What Lies Ahead in ‘91? Take a Look at the Big Pictures

Predictions for 1991, or, in some cases, wishful thinking:

The television ratings for the New Year’s Day bowl games will be disastrous. Eight games on one day are about five too many!

Talk of a playoff system in college football will be taken more seriously by the NCAA. Something is going to have to be done about the New Year’s Day logjam.

The Super Bowl Jan. 27, in which the Raiders will give the San Francisco 49ers a considerably better game than did the Denver Broncos, will set a record for number of viewers.

ABC’s two-hour Super Bowl pregame show will be at least one hour too long.

NBC’s Bill Walsh will become the coach of the San Diego Chargers, with Dan Henning going to the Rams for a bargain price and John Robinson ending up in Cleveland.

NBC will go to the well again, hiring Mike Ditka to replace Walsh.

NBC executives won’t admit it, but they’ll again see that hiring a coach or athlete with no broadcasting experience was a mistake and privately vow not to do it again. Of course, they will.

Todd Christensen will move up the NBC scale, but won’t be seriously considered for the No. 1 football commentating job because he doesn’t have a big enough name.

Play-by-play man Joel Meyers will also move up the NBC scale.

Newcomer Brad Nessler, who will do the play-by-play on Monday’s John Hancock Bowl between USC and Michigan State, will move up at CBS. Nessler, former radio announcer for the Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings, is only 34.

Pat Summerall will be back and better than ever.

Dick Enberg will be chosen sportscaster of the year by the National Assn. of Sportscasters and Sportswriters, and Al Michaels will be the favorite of most TV critics.

Criticism of Dan Dierdorf will taper off.

Frank Gifford will continue to sidestep anything remotely controversial concerning the NFL.

Dick Vitale will blow out his vocal cords and have to find a different line of work.

The public will forget about Jim Valvano’s troubles at North Carolina State and accept him as a competent basketball commentator.

Bo Schembechler, president of the Detroit Tigers who was called “a jackass” on the air by one L.A. sportscaster, will be forced to give legendary announcer Ernie Harwell a contract extension beyond 1991.

Vin Scully will remain at the top of his field. He is simply the best baseball announcer who ever lived.

Scully will excel when he joins Pat Haden, Don Sutton and others for TBS’ Hawaiian Open golf coverage Jan. 17-20.

Angel announcer Al Conin won’t be offered a new contract after the baseball season.

Ken Brett will continue to improve.

The Dodgers and Angels will take a serious look at their contracts with SportsChannel and question if pay cable is really the way to go.

Cable executives will talk a lot about a bright future for pay cable, but consumers will continue to show that basic cable is the way to go.

New pay-per-view ventures will continue to struggle. Consumers will pay for an occasional big fight, but they won’t regularly pay for ordinary fights or other events.

Suckers will pay $35 or more to watch Evander Holyfield destroy George Foreman in a round or two, then complain about it.

CBS and ESPN will continue to lose big money on baseball, which will have a trickle-down effect on player salaries.

CBS, which had a blowout Super Bowl, fired Brent Musburger on the eve of a blowout NCAA basketball championship game and had a four-game World Series, will have a better year--guaranteed.

Greg Gumbel will no longer be identified as Bryant Gumbel’s brother.

Pat Riley will beat Bob Costas in their silly basketball shootout, meaning things will get even sillier when Costas wears his hair slicked back at the NBA finals.

After the Lakers fail to make it past the first round of the playoffs, Jerry Buss will decide to bring Riley back as coach.

NBC will hire Mike Dunleavy.

Marv Albert’s national stature will grow during the NBA playoffs, and partner Mike Fratello will get rave reviews.

NBC will continue to deceive viewers, as it did on Christmas Day, when it advertised that the Detroit-Chicago NBA game began at noon when actually the half-hour pregame show began at noon.

Fred Roggin’s new national syndicated show, “Roggin’s Heroes,” which starts Jan. 12, will be a hit, making the Channel 4 sportscaster a national celebrity.

Nice-guy Brett Lewis will leave Channel 4 this spring for a No. 1 job elsewhere.

Channel 4, in order to save money, will have Phil Shuman, Doug Kriegel, Fritz Coleman, Kelly Lange, John Beard, Colleen Williams and Floyd the shoe-shine man take turns doing the sports.

Hard-working Jim Hill will continue to be the most visible sportscaster in L.A., with near-perfect attendance at all major events.

Channel 5’s Ed Arnold will continue to do as much charity work as anyone.

Likable Scott St. James, after a year’s absence, will return to the airwaves on a regular basis.

ESPN’s Fred Edelstein will report the Raiders are moving back to Oakland.

ESPN’s “SportsCenter” will continue to be the best program of its kind, but Prime Ticket’s “Press Box” will become a major force in Southern California.

KMPC’s Jim Healy will continue to upset people.

The potion that eluded Ponce de Leon will continue to do wonders for ageless Chick Hearn.

Directors will continue to be obsessed with showing the crowd or the coach rather than the players after a big play. They also will continue to use ground-level angles even though everybody hates them.

Long-worded graphics will be shown for a split second, then taken down before even Evelyn Wood could get halfway through them.

Viewers and critics will continue to complain to mostly deaf ears about the irritating aspects of TV-radio sports.

TV-Radio Notes

There are only 21 football games on television during the next five days--six NFL games and 15 bowl games. . . . There are two bowl games tonight--the All-American on ESPN at 4:30 p.m. and the Blockbuster on Channel 13 at 5 p.m. . . . Saturday’s 5 p.m. Freedom Bowl at Anaheim Stadium, with Oregon facing Colorado State, will be nationally televised by Raycom and carried in Los Angeles by Channel 9. The announcers will be Phil Stone and former New England Patriot running back Craig James. It competes against San Diego’s Holiday Bowl, matching BYU and Texas A&M;, which begins at 4:30 and will be on ESPN. Saturday’s Peach Bowl, Indiana vs. Auburn, will be on ABC at 9:30 a.m.

There will be two bowl games Monday--USC vs. Michigan State in the John Hancock Bowl on CBS at 11:30 a.m. and California vs. Wyoming in the Copper Bowl on TBS at 2 p.m. . . . Then comes the New Year’s Day lineup, beginning at 8:30 a.m. with the Gator Bowl on ESPN. Then it’s the Hall of Fame (NBC, 10 a.m.), the Cotton (CBS, 10:30 a.m.); the Citrus (ABC, 10:30 a.m.); the Fiesta (NBC, 1:30 p.m.), the Rose (ABC, 1:45 p.m.), the Orange (NBC, 5 p.m.), and the Sugar (ABC, 5:30 p.m.).

Pro football: Saturday, beginning at 9:30 a.m., it will be Kansas City-Chicago on NBC, followed at 1 p.m. by Philadelphia-Phoenix on CBS. Sunday, it will be Buffalo-Washington on NBC at 10 a.m., Green Bay-Denver on CBS at 1 p.m., and, in maybe the best game of the day, Pittsburgh-Houston on ESPN at 5 p.m. ESPN plans to have Seattle quarterback Dave Krieg and some of his teammates and maybe some Cincinnati Bengals as well in live hookups. Both teams will be affected by the outcome. . . . A reminder: Monday night’s game between the Rams and New Orleans Saints will begin at 5 p.m., not the usual 6.

Recommended viewing: “Great Moments in College Bowl History,” produced by Rasha Drachkovitch’s 44 Blue Productions, is worth a look on Channel 7 Saturday at 3 p.m. . . . The same production company has a new anthology series, “Discovery Sport,” which will be shown weekly beginning Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. on the Discovery Channel. . . . Tonight at 8:30, Fred Hickman will show his top 10 plays of the year on CNN.