Sports Bars Aim to Score Big With Giant TVs : Trends: Fans from as far away as L.A. converge on Orange County pubs that offer veritable video buffets on huge screens.

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

Two of the televisions have 8-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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.