Moon’s Crime Can’t Be Ignored

A year or so ago, Warren Moon’s arrest for spousal abuse might have been only a blip on the newswire, and then forgotten about.

But the Moon story has been big news in the Houston area, where he lives during the off-season, and in Minnesota, where he is employed as a quarterback by the Vikings.

Turner Sports, Moon’s secondary employer, which has big plans for him, didn’t take the news lightly.

Harvey Schiller, president of Turner Sports, said: “Warren knows what needs to be done, and now he has to do it.”

Schiller was referring to the counseling Moon has sought.

Schiller, in a private phone conversation with Moon, was tougher. He was supportive but also told him the incident was being taken seriously, and he stressed the importance of following through on the counseling.

Turner Sports has gone out of its way to get Moon started in broadcasting. First, he got a chance to work as a reporter during the NBA playoffs.

And this fall, he will have the opportunity to be a part of TNT’s Sunday night NFL pregame and postgame show even though he is still playing.

Moon, probably playing his last season, will appear via satellite from Minneapolis, or wherever he happens to be on any Sunday.

He is getting red-carpet treatment while entering broadcasting. No network has ever done anything quite like this for an active player.

It’s now up to Moon to show that he is worthy, that his act of hitting his wife, choking her and chasing her in his car at high speed was an aberration and that nothing like it will happen again.

If it does, his broadcasting career should be finished. That should be one of the consequences.

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Maybe history does teach us something.

When NBC hired another popular football player, O.J. Simpson, to replace Ahmad Rashad on its NFL pregame show in 1989, Simpson’s arrest for spousal abuse a few months earlier, after a New Year’s party at his home, was a non-issue.

The arrest didn’t even make the newspapers until a month later, and that May, Simpson, after pleading no contest, was given two years’ probation, told to donate $500 to an organization for battered women and ordered to undergo counseling.

Meanwhile, everyone at NBC greeted Simpson with open arms. At a network news conference in July that included Simpson, the arrest wasn’t even brought up.

However, after the news conference, this reporter pulled Simpson aside to asked him about it.

He called it a “bum rap” and said it never would have happened if they hadn’t been drinking.

He said two police officers came to the house that night and left after “we told them it was nothing.”

He said two others came the next day and took a report. “I was stunned it made the papers a month later,” he said.

About a week after reporting Simpson’s comments, this reporter encountered Simpson and his wife, Nicole, at a Cedars-Sinai benefit.

“Hey, Nicole, this is the guy who reminded the public about our little spat on New Year’s,” Simpson said with a laugh.

Nicole was not laughing.

TV-Radio Notes

Frank Gifford will be part of the announcing team for Saturday’s NFL Hall of Fame game between expansion teams Jacksonville and Carolina on ABC at 11:30 a.m., and he’s also an honoree. Gifford is receiving the Hall of Fame’s Pete Rozelle Radio and Television Award. Previous winners include Bill MacPhail, Lindsey Nelson, Ed Sabol, Chris Schenkel, Curt Gowdy and Pat Summerall. . . . Because there will be no NFL television blackouts in Los Angeles this season, subscribers to the NFL Sunday Ticket package will be able to get every game. The NFL is offering the package for $119 through Monday, then it goes to $139. It takes a DirecTV or C-band satellite dish system to get the package.

It would be hard to beat the final round of the British Open for excitement, and the ratings bore that out. Sunday’s coverage on ABC got a 4.9 national rating, up from a 3.7 last year and the highest rating for a British Open since a 5.8 in 1983. . . . ABC announced Thursday it will use Curtis Strange as a commentator at next year’s British Open, since Jack Nicklaus says he isn’t going.

Recommended viewing: In need of a lift? Check out Prime Sports’ special on the California Special Olympics, held at UCLA June 25. The special is on Sunday at 8 p.m., with Bill Macdonald and Ann Meyers as hosts. . . . A documentary on the Negro Leagues, “Kings of the Hill: Baseball’s Forgotten Men,” will be shown on NBC Sunday at 1 p.m. . . . HBO’s second installment of “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” will be shown Sunday at 9:45 p.m. The topics are Len Dykstra, sports agents and “playing in pain.”

Oscar De La Hoya joins Rich Marotta and Channel 11’s Rick Garcia at ringside to help announce a $24.95 pay-per-view card from San Antonio on Saturday at 6 p.m. The main event, Danny Romero vs. Miguel Martinez, will be the third of five fights. . . . Only in boxing: The Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield fight, a TVKO pay-per-view event, is scheduled for Nov. 4 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Mike Tyson’s second fight, against an opponent to be named, a Showtime Entertainment Television (SET) pay-per-view event, is scheduled for--yes--Nov. 4 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Promoters for both fights say they won’t budge.

Even though Martina Navratilova is nursing a groin injury, her exhibition match against Monica Seles Saturday at 11 a.m. on CBS is still on. . . . Bill Walton will join Chris Marlowe and Paul Sunderland for NBC’s coverage of the Miller Lite Pro Beach Volleyball Open this weekend in Seal Beach. . . . Track and field moves into the spotlight when ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 share coverage of the fifth world championships at Goteborg, Sweden, Aug. 5-13. These world championships will get more coverage than any of the previous four. The announcing team will include Brent Musburger, Mark Jones, Carol Lewis, Craig Masback and Dwight Stones.

TNT, as expected, named Vince Cellini the new studio host of the NFL pregame and postgame show, “Pro Football Tonight,” for TNT’s nine-week NFL run the first half of the season. Cellini will continue as host of CNN’s Sunday morning “NFL Preview” show, with James Lofton and Ron Meyer. . . . For NFL games, TNT will use a continuous graphic similar to the one used by Fox and ESPN that shows the score, quarter and time remaining. Amazingly, the TNT graphic will not show the score. . . . Michael Weisman, former executive producer of NBC Sports, reportedly has been offered the position of president of New York’s Madison Square Garden regional sports network. Weisman declined comment but it’s believed he is reluctant to leave his home in Brentwood.