Maguire Looking Good Now as the Odd Man in the Booth

Dick Enberg, liked by almost everyone, has announced six Super Bowls. Phil Simms, finishing a solid rookie season in the broadcast booth, has played in two.

“I’ve watched 29 of ‘em,” says Paul Maguire, the odd one of the three-man announcing team who will be working Sunday’s Super Bowl for NBC.

It’s hard to put your finger on it, but there’s a certain appeal to Maguire.

It’s certainly not his looks. He will tell you he was fired by NBC in 1979 for being so darn ugly.

“This face has worn out four bodies,” he says.

Maguire can now laugh about being fired.

“I said, ‘We’re only on for 45 seconds. How many kids can I scare in 45 seconds?’ ”

Maguire wasn’t out of work long. He went to ESPN, where his first assignment was arm wrestling. He later did some Canadian Football League and USFL games.

Maguire was rehired by NBC in 1986 but didn’t really establish himself until he was paired with Marv Albert on football in 1988.

This season, he was brought in to work with newcomer Simms on the “A” team. And it has quickly become a good one, thanks in large part to Maguire’s wry sense of humor and outspokenness.

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You might have heard that Maguire was a punter for the Buffalo Bills. Even played some at linebacker. But what you might not have heard is that Maguire was one of the nation’s leading college receivers in 1959, his senior season at The Citadel. He weighed 184 pounds at the time.

The person who recruited him for The Citadel was a line coach named Al Davis. Yes, that Al Davis. And Davis was an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Chargers when they drafted Maguire in 1960.

Maguire, who had more than a few beers that summer, reported to camp at 220 pounds. So the Chargers made him a linebacker.

He spent 11 seasons in the American Football League, four with the Chargers, who moved to San Diego after one season in L.A., and seven with the Buffalo Bills. He still holds the Bills’ career record for punting average, 42.1 yards.

These days, he doesn’t have much to kick about.

“I love what I do,” he said. “Think about the job. I’ve got the best seat in the house. Free.”

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Casual fans watching the Super Bowl might have trouble following the ball, but there is no truth to the rumor that NBC is going to put a blue fuzz-ball around it, as Fox did with the electronic puck in last Saturday’s NHL All-Star game.

Free-lance writer Norman Chad said it looked like “a runaway cockroach in an evening gown.”

Hockey purists weren’t fond of it, but then football fans at first didn’t like the “Fox box” that shows the score and time remaining in NFL games.

The Fox people, who deserve credit for at least trying something different, were pleased with the effect. Spokesman Vince Wladika said that, after some fine-tuning, the network plans to bring it back when it begins showing Sunday hockey games in March.

Fox’s regional Saturday coverage starts this weekend with a noon telecast of the Mighty Ducks playing the Kings at the Forum.

The All-Star game got a 4.1 national rating, the highest network rating for an NHL telecast since 1980. But the figure skating on ABC the same night got a 10.1.

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The whole truth: Pat Healy, the widow of Jim Healy, sent along a note responding to an item in this space last week regarding her late husband’s headstone, which reads: “IT IS TRUE.”

“Jim left no instructions,” Pat Healy said. “I suggested IS IT TRUE? [Son] Patrick countered with IT IS TRUE. We knew immediately that Jim would have been both pleased and amused.”

TV-Radio Notes

The Super Bowl pregame show on NBC begins at 12:30 p.m., nearly three hours before the 3:20 kickoff. Of course, there’s plenty of Super Bowl programming all weekend. TNT’s Super Bowl weekend begins today at 4 p.m., and CNN’s preview show with Vince Cellini, James Lofton and Ron Meyers will be on Sunday at 8 a.m. ESPN has nearly round-the-clock programming leading up to the game. . . . NFL Films has completed its highly acclaimed “Road to the Super Bowl,” and this year’s edition is the best ever. Channel 9 will show it late tonight, around 3 a.m., if you want to set the VCR, and again Saturday at 9 p.m.

Among all the Super Bowl programming is a pay-per-view show--for $19.95--produced by Playboy. The live show, entitled “Real Men Don’t Watch Pre-Game,” will originate from the Playboy Mansion. . . . Recommended viewing: Fred Roggin’s year-end special, “Sportsbowl ‘95,” following the Super Bowl and “Friends” at about 8 p.m. on Channel 4.

Announcers for the CBS telecast of the Louisville-UCLA basketball game Saturday at 1 p.m. will be Bill Macatee, who mostly works for the USA network, and former Cincinnati and NBA player Derrek Dickey. The producer is former Bruin Roy Hamilton. . . . Fox’s boxing show from Phoenix on Saturday night is the first of Don King-promoted cards the network will be showing periodically. . . . ABC begins its Indy Racing League coverage Saturday with the Indy 200 at Walt Disney World, delayed at 12:30 p.m. Danny Sullivan makes his debut as a full-time commentator for ABC, joining Paul Page and Bobby Unser in the booth.

For golf fans, ABC offers the Senior Skins Game from the Big Island of Hawaii on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. and Sunday at 12:30 p.m. The competitors are Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, two-time defending champion Raymond Floyd and Jim Colbert. The announcers will be Vin Scully and Mark Rolfing. Last year, the Senior Skins Game was the fourth-highest rated golf event on television, behind the Masters, U.S. Open and PGA Championship. . . . The USA network, after experimenting with a one-hour format for its Tuesday night boxing shows, is going back to two hours beginning next week.

XTRA plans to shuffle its lineup on Feb. 12, moving Jim Rome to 9 a.m.-1 p.m. and the Loose Cannons, Steve Hartman and Chet Forte, to 1-4 p.m. The station’s thinking is, gear the mornings for the younger set, the afternoons for the older set. . . . A defender of Scott Ferrall, XTRA’s obnoxious nighttime host, is Howard Freedman, XTRA’s program director. Freedman says Ferrall’s ratings have steadily improved. Unfortunately, nothing else has.

Pete Arbogast, the former USC football and basketball radio announcer, has been dumped by the Ice Dogs and replaced by veteran L.A. sportscaster Ted Sobel on the KMAX-FM broadcasts. Maybe the minor league hockey team thought the change would increase the listening audience, maybe from four to five. The Ice Dogs also added Brett Kurtz as commentator. Kurtz played hockey at Wisconsin and plays roller hockey for the Los Angeles Blades. Sobel is a reporter for KFWB. Arbogast, who earlier was in the running for jobs with the Arizona Cardinals and Sacramento Kings, is now left with working for K-NEWS (540 and 1260).