed that the United States national team play in the second game each night.

So, what was a crackling good tournament--the U.S. team beat the Soviet Union, the world’s No. 2 team; No. 6 France, and a game young Canadian team--wound up as a tailored-for-television event that ran late into the night, leaving skimpy crowds heading for the exits, yawning.

Volleyball is a fast-paced sport that ought to be right up TV’s lens, since it is played by strapping, sun-tanned athletes leaping and diving in a display of both power and finesse. It is also, however, too long, too continuous and too unpredictable for television’s purposes. There’s no fourth quarter to build up to, and no time limit.

The game, therefore, had to be tailored for television.

For example:

--International volleyball rules call for 30-second timeouts. ESPN and Prime Ticket wanted 70- and 75-second timeouts. Television won. The games went longer.

--Volleyball action is practically non-stop, so there is almost no logical time to show replays or commercials. Sometimes, though, games are interrupted while sweat on the floor is mopped up. In the USA Cup, when television wanted to show a replay, a person sitting at the TV table held up a paddle as a signal to the umpire to send out the towel kids to swab up non-existent sweat.

--The first match on opening night was over a little too fast for television. ESPN wanted to go on the air live at 9 p.m. with the United States-Soviet Union match. So, when the France-Canada match ended at 8:30, the fans in the Forum had to sit through half an hour of “official ceremonies” and other time wasters.

--Friday night’s U.S.-Canada match was moving so fast that there was little chance for a commercial break. The solution? A timeout. Television requested that the U.S. team call one. Therefore, U.S. Coach Marv Dunphy, with his team beating Canada, 12-1, had to call an unnecessary, and silly looking, timeout.

In a way, these are welcome problems for volleyball. Whatever the difficulties, you can’t beat the exposure. As have so many other sports, this one will have to learn to deal with, and compromise with, television and its demands.

Still, volleyball has to be careful that it does not sell its very soul to the tube.

Last week, for instance, the United States Volleyball Assn. lost perhaps thousands of ticket-buying fans and valuable print coverage of its showcase event because of the scheduling. The first game began each night at 6:30 to accommodate L.A.’s “late-arriving crowds.”

Then, as mentioned, the match of greatest interest here, the one involving the U.S. team, was scheduled second every night. That meant that fans were in for late nights. Those who brought children also were pretty well assured of cranky kids the next day.

The four nights of volleyball ended at 10:45, 11:25, 9:45 and 11:50, pushing print reporters from as far away as San Diego up against almost impossible deadline situations.

Jeanie Buss of the Forum said that crowds were disappointing, about half what she had expected.

Said Clifford McPeak, associate executive director of the USVBA: “Right now, we are experimenting. It’s reciprocal with television. Anything we can do to help the sport is valuable to us. If someone came to us and said, ‘We’ll give you $15,000 to televise your event,’ we’d play at 3:30 in the morning and we’d play with orange balls if they want. You get my point.”

Clearly. Amateur sports tend to live four-year cycles of crumbs and famine, the crumbs falling their way only in Olympic years. Volleyball figures that if it can get some attention in a non-Olympic year, great.

The question, though, is how far to go. If volleyball would really like to accommodate television, it would change its scoring system, eliminating the time-consuming side-outs and scoring a point per play.

Erik van Dillen of IMG, the event’s co-promoter, suggested that and other changes.

“They’ve got to package it for TV,” he said. “What we have done at IMG is to take the sport out of high school gyms and bring it into major arenas, to make it a new major sport, like tennis was 15 years ago. To do that, you’ve got to sell it to TV.

“Some people may call that selling out or compromising. To the contrary, that’s learning from others, improving the product. No sport is perfect from inception. There’s always room for improvement.”

Lots of people, though, enjoy volleyball just the way it is. What remains to be seen is how long it will stay in TV’s mainstream if it doesn’t change.