SPORTS BARS : TVs Make Every Match ‘the Big Game’

It’s Saturday afternoon, and 20 or so people, mostly men, have forsaken the blue skies and bright sun to huddle in the semi-darkness of the 16 video monitors in the Out of Bounds Sports Bar and Grill in Huntington Beach.

Two of the televisions have eight-foot screens. Six monitors line the wall behind the bar, with two others boxing the corners. The rest jut at odd angles to provide full coverage. It’s a veritable video buffet.

The Out of Bounds probably wasn’t what they had in mind on the East Coast when tavern owners set those first black-and-white televisions on their bars. A sports bar was four walls and a roof, a place to hang out, drink, talk about Mantle and Williams, Orr and Tittle. It was a way to get through the sloppy winters.

When the sports bar was exported to California, it underwent some perhaps predictable changes. It’s a marketing concept rather than a hangout. A place where there’s male bonding rather than buddies.

Glitzy or not, the sports bar theme works. “It’s a concept that began in the mid-1970s that became very popular,” says Tony Romero, beverage supervisor at Champions American Sports Bar and Grill at the Irvine Marriott.

Normally, Saturday afternoons this time of year are given over to baseball. But on this day, with the lockout just ended and opening day yet to start, the screens are aglow with college basketball--the NCAA semifinal double-header of Arkansas versus Duke, followed by Georgia Tech versus University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

While Duke and Arkansas go at it on all screens, Out of Bounds owner Mark Larsen oversees the installation of two more satellite receivers that can pull in stations from Kentucky, Moscow, or as Spike Lee says about Michael Jordan, the Sea of Tranquillity.

Larsen has spent the last three years turning the bar into a video sports mecca. “If it’s up there, I’ll get it,” he tells me. “There are 20 satellites up there, and 24 channels on each. It’s a matter of search and find.”

Larsen, a confirmed sports fanatic, was convinced from the outset that more and bigger televisions would draw more sports fans. “Especially football. That’s by far the sport that everybody watches,” he says. “During football season, at 9 a.m. people are waiting to get in. They come from as far as L.A.; they fight for the seats at the bar because they can watch all the games at once.”

He adds: “I wish football was 36 weeks a year. If it was, I could close all week long and just open on Sundays.”

But while the sports theme will carry a bar a long way, it’s not always into the end zone of financial success. There will inevitably be down times. For example, on the Wednesday night before college basketball’s Final Four, the Out of Bounds is, by its own standards, dead to the world. Maybe a dozen customers ambled about, unaccustomed to the elbow room.

On the big screen near the stage, there is horse-jumping from Florida. The eight televisions over the bar are tuned to different stations; National Invitation Tournament basketball is side by side with the world snowmobile championships and beach volleyball. Lee Marvin is slapping the Dirty Dozen into shape, although what we are hearing is 50 watts’ worth of Chick Hearn and Laker basketball.

On the main monitor the Lakers are playing the Clippers. The monster screen gives the game a three-dimensional immediacy; from the angle of the camera under the basket, a driving layup looks as if it is about to provide an in-your-face look at the business end of a size 14 Reebok. This is sports as it was meant to be seen on television.

The small crowd is made up of stayers. Two women alternately shoot pool and shoot free throws in the basket toss. None of the men make a serious effort to get friendly with them.

I wind up shooting free throws with Dave and Bill. They hadn’t been in the Out of Bounds before tonight, but they say they expected to see a lot more of it in the future. Dave, a former USC football player who once worked on nuclear warheads on Minuteman missiles in the Air Force, now works for Bill as a painter. Between rounds of free throws, Dave and I have an informed discussion about whether the water buffalo head mounted on the wall is a big water buffalo or an average-size water buffalo.

We have both been to the Philippines and met water buffaloes face to face. I am of the opinion that any water buffalo is a big water buffalo. Dave feels this one is exceptional.

A group of middle-aged regulars say they show up in late afternoon. Tom Hartnett of Newport Beach says he has been coming in here for 10 years. Don Lowe, a sales engineer and Little League coach from Huntington Beach, says they’re celebrating the day’s victories on the ball field. The Final Four is a bonus.

Roxine Spencer, an office coordinator from Huntington Beach, says she has been coming in for a year with Hartnett, but because she’s a UNLV fan she has a double reason for being here today.

They say Out of Bounds actually has several personalities.

“This bar does a metamorphosis around 9 o’clock,” says Bob Bond, an electrical components salesman from Huntington Beach. After 9, a band cranks up, and the bar fills with younger people ready to boogie.

Mark Larsen has found that the bar’s schizo personality doesn’t confuse customers. “On Thursday, Friday and Saturday it’s a meat market,” he agrees.

I ask Larsen’s friend, Mark Matteke, a carpenter from Tustin, what the best night is for being in the bar. “During football season the best night is Monday,” he says. If you’re looking for women (although he doesn’t phrase it quite so delicately), Friday and Saturday nights.

On the TV screens, the Duke Blue Devils are beginning to overpower the Razorbacks. The customers are attentive but unenthused.

John Schmiesing, a researcher at the Long Beach Veterans Hospital who lives in Newport Beach, says he visits the Out of Bounds only a couple of times a year. He and his girlfriend, Tina Quo, a geologist from Fountain Valley, are having a beer before they move on to the Balboa Saloon. Schmiesing claims to have tried all the area sports bars. “A true sports bar would never have a band,” he insists. He is also offended by the bar’s black lights. He does, however, appear to enjoy the glut of TV screens.

As the game grinds through the second half, Mark Larsen says he is currently readying the Sports Palace, a beer and wine bar in Stanton. He expects to open the bar in the middle of April. The Sports Palace will have an arcade for kids. And plenty of big screens.

At such sports bars as Jeff’s Sports Connection Deli in Orange, Henry’s Goat Hill Tavern in Costa Mesa and the Time Out Sports Bar in Anaheim, sports fans get much the same attention. Time Out has three satellite dishes to power its televisions. Patrons gobble 150 pounds of peanuts a week, recycling the shells as carpeting.

“It’s not a meat market. The guys aren’t here to pick up chicks. Their first question is, ‘Is the game on?’ ” says Tammy Radan, who owns Time Out with her husband Dave.

For true East Coast sports bar ambience, Reagan’s Irish Pub on Jeronimo Road in Mission Viejo wins hands down. Reagan’s is a dark cavern of swirling smoke and conversation. Celtics and Red Sox photos and posters line the walls.

Owner Bruce Reagan picks up the Celtics games on his satellite dish at home in San Clemente and pipes them over to the bar, says bartender Johnny McGrail.

Reagan’s coup de grace is an 8-foot-by-10-foot section of parquet floor from Boston Garden. “This is an unusual kind of place,” Bruce Reagan says. “Most people would be afraid to make a statement like this in Orange County.”

At the Champions American Sports Bar and Grill in the Irvine Marriott, 60 or 70 customers are settling in for this afternoon’s main course: UNLV and Georgia Tech. About half are there for the game; the rest seem to be overflow from a wedding.

Champions is cheerful, sanitary, well-lit. At Champions the bartenders and waitresses are dressed in referee’s outfits. An old movie poster touts “The Rose Bowl Story.” There’s a Magic Johnson poster, full size. California Angels uniforms are reverently sealed in a glass case on one wall.

There are 25 Champions bars across the country, and this, reputedly, is the busiest of them. Champions is the kind of place one can bring the family, which indeed several people have.

It’s a middle-class crowd. During the week one sees lots of suits and ties here. “A lot of business people will come in and be ‘in the hotel’ for a month, have their meals here,” says bartender Doug Hart of Newport Beach.

“It’s the best-behaved bar I’ve been in,” says Lane Bueche, the assistant manager on duty. Even the ventilation is good; Bueche props the door, opening the bar directly to the outside.

Doug Hart points out a Champions regular, Brian Kendall, who is a project manager for Westinghouse. Kendall hails from Washington state, but he has lived at the Irvine Marriott for over a year while working with Orange County contractors on a project for disposing of “high-level wastes.”

Kendall admits that he’s a sports fanatic. A Washington State fan, he’s pulling for UNLV primarily because it’s a western team. “It’s as close to the Pac 10 as I’m going to see,” he says.

Like the Out of Bounds, Champions can show different programs on different televisions, and the staff is good about tuning in special games for the regulars, Kendall says. Despite his preference for Washington teams, Kendall doesn’t let team loyalty stand in the way of enjoying a good game, and he says he goes to Angels and Rams games. “Oh, yeah, you’ve got to see it all,” he says.

Tony Serri and his friend Brian Brassil aren’t regulars at Champions. They had planned to go to another bar for the UNLV game but somehow they wound up here. “There’s a nice clientele here,” says Serri, a computer specialist from Garden Grove. “It’s a kind of theme that makes everyone feel comfortable.”