Auburn and Alabama Will Be the Best Game Money Can Buy

Don’t you just hate ABC’s regional college football coverage?

ABC gives us USC-UCLA Saturday at 12:30 p.m., which is fine, but Auburn-Alabama, the game of the day, nationally anyway, won’t be shown here.

Neither will Oregon-Oregon State.

But at least those game are available to most cable subscribers on pay-per-view.

It’s not easy to say something nice about pay-per-view. The word pay right away tells you it is not a good thing.

But because of pay-per-view, those wishing to buy one or more of ABC’s regional telecasts can do so, provided their cable system offers that option.

If you haven’t tried pay-per-view college football before, be forewarned that many systems are limited to one game because of channel capacity.

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No question Auburn-Alabama is ABC’s main game, so the A team of Keith Jackson and Bob Griese will call it, and it will go to about half the country.

So why is Michigan-Ohio State at 9 a.m. a national telecast and not Auburn-Alabama?

ABC spokesman Mark Mandel said the decision on Michigan-Ohio State was made before the season.

“That’s a longtime classic matchup involving teams proven to get high ratings, and we locked into that,” he said.

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Fox invasion, Part II: First, the fledgling network stole the NFL from CBS. Now, with its proposed golf tour, it could end up giving CBS’ golf package minor league status.

In the meantime, though, CBS has a good golf event this weekend--the Shark Shootout at the Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks.

Today’s opening round will be on ESPN at 12:30 p.m. Saturday’s round will be on CBS at 1 p.m., with Sunday’s final-round coverage at 12:30 p.m.

The announcers will be Jim Nantz, Gary McCord, Ben Wright and Verne Lundquist. Peter Kostis had to bow out because of an illness in his family.

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Add golf: The Golf Channel, scheduled to launch Jan. 17, announced it will award $1 million to the next professional golfer to shoot a 59 or lower. Al Geiberger and Chip Beck are the only players to shoot 59 in a tournament.

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Name change: Beginning Jan. 1, Prime Ticket will become Prime Sports, the same as seven other regional sports networks now owned by Liberty Sports, a division of TCI.

“For identity purposes, we want all our networks to have the same name,” said Ed Frazier, the president of Liberty Sports.

Said Kitty Cohen, Prime Ticket’s new general manager: “At least people, thinking we’re a ticket agency, no longer will call us trying to buy concert tickets. For the past nine years, a day hasn’t gone by without someone calling, trying to buy tickets.”

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Add Prime: The network’s award-winning news show, “Press Box,” goes national Jan. 1.

Different editions will go to different Liberty networks across the country every hour on the half-hour, beginning at 3:30 PST.

The L.A. edition normally will run at 6:30 and 10:30 p.m., wrapped around the featured event of the night.

Also, “Press Box” will be expanded to one hour on weekends, airing at 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Prime Ticket is beefing up its staff to handle the increased workload.

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A dead issue: Don’t expect Channel 9 to change its longstanding policy on delaying Laker telecasts from the East Coast.

“The viewership goes up tremendously after 6 o’clock,” said executive producer Susan Stratton. “We’re aware some people don’t like the delays, but it works best for the majority of people.”

OK, so a case can be made for delayed telecasts. But what about the outdated TV-radio simulcasts?

It’s gotten to the point where Chick Hearn and Stu Lantz are doing mostly a television call on radio. It’s really bothersome to listeners when they refer to a television replay.

It seems Hearn and Lantz would welcome not having to worry about trying to please both viewers and listeners.

Also, if the games weren’t simulcast, maybe at least the radio broadcasts could be live.

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Foursome reunited: ABC isn’t offering much of a Monday night game next week--the New York Giants, losers of seven in a row, against the 1-9 Houston Oilers--but Channel 7, for its postgame “Monday Night Live” program, has lined up the Rams’ “Fearsome Foursome.”

Merlin Olsen, Rosey Grier, Deacon Jones and Lamar Lundy are all scheduled to appear. Lundy is being flown in from his home in Richmond, Ind.

In 1972, Lundy almost died from myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disease that weakens all parts of the body, including the immune system. And although he still battles the disease, he is doing well.

TV-Radio Notes

The ABC announcers for the USC-UCLA game will be Mark Jones and Tim Brant. . . . Prime Ticket’s tape-delayed coverage of USC-UCLA, with Bruin announcers Bill Macdonald and Tom Ramsey, will be shown Saturday at 7 p.m. and again Sunday at 10:30 a.m. . . . Duty calls: Former Bruin defensive back Ron Pitts was hoping to attend his first USC-UCLA game since he played in the 1985 game. But he’ll be busy Saturday preparing to work Sunday’s New Orleans-Raider game for Fox. His broadcast partner is Kenny Albert, son of Marv.

Recommended viewing: A one-hour HBO special next Tuesday at 9:30 p.m., “American Coaches: Men of Vision and Victory,” takes a look at five legendary coaches--Red Auerbach, Woody Hayes, Vince Lombardi, Casey Stengel and John Wooden. Pat Riley is the host, and narrators include Tom Lasorda, Lou Holtz, Joe Paterno and John Thompson. Among those interviewed are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Phil Rizzuto and Paul Hornung. The show is produced by HBO and Black Canyon Productions, the same team that put together the award-winning “When It Was a Game” specials. . . . For those who rise early on Thanksgiving Day, ESPN will show an NFL Films 90-minute special on the NFL’s all-time team at 7:30 a.m. For those who don’t rise early, set the VCR. This is another NFL Films quality show.

It’s now set that ESPN’s Chris Myers will replace Roy Firestone on “Up Close” in January. Andrea Kremer will be the backup host. . . . George Foreman will be the guest host on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” Dec. 17. . . . Tonight’s James Toney-Roy Jones Jr. fight card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is a TVKO pay-per-view production.

The heartwarming story of Ramon Ramos, one-time Puerto Rican basketball star who was almost killed in a 1989 traffic accident, is told by Bill Walton as part of NBC’s Hoop-It-Up competition Saturday at 2 p.m. . . . Last weekend’s “special report” on NBC about Bill Murray giving up entertainment to pursue an NBA career was silly and not funny. During “NFL Live,” Ahmad Rashad, with bated breath, said a big NBA announcement was coming up at halftime. NBA publicists, meanwhile, called reporters to warn them it was only a joke. But then what was everyone else supposed to think? The whole thing was ill conceived.

Sign of the times: An all-female broadcast team of Beth Mowlins and Mimi Griffin will call this weekend’s women’s basketball Hall of Fame Tipoff Classic at Jackson, Tenn., for ESPN. No. 3 Stanford faces No. 2 Purdue Saturday at 9:30 a.m. and No. 4 Louisiana Tech takes on No. 1 Tennessee on Sunday at 10 a.m. . . . An all-female broadcast team of Robin Roberts, Pam Shriver and Betsy Nagelsen will call ABC’s coverage of the Virginia Slims Championships Sunday at 10 a.m. Said Roberts, playing down the significance of her calling the action: “Yes, I’m a black woman and a black woman has never done network play-by-play before, but I’m not the story. The players are.”

Channel 9 has picked up the Pacific 10 basketball package formally carried by Channel 2. The first telecast will be UCLA at Oregon State on Jan. 7. . . . Channel 9 has named Steve Jahnke as its executive producer of sports. Jahnke, a USC graduate, comes from Channel 13, where he had been a producer and reporter since 1984.

DialRadio Sports in Newport Beach will broadcast Southern Section Division I football games on KORG throughout the playoffs, beginning with tonight’s Mater Dei-Redlands game. The announcers are Kevin Turner, a former Arizona State wide receiver who works part-time for XTRA, and Ghizal Hasan, former general manager of KUCI, UC Irvine’s campus station. . . . Talk radio: Can you believe it? Ed (Superfan) Bieler has resurfaced, doing a 5-6 a.m. weekday show for KIEV, the same station that gives us Irv Kaze Friday nights, usually at 6:15 p.m. . . . The former KMPC duo of Brian Golden and Doug Krikorian will be back on the new KMPC Sunday, 1-3 p.m., and will fill in for Steve Edwards and Eric Tracy on KABC next Friday.