Brown Is Left Out; CBS to Use Rookie in Its NCAA Lineup

CBS will have an untried rookie, sportswriter Curry Kirkpatrick, in its National Collegiate Athletic Assn. tournament lineup this weekend.

Meanwhile, Hubie Brown, the network’s all-around commentator, has been benched. It’s in his contract that he work five pro and college games. He has worked four college games, and that’s all he will work.

“I’m not the person who makes those decisions,” Brown said, choosing to be diplomatic.

Neal Pilson, the president of CBS sports, said: “Hubie’s identity is more with the pro game. We will be using him during the NBA playoffs.”

Tom Heinsohn and Billy Cunningham are also identified with the pro game, yet both have NCAA assignments this weekend.

The other commentators working the tournament are Billy Packer, the network’s No. 1 man on college basketball, and Bill Raftery, former Seton Hall coach.

Heinsohn, Cunningham and Brown are all former NBA coaches, and maybe Pilson thought three would be too many.

Jim Marchiony, a spokesman for the NCAA, said: “We have a right of consultation, and we prefer they use announcers with an identification with college sports more than professional sports. But we have no right to prevent CBS from using a particular announcer.”

Whatever the reason, CBS will go without Brown. Instead, we get Heinsohn. Does that make a lot of sense?

CBS has hired Sports Illustrated’s Kirkpatrick as a commentator, and ABC, a source said, has hired the magazine’s Rick Reilly, a former Times sportswriter, as a feature reporter.

But here’s a different twist. There’s a rumor circulating that Chuck Howard, a former top executive with ABC sports, has applied for a job as a TV sports columnist for the New York Times. No one at the paper would comment on that possibility.

The paper recently lost TV sports columnist Michael Goodwin, who left to write a book.

Rick Monday has informed Channel 11 that he will not accept his demotion to weekend sports anchor because it voids his contract, meaning, essentially, that he and the station have parted company.

KTTV, meanwhile, is looking for a replacement for Monday, reportedly a Keith Olbermann type. Fresno’s Vic the Brick, once featured in Sports Illustrated because of his offbeat approach, is said to be a candidate.

A new frontier: NBC, for the first time, will televise a spring training game. Naturally it will be the Dodgers and New York Mets, the network’s two favorite teams. Their game Sunday at Vero Beach, Fla., will be shown at 10 a.m.

Because it is an exhibition game, NBC will have Marv Albert and Gayle Gardner conducting player interviews during the game.

The game announcers will be Bob Costas and Tony Kubek.

Another new frontier: Usually pay-per-view fights are top of the line. The Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvelous Marvin Hagler fight last year generated about $70 million as a pay-per-view event.

So, one may wonder, what is Saturday night’s George Foreman-Dwight Muhammad Qawi fight doing on pay-per-view?

Foreman is 40 years old and Qawi “retired” from the sport after being knocked out by Evander Holyfield last September. But before that, at least Qawi won 29 of 34 fights and, in 1983, went 15 rounds with Michael Spinks.

Foreman was to have fought Anders Eklund of Denmark. But Foreman, who claims to be gearing up for a fight with Mike Tyson, saw a surer opponent. Eklund is 6 feet 7 inches tall. Qawi, known as Dwight Braxton when he was the light-heavyweight champion, is about 5-7.

Promoter Bob Arum, who made a $350,000 profit from last November’s pay-per-view telecast of the Thomas Hearns-Juan Roldan fight, would be more than happy if Foreman-Qawi, to be held in the 4,300-seat Caesars Palace Sports Pavilion, did that well.

According to Rick Kulis, the president of Torrance-based Choice Entertainment, the distributors of the pay-per-view telecast, it will bring in a slight profit. The fight is being sold for $14.95 and is available in about 500,000 of the Los Angeles market’s 4.5 million television households. About 30 cable companies in the Southland and San Diego are offering the fight.

The program consists of three other fights. In one of those, North Hollywood middleweight Michael Nunn faces Curtis Parker of Philadelphia. Arum has promised Nunn’s manager, Dan Goossen, a title shot, provided his fighter beats Parker.

The other fights are between heavyweights Orlin Norris and Renaldo Snipes, and cruiserweights Bert Cooper and Tony Fulilangi.

Add boxing: In a somewhat more creditable fight, Mike Tyson faces Tony Tubbs in Tokyo, and HBO will televise it live Sunday night at 7. The fight marks the first HBO assignment for Jim Lampley. CBS had planned to use Lampley on the NCAA tournament before he took the HBO job.

Radio station KFI and Bob Steck Productions announced Thursday that, as reported by Jim Healy last week, the Raiders are changing flagship stations, going from KRLA to KFI.

KRLA’s Rich Marotta, the Raider commentator since the team has been in Los Angeles, will continue in that capacity, Steck said, and Bill King will return for his 23rd year as play-by-play announcer.

Steck, the producer and packager of the Raiders’ radio broadcasts, said the main reason for the switch was KFI’s offer of more promotional programming.

Steck said the station will begin broadcasting a 1-hour sports-talk show on weeknights from 7 to 8 during the football season. He said when the Raiders are at home on Sundays, the pregame coverage will begin at 9 a.m. and postgame coverage will continue until 6 p.m.

Steck also said that “Costas Coast to Coast,” a show now carried by KMPC, will switch stations and be carried by KFI after Raider broadcasts. According to Steck, he and the Raiders have signed a new 4-year agreement.

TV-Radio Notes

Bud Furillo, formerly of KABC radio, will be back on the air beginning Monday. He and Peter Vent will be co-hosts of a new talk show, “Sports Time,” for station KFOX-FM (93.5) in Redondo Beach. It will run 4-5 p.m. Monday through Friday. . . . CBS will televise 47 hours of NCAA tournament action, including 10 hours of prime-time coverage. The championship game is set for Monday, April 4. . . . ESPN will televise 10 more first-round games beginning at 9 a.m. today. Five of the telecasts will be live. . . . John Wooden will be Roy Firestone’s guest on “Sports Look” on ESPN next Tuesday at 3 and 11 p.m.

Dick Enberg and wife Barbara have a new baby, Edward Arnie (Ted) Enberg, born last Monday. The baby was named after Enberg’s father and Ted Williams. . . . Merlin Olsen has said he will begin phasing out sportscasting if his new NBC show, “Aaron’s Way,” is a success. Well, the first show got a 19.5 national Nielsen rating and shattered the competition. ABC’s lineup of “Growing Pains,” “Head of the Class,” “Hooperman,” and “Slap Maxwell,” going up against “Aaron’s Way,” averaged a 14.5. . . . ABC’s four hours of Atlanta 500 coverage Sunday will begin at 1 p.m., a delay of two hours. There will be cameras in the cars of Neil Bonnett and Alan Kulwicki.