Things Are Getting Just a Little Wild for ABC’s Football Crew

ABC is glad to have two NFL wild-card games to televise Saturday, but some of the network’s people have had to do some scurrying this week.

Doing a game Monday night plus three bowl games the next day made it a busy week to begin with, and now it’s the first round of the NFL playoffs, with ABC involved for the first time.

College announcers Brent Musburger and Dick Vermeil, who announced the Citrus Bowl Tuesday, will work Saturday’s 9:30 a.m. game between the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles. They’ll be joined by Lynn Swann, who will be a reporter. The production staff will be the one that was in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl.

The regular “Monday Night Football” crew will work Saturday’s 1 p.m. game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, the third game in one week for this group. Bob Griese will also be on hand as a reporter.

ABC will have a makeshift half-hour pregame show at 9 a.m. Saturday, with the seven announcers handling duties from the game sites.

NBC and CBS will share the Sunday wild-card games.

The day begins with “NFL Live” on NBC at 9 a.m., followed by the Houston Oilers at Cincinnati at 9:30, with Don Criqui and Bob Trumpy announcing.

Bill Walsh will join Bob Costas and Will McDonough in the studio for “NFL Live,” with O.J. Simpson working as a reporter at Riverfront Stadium.

On “NFL Live,” Walsh will interview his former boss, Paul Brown, the Bengal vice president-general manager who has been ailing. Walsh was once Cincinnati’s quarterback coach.

CBS’ “NFL Today” will be on at 12:30 p.m., with guest commentator Phil Simms joining Greg Gumbel and Terry Bradshaw in New York. Pat O’Brien and Lesley Visser will be in Chicago, where the Bears play host to the New Orleans Saints.

The game announcers will be Verne Lundquist and John Madden. Pat Summerall, still recovering from a bleeding ulcer, is home and feeling better, and might return the next weekend.

Replay, please: NBC went off the air Tuesday night after showing only one brief, incomplete replay of Raghib Ismail’s 91-yard punt return against Colorado in the Orange Bowl, which was nullified by a clipping penalty. So, you’d think the network would re-examine the play this weekend.

Nah, that would make too much sense.

As of Thursday, NBC had no plans to take another, more in-depth look at the controversial penalty that probably cost Notre Dame the game and Georgia Tech an outright national championship.

Ratings: National prime-time ratings for Tuesday night are now in. The Orange Bowl got an 18.3 and a 30% share of the audience, the Sugar Bowl only a 4.9 and an 8% share.

The Sugar Bowl rating was the lowest ever for a New Year Day’s bowl game and the lowest ever for a prime-time bowl game on any day.

It’s another reason for the NCAA to look more seriously into an organized playoff format.

Auburn Coach Pat Dye, a playoff proponent, said: “You get one of those networks to come up with $75 million, and you’d have it in a heartbeat.”

Surprise call: When Roy Firestone was performing at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas recently, he got a call at the hotel from Andre Agassi, who lives in Las Vegas.

Agassi said he saw Firestone’s name on the marquee and was just calling to say he is a fan of Firestone’s ESPN television show, and always dreamed of appearing on it.

Firestone, naturally, thought someone was putting him on. But it was really Agassi.

Firestone used the first of a two-part look at the controversial tennis star as his first installment of “Up Close,” a revamped “SportsLook” that made its debut Wednesday.

Firestone was hardly easy on his guest. Early in Wednesday’s show, Firestone played a tape of NBC’s Costas, on his national radio show, taking shots at two of Agassi’s commercials.

Costas calls the so-called images in one “moronic” and singles out another in which, at the end, Agassi asks, “Any questions?” Says Costas: “My question is, ‘Why are you so stupid?’ ”

Agassi had this response: “I have a lot of respect for Bob Costas, who has as much knowledge of sports as anyone.”

Agassi, who apparently is trying to work on his image, handled other criticism brought out by Firestone in a similarly calm manner.

At the end of the show, Agassi cited a quote from Michael Corleone in “Godfather III”: “You don’t hate your enemies because it impairs your judgment.”

Firestone said the second installment of the Agassi interview, which deals more with his childhood and his relationship with his father, will be shown in a week or two. No date has been set.

Add Firestone: He says the new “Up Close” is not just “SportsLook” with a new name, although it’s still on ESPN weekdays at 3:30 p.m. and repeated at midnight.

“We will be taking a more journalistic approach,” Firestone said. “At the top of the show, we’ll define the stories we’ll be dealing with, then focus on those stories with our guests.

“We now have the ability to do satellite remotes, meaning we can go to our guests, not simply rely on them coming to us.”

Firestone and co-producer Bob Seizer have also added some new regulars and semi-regulars, including sportswriters Jim Murray of The Times, Ken Gurnick and John Feinstein of the National and Joan Ryan of the San Francisco Examiner, plus basketball’s Bill Walton.

Lists: The Sporting News, in its Jan. 7 issue, has a list of the 100 most powerful people in sports, and it’s top-heavy with television executives.

Laurence Tisch, CBS chairman who approved $8 billion in rights fees to sports over an eight-month period, is No. 1.

NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol is No. 2, ABC Sports President Dennis Swanson No. 8, CBS Sports President Neal Pilson No. 12, ESPN President Steve Bornstein No. 14, and Prime Ticket owner Bill Daniels No. 30. USA Today TV sports columnist Rudy Martzke is No. 77, two spots ahead of Michael Jordan.

TV-Radio Notes

While radio station KABC has yet to decide who will be the host or hosts of “Sportstalk,” the former host, Ed (Superfan) Bieler has landed a job. Radio station KTMS in Santa Barbara will announce Monday that Bieler will come aboard on Jan. 14. . . . KMPC’s Paul Olden, who filled in on Channel 5’s Angel telecasts after Joe Torre left to become manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, has talked with ESPN about a baseball announcing job. ESPN is interested.

“Lakers Rebound,” a new radio show with Laker newcomer Sam Perkins, will make its debut on KLAC this morning. It will air mornings at 8:30, after Laker games. Perkins was a communications major at North Carolina. . . . Attention, UCLA fans: Taped coverage of the Bruin soccer team’s four-overtime victory over Rutgers in the NCAA Division I championship game and the Bruin women’s volleyball team’s victory over Pacific for the national championship will be shown as a 1 1/2-hour special on CBS Sunday at 10 a.m. . . . ESPN’s Roy Firestone will perform his comedy routine at the 34th Awards Dinner of the Los Angeles-Anaheim Chapter of the Baseball Writers Assn. of America Feb. 10 at the Long Beach Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Boxing beat: There has been a lot of talk about the demise of the sport on the three major networks, but ABC has made a two-fight deal with heavyweight Riddick Bowe. The network will televise his bout against Tyrell Biggs on March 2 and will show a Bowe fight against an unnamed opponent on April 20. . . . The first of promoter Bob Arum’s monthly or bimonthly pay-per-view shows will be televised next Friday at 7 p.m. and repeated at 9. Ray Mercer will fight Francesco Damiani in the featured bout of a heavyweight tripleheader at Atlantic City, N.J. The cost on most systems is $19.95.