PRO FOOTBALL : When They’re Telling Us the Story, Why Can’t They Tell Us the Score?

With the approach of the holiday playoff season, here are two requests of the football announcers who will be assigned to the games:

--Please give us the score once in a while.

--Please recapitulate the scoring occasionally. If you remember what happened an hour ago, tell us about it some time, very briefly.

This is hardly new advice. Announcers have been hearing it since the invention of radio.

The problem is that anyone can be an announcer. In a perfect world that couldn’t happen. Ideally, no one would be allowed in the booth unless he listened to several hours of Vin Scully tapes and taken a written examination proving that he understands why Scully does it right.

Are the networks to blame? Columnist Art Buchwald thinks not.

Holding the announcers at fault, Buchwald says: “Before announcing a game, all sportscasters take a blood oath not to reveal the score because it will take away the suspense from the fans who have tuned in late.”

This is particularly annoying in a broadcast using three announcers, one of whom ought to be held responsible for reiterating the score, and also the scoring, regularly.

But recaps can be easily managed in one-announcer telecasts, too, as Scully has shown.

If it’s 24-7 in the third quarter, something must have happened in the first half, when we were on the phone or the freeway, or both, and missed it.

Probably the strangest thing about football announcers, as a group, is that although they were hired not to predict but to describe, most would rather guess at the next play than set the stage by explaining, briefly, what’s happened so far.

Screened graphics are helpful but incomplete. It isn’t enough to know that Smith scored on a one-yard run or that Jones kicked a 20-yard field goal. How did they get the ball down there?

What’s the score?

The Kansas City Chiefs are playing the best football in the American Conference right now, and although they are a longshot to make the playoffs, they are probably going to get there in a season of ups and downs for most clubs.

With two weeks left, the Chiefs’ edge, mathematically, is that they held the Cleveland Browns to a tie last month, starting the Browns’ slide to 7-6-1.

In the AFC wild-card race, the Chiefs, also 7-6-1, are still half a game behind Miami, Buffalo and the Raiders, all 8-6--but they are half a game ahead of Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, all 7-7.

The Chiefs’ edge in personnel terms is their defensive efficiency and their ground power with 260-pound fullback Christian Okoye.

On the off tracks of December, Kansas City appears to be better positioned to run the ball and defend against the run and pass than any other NFL team.

Perhaps only Minnesota and Houston can match Kansas City’s all-around defensive strength. Up front, the Chiefs have a rookie-of-the-year linebacker, Derrick Thomas. In back they have the NFL’s finest secondary with Deron Cherry and the others.

Since opening day, Kansas City has shown everything it needed to make the Super Bowl except a quarterback. And lately, Steve DeBerg has seemed, for the first time in 13 years, to be a champion at that position.

While the Chiefs were winning their third in a row last Sunday, defeating Green Bay, 21-3, after surprisingly routing Houston, 34-0, DeBerg was accosted by Kansas City Coach Marty Schottenheimer.

“Why have you suddenly improved so much?” Schottenheimer asked.

Said DeBerg: “I don’t know.”

The AFC’s key playoff-deciding games of 1989:

--Kansas City: San Diego Sunday; at Miami Dec. 24.

--Raiders: At Seattle Sunday and at the New York Giants Dec. 24.

--Buffalo: At San Francisco Sunday and at the New York Jets Dec. 23.

--Miami: At Indianapolis Sunday; Kansas City Dec. 24.

Russ Purnell, who coaches Seattle’s tight ends, noted the other day that more pass receivers than ever have been wearing gloves this year--even on warm days.

“I doubt if they catch the ball any better in gloves,” Purnell said. “But they think they do, and I’m sure they think they look good in gloves. And for most of them, of course, those are the two things that matter.”

A former aide to John Robinson at USC, Purnell said he has seen receivers in two types of gloves this season, a skin diver’s and a baseball batter’s.

“Some might slip on a little stickum,” he said, identifying a banned substance. “But probably not many.

“When (Seattle) receivers wear gloves, we only insist on one thing. They’ve got to wear them all week in practice.”

The Ram-49er series this season, as Ram Coach John Robinson said at Anaheim this week, will probably come down to the NFC title game, which, if they’re both in it, will be played at Candlestick Park Jan. 14.

If so, it should be remembered that turnovers were decisive the first two times:

--In San Francisco Oct. 1, the 49ers were going in for the put-away touchdown in the final minutes when fullback Tom Rathman fumbled, setting up the drive that gave the Rams a 13-12 victory.

--At Anaheim Monday night, the Rams were comfortably ahead in the fourth quarter before they fumbled twice and lost, 30-27.

Joe Montana should have won the first game and Jim Everett the second, leaving the rubber game in doubt.

Is Montana the best of all time? You can’t really compare him with Hall of Famers Joe Namath and John Unitas, or any other old-timer, because Montana doesn’t call his own plays. But Montana is the best recently.

He also has one continuing advantage over most quarterbacks--the opportunity to throw the ball to perhaps the most gifted broken-field runner who ever played wide receiver, John Taylor.

The memory that will linger longest from Monday night is Taylor taking short passes for long touchdowns on plays that measured 92 and 95 yards.

Considering their significance in a game that the Rams led at different times by 17 points, those were the NFL’s two plays of the year.