A TV Sports Institution Needs Help

Those in charge of “Monday Night Football” haven’t reported here lately, seeking counsel. We shrug. If they want to die with their show, it’s their option.

But if they check in here, complaining that ratings aren’t what they used to be, they are going to be advised to renew the effort to change the scheduling format.

They will be advised on other matters, shortly to be revealed.

As you doubtless know, “Monday Night Football” is locked in, which is to say, games for the season are selected in summer and not subject to change.

Well, when those picking the games guess wrong, you wind up with a succession of matches of only mild interest to the sports connoisseur.

It gets worse than that. You wind up with outright turkeys, of the variety offered the last two weeks in games matching the Rams and Pittsburgh and the New York Giants and Indianapolis.

Because the Rams didn’t play a lick and because Indianapolis couldn’t, “Monday Night Football” came away red-faced, selling merchandise not palatable.

Almost uniformly this season, Monday night games have been of minor impact, of interest mainly to those giving or taking the points.

What “Monday Night Football” must do, in order to retain a pulse, is persuade the league to keep the schedule loose, picking each game no farther in advance than a week.

In other words, each Monday morning, the game would be announced for the following Monday night, assuring matchups with at least reasonable bite.

Baseball has been picking TV games on short notice for years. Football has resisted this, explaining it has logistic problems that baseball doesn’t.

But the truth is, if ABC were permitted to skim the cream each week, a large howl would be heard from CBS and NBC, standing to lose choice games.

So, coming here for help, ABC acquires a slick negotiator who, unhampered by twinges of conscience, goes to the NFL and harpoons CBS and NBC, claiming that “Monday Night Football,” an American institution for 20 years, must be preserved.

To save “Monday Night Football,” ABC is next advised to kick out the show’s opening in which the game is introduced by a scrubby-looking guy singing country rock . . . yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re gonna party.

If this is the image of “Monday Night Football,” all of us who watch are a bunch of slobs, flanked by six-packs.

Has it never occurred to ABC that the majority tuned in is attired in clean clothes, looking at a football game after dinner and not partying it up? How do we get linked to flashing lights, guitars and heavy metal?

Then if “Monday Night Football” is interested seriously in recapturing its old stature, it must think in terms of people in the booth satisfactorily obnoxious--more than those presently there.

Frank Gifford isn’t obnoxious. Nor is Al Michaels, meaning the responsibility falls entirely on Dan Dierdorf, who does his best, but as a public irritant, hasn’t yet ascended the plateau of Howard Cosell, who made “Monday Night Football” the giant it became.

Dierdorf talks a lot but doesn’t lunch with enough important people. He also hasn’t posted a distinguished enough record in the booth of never acquiring from his colleagues information he doesn’t already know.

Cosell was the master, never to be outstripped. For example, Gifford might have observed: “Four receivers flooded that zone. Two were wearing Jockey shorts, one BVDs and the other long johns.”

“Ex-actly right,” Cosell could be counted on to answer.

Never in the years he served “Monday Night Football” was Howard heard to say, “Interesting point, Frank. I didn’t know that.”

Dierdorf has progressed in the science of irritation, but he doesn’t test the pain tolerance of the masses as Cosell did.

Nor has Dierdorf learned to burden audiences enough with his travel problems.

When Cosell was on the job, enormous suspense developed over whether the game would end early enough for Howard’s helicopter to get him to Boston in time to make his connection to New York.

Viewers became nervous wrecks, pleading with teams to keep the clock running so that Cosell wouldn’t blow his flight.

Without such weekly drama, “Monday Night Football” has suffered. Its recovery is going to hinge on how much of a horse’s rear someone is willing to make of himself in that booth.