COMMENTARY : College Basketball Is Everywhere

The TV repairman:

Please, some network, cable, syndicate or campus station, send us a list of the college basketball games that aren’t on TV, no matter how short it is.

As we all know, the word “great” is vastly overused. For example, Tom Matte used it 387 times during a recent Maryland football broadcast describing the home team’s efforts, and the Terps got muckled, 48-21.

Anyway, no other word leaped immediately to mind while watching Bud Greenspan’s “Seoul ‘88: 16 Days of Glory.”

The master at chronicling anything to do with the Olympics, Greenspan has outdone himself this time. The individuals and events he covers prove a perfect mix of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, as Jim McKay might say.

The Disney Channel ran the 140-minute show the other night. Hopefully, it will run it a few more times, and the tape will make it to the video stores soon.

Question: Will Pete Axthelm, who has been ESPN’s football “expert” the last few years after a solid shot on network, ever attain camera presence? Or must we go through life feeling uneasy as he stumbles through his convoluted thoughts?

CBS already has its baseball schedule doped out for next year and is justly proud of the fact 22 of 26 teams will be seen on either the primary or backup broadcasts. Of course, the big three -- New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- will be catered to seven, six and five times, respectively. But the Bay Area boys, the A’s and Giants, get seven look-sees, too. Cleveland, Atlanta, Detroit and Seattle get blanked.

Nearly 14 million homes had the dial set on the Miami-Notre Dame game last Saturday evening, giving CBS its highest college football rating since the courts threw out network exclusivity five years ago. Unless it’s late in the season and a game has national championship implications, the college game’s spark seems to have diminished.

ESPN still has a dozen college football games to show us, including a couple of big rivalries Saturday: Texas-Texas A&M; and Florida-Florida State. Sudden thought: Wouldn’t it be great if Dick Vitale worked at least one of these games?

Vitale, incidentally, is credited with the most grotesque quote of the week. “My heart goes out to those coaches on the sidelines,” the dynamo shrieked, as though those millionaire basketball coaches needed anything more than a stiff injection of ethics.

Halftime of the Alabama-Auburn game on CBS Saturday should be interesting. First, they’ll talk to Army’s Mike Mayweather about breaking Glenn Davis’ rushing record at USMA -- oh, sacrilege, he needs 80 yards against Navy next week -- then they’ll have a feature on the fabled Heisman Trophy winner of 1939, Nile Kinnick.

The latter is a good lead-in to the Heisman Trophy show, which follows the game on CBS, and will have six of the front-runners for the award in the audience. Hopefully, the lads will sit down and think out a proper acceptance speech. This is college, men, “Thanks a lot,” just doesn’t get it.

I taped Al McGuire’s college hoops special, have gone over it a half-dozen times already and still don’t have it completely translated. Until Al surfaced, few were aware Sanskrit could be spoken.

Wasn’t Brent Gushburger astonishingly subdued doing the Pitt-Penn State game last Saturday? Even when the game ended in a brawl and No. 32 for Pitt was caught kicking at Penn State players, Brent sounded as if he was gathering up his gear and heading out of the booth. Had to be an impostor.

Raise your hand if you’re sick of seeing agents speak for their athletic clients on TV. Bob Woolf’s description of Dexter Manley being “very upset and very emotional” on The NFL Today didn’t go far enough. How about “very stupid?”