Air Ball: No Miami-Syracuse

No. 1 Miami at No. 8 Syracuse is the game of the day and one of the best of the year.

But it won’t be televised locally Saturday.

Instead, ABC will televise Washington-Washington State. If this was for the Rose Bowl, fine. But it’s not.

Unfortunately, ABC is required by contract to give Los Angeles a Pacific 10 Conference game.

OK, but it makes no sense for ABC to show Washington-Washington State in almost half the country. It will go to 45% of the country; Miami-Syracuse to 46%.

The morning game, Michigan-Ohio State, is a national telecast, even though Michigan, like Washington, has already clinched a Rose Bowl berth.

ABC is committed to making Michigan-Ohio State a national telecast, thus Miami-Syracuse is a regional.

ABC is televising two other 12:30 games--Fresno State at San Diego State, which will be shown in Fresno, San Diego, Hawaii and Salt Lake City, and Texas Christian at Texas A&M;, which will be shown in Texas.

Somehow, KMPC’s Fred Wallin thought Fresno State-San Diego State was the game Los Angeles would be getting instead of Miami-Syracuse. Wallin had a reason to beef, as he did Tuesday night, but he had his facts wrong.

Actually, Fresno State-San Diego State would be better than Washington-Washington State, what with Marshall Faulk on display and the Aztecs trying to wrap up the Western Athletic Conference title.

Also, USC-UCLA, which has been relegated to ESPN at 4:30 p.m., would have also been a better choice than Washington-Washington State.

But Miami-Syracuse is the game nearly everybody wants to see.

The few who have cable systems that offer ABC’s college football pay-per-view options are out of luck this weekend. The ABC experiment ended last weekend.

What timing. Surely, plenty of viewers would have been willing to pay for Miami-Syracuse--or even Fresno State-San Diego State.

At least Fresno State-San Diego State will be on Prime Ticket Sunday at 2 p.m.

Prime Ticket will replay USC-UCLA on Saturday at 10:30 p.m. and Sunday at 11:30 p.m.

The good news this weekend is that the Rams’ game with the San Francisco 49ers has sold out and will be shown Sunday on Channel 2 at 1 p.m.

More good news is that this is CBS’ main game, meaning Pat Summerall and John Madden will be announcing.

This is football’s best announcing team, and what is particularly impressive is they have been on top for some time. They were first paired in the middle of the 1981 season.

What makes Madden so good? No, it’s not his bombast or style. It’s his preparation.

He works at his craft, then makes it seem as if he merely shows up. He digs up a lot more information than he needs.

Madden, speaking from his office in Pleasanton, Calif., came up with this tidbit: Jim Everett is the NFL’s top-rated quarterback over the last six weeks, or since the Rams barely lost at Candlestick Park, 27-24, and Steve Young is No. 2.

Madden has a pretty busy schedule. After Sunday’s game, he and his Maddencruiser head for Dallas, where he will work the Cowboys’ Thanksgiving Day game against the New York Giants.

Then it’s back to the Bay Area for the following Sunday’s game between the 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles.

Does Madden ever think about retiring?

“No, not at all,” he said. “As long as I’m having a good time, I’ll keep going. And I’m having a good time. I still enjoy the traveling, the camaraderie, watching practices.

“This is all fun, not work. I don’t know if it ever will be.”

The NFL could have been facing an embarrassing situation Sunday, had the Raiders sold out their game with the Denver Broncos. Not long ago, it was within the realm of possibility.

Had it happened, NBC and CBS would have had to go head to head with the Raiders and Rams.

You would think it would be easy for the NFL schedule-makers to avoid that possibility.

Jim Valvano will work the second of ESPN’s three preseason National Invitation Tournament quarterfinal telecasts tonight at 6:30, Iowa State at Florida State. His play-by-play partner will be Jim Durham.

The big news is that Valvano is working at all. Five months ago, it was discovered that he had cancer.

“I feel pretty strong and I’m looking forward to getting back to work,” Valvano said in a conference call with reporters this week. “When my eyes open each day and my feet touch the floor, I thank God for the day I have and say, ‘Let’s go get ‘em.’ ”

Valvano undergoes treatment every two weeks as an outpatient at Duke University Medical Center, and every six weeks he spends two or three days in the hospital for chemotherapy treatment.

“I fight every day and it’s an every-day battle,” he said.

The chemotherapy treatment causes numbness in his hands and feet and ringing in his ears, he said. But he has not experienced the baldness that usually occurs.

“I have the toughest hair in the country,” he said. “It’s a medical miracle. I was supposed to be bald three months ago. I’m trying to defy the odds. That’s what I’m all about. I haven’t lost my hair and they don’t know why.”

TV-Radio Notes

ESPN will televise the opening round of the Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club today at 1 p.m. The weekend rounds will be on CBS at 12:30 p.m. Saturday and 11:30 a.m. Sunday. The CBS announcers will be Jim Nantz, Gary McCord, Ben Wright and Peter Kostis. CBS may have a problem if Sunday’s round runs long, since the Ram-49er game begins at 1 p.m. The first of the five groups will tee off at 7:30 a.m. . . . Add golf: ABC will carry the following weekend’s Skins Game at Bighorn in Palm Desert.

Arthur Ashe, despite suffering from AIDS and having had a heart attack in September, remains active. He will be part of ABC’s delayed coverage of the Virginia Slims Championship final Sunday, working with Julie Moran and Pam Shriver. Quarterfinal and semifinal matches today and Saturday will be on Prime Ticket. . . . Prime Ticket will televise Oscar De La Hoya’s first professional fight from the Forum on Monday night at 7:30.

KMPC has scrapped plans to carry the Washington-Washington State game Saturday and instead will have a talk show with Joe McDonnell and David Norrie leading into USC-UCLA. Maybe not a bad idea. What if Washington-Washington State ran long? Would the end be preempted by the UCLA pregame show? . . . KMPC General Manager Bill Ward this week contacted the American Network Group, the UCLA rights-holder based in Nashville, seeking more flexibility in order to avoid what happened last Saturday--when KMPC missed the game-tying field goal in the Michigan-Illinois game so as not to preempt any of the UCLA pregame show. “We got everything worked out,” Ward said.

Recommended viewing: This week’s edition of “This Is the NFL,” which will be on Channel 2 Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Said NFL Films President Steve Sabol: “This show is very special, something I’ve wanted to do for several years. What we’ve done is put the writing styles of great authors and producers together with NFL footage.” The show is called “Highlights for the Highbrow.” There is one segment called “A Farewell to Arms,” featuring Randall Cunningham with a script that reads as if it were written by Ernest Hemingway. There’s a J.D. Salinger segment entitled “Passer in the Rye,” a Mickey Spillane segment called “Catch Me Deadly,” and so forth.