Preview ’92 : Remodeling the Sports Booth

The 1992-93 sports season has no mega-events scheduled on the level of this year’s Winter and Summer Olympic Games or 1994’s Winter Olympics and the U.S. debut of soccer’s World Cup.

The upcoming season also has no major changes in network contracts.

But that doesn’t mean sports will be business as usual this season, particularly in the broadcast booth.

Many announcing changes can be traced to Bill Walsh’s return to coaching football at Stanford. When Walsh left NBC, that set off a chain reaction of changes at the network. Bob Trumpy is NBC’s No. 1 pro football analyst. He will also be paired with Dick Enberg for the network’s Super Bowl telecast Jan. 31 at the Rose Bowl.

Cris Collinsworth, a former Cincinnati Bengal receiver who has distinguished himself on HBO’s “Inside the NFL,” assumes Walsh’s analyst duties on Notre Dame football telecasts. Tom Hammond is taking over for Enberg on play-by-play. Two of NBC’s recent hires, Jim Lampley and Hannah Storm, are also involved in the Notre Dame coverage.

Bill Parcells has left the “NFL Live” team to serve as a game analyst. Gayle Gardner will do “NFL Live” halftime features.

John Robinson has done the opposite of Walsh, going from the sidelines to broadcasting. The former Ram and USC coach has joined CBS as a pro football analyst and will have the same position on at least four Trojans games on Prime Ticket.

The 1993 baseball season will be the last one for CBS under the current contract. Next season will also see the Dodgers move to KTLA from KTTV, after 35 years on Channel 11. But viewers should notice little difference because Vin Scully, Ross Porter and Don Drysdale will still be calling the games.

On Nov. 17, ESPN will televise baseball’s expansion draft, which will provide players for its two newest teams, the Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins.

The Lakers will again have every game televised, either by KCAL, Prime Ticket or NBC. The Clippers will have at least 77 games aired, a franchise record, with 36 on KCOP, 40 on SportsChannel and at least one on NBC (at home on Christmas Day vs. the San Antonio Spurs). The Clippers, who had been absent from network broadcast television from 1979 until last Christmas, could make another two NBC appearances.

With Mike Tyson in prison and fan-favorites George Foreman and Larry Holmes unlikely to get additional title shots, boxing’s heavyweight division could be in for a down year. Evander Holyfield is scheduled to make his next title defense Nov. 13 against Riddick Bowe, which will be shown on pay-per-view. The suggested retail price will be between $35 and $40.

The sport that will have the most changes is college football.

Several schools will be making their debuts in new conferences. The Southeastern Conference now has 12 teams, which allows it to split into divisions and have a playoff game to determine the conference champion and Sugar Bowl representative. ABC will televise that game Dec. 5.

In theory, New Year’s Day bowl matchups should be better. Agreements with the bowls and major conferences will match the highest-ranked teams against the highest-ranked opponents.

There will be eight bowl games New Year’s Day. The first, the Hall of Fame, will begin at 8 a.m. on ESPN. The last, the Sugar, will conclude around 8:30 p.m. on ABC. The Cotton Bowl has moved to NBC from CBS, which has shifted the Blockbuster Bowl to New Year’s Day to fill the void.

Transplanted fans will also get more of a chance to see their favorite teams, thanks to a pay-per-view plan that began Sept. 5. In a one-year experiment, ABC’s regional telecasts not carried to the viewers’ market will be on several cable channels simultaneously. Where available, the one game will carry a suggested retail price of $8.95, with each additional game that day costing $1. An 11-week “season ticket” package is available for a suggested retail price of $59.95.

Although some fans might fear that ABC would put its most attractive games on pay-per-view, the network will still air several games on a free, national basis, including Notre Dame at Michigan State on Saturday, Illinois-Michigan on Nov. 14, Michigan at Ohio State on Nov. 21 and Notre Dame at USC on Nov. 28.

“I don’t think you are going to see major events gravitate to pay-per-view because there are people in Congress who are keeping pretty close tabs on this,’ said Dennis Swanson, president of ABC Sports, daytime and children’s programming.