‘SportsCentury’ Gets Down to Elite Eight

ESPN’s “SportsCentury” project is headed down the home stretch.

Athletes No. 10, Babe Didrikson, and No. 9, Jack Nicklaus, will be profiled today at 4:30 and 5 p.m.

The remaining eight, in no particular order, are Jesse Owens, Wayne Gretzky, Jim Brown, Willie Mays, Jim Thorpe, Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali.

Actually, that’s the order, starting with No. 8, in which they should finish. But then Carl Lewis should also be No. 4.

Disagreeing is the fun part of these lists.

Athletes No. 1 and No. 2 on this list of the best North American athletes of the 20th century will be part of an ABC special Dec. 26.

NO PUFFERY HERE

The “SportsCentury” profiles have been anything but puff pieces. ESPN has already won an award for excellence in sports journalism from Northeastern University in Boston.

Today’s profile of Didrikson is typically mixed with positives and negatives.

If ESPN can be criticized for anything, it is being too hard on some of the athletes they are honoring. One reason for this is that many of the sound bites come from sportswriters, who, generally speaking, are more candid than former teammates and coaches. Some may say more cynical too.

Anyway, the series has been outstanding, and ESPN, in recognizing this, has promoted the executive producer of the project, Mark Shapiro, to vice president and general manager of ESPN Classic.

Shapiro, 30, worked in Los Angeles when he produced Jim Rome’s ESPN2 show and, later, “Up Close.”

ESPN, BASEBALL GO TO COURT

A federal trial involving ESPN and major league baseball begins Monday in New York.

The case threatens to end the relationship between the two.

The dispute is basically over three Sunday night baseball games in September moved from ESPN to ESPN2 to make room for NFL telecasts.

The stakes are high for both, but possibly higher for ESPN, which has already lost out on NASCAR and the NCAA basketball tournament.

SHORT WAVES

According to what Phil Jackson tells interviewer Chris Myers on the next Fox Sports Net “Goin’ Deep” show Sunday at 9 p.m., his latest project is working on Shaquille O’Neal’s head. “Shaquille hasn’t been challenged intellectually,” Jackson says. “We get stagnant sometimes in this professional game.” . . . No surprise here: NBC and Turner have scrapped their idea of forming their own pro football league. . . . Marv Levy is one former coach who has adapted well to television. If you’ve seen him on Fox Sports Net’s “NFL This Morning” Sundays at 8 a.m., you’ve heard some pretty good lines. Last Sunday, talking about former Carolina coach Dom Capers, who is now Jacksonville’s defensive coordinator, Levy said, “He has instilled dominance in that Jaguar defense. They tell me he is so stingy he has a burglar alarm on his garbage can.” OK, at least he’s trying. . . . The “NFL This Morning” crew, which also includes Myers, Jackie Slater and Chris Spielman, will get some additional exposure this Sunday. With the “NFL on Fox” crew on location in Detroit for the Lions’ game against Washington, the “NFL This Morning” crew will man the update desk at the Fox studios in Los Angeles.

ESPN will televise the “Home Depot College Football Awards” Thursday at 2 p.m. All of the awards other than the Heisman Trophy will be presented during the two-hour show. . . . Joel Meyers, who seems to pop up all over the place, is doing play-by-play on 30 San Antonio Spur telecasts this season for Fox Sports Net in Texas. His commentator is Sean Elliott, who still has hopes of playing again after having a kidney transplant. . . . Laffit Pincay, as he closes in on Bill Shoemaker’s record, will be featured on the excellent “Thoroughbred Los Angeles” radio show with Mike Willman and Kurt Hoover on KRLA (1110) on Sunday, 9-10 a.m.

John Terenzio, executive producer of “Fox Sports News” the last 2 1/2 years, is leaving the network at the end of the year. He said he wants to explore other opportunities and that this is a good time to leave because of a heavy workload and challenges facing Fox Sports Net over the first few months of the new year as it moves to regionalize “Fox Sports News.” Terenzio says he wants to spend some time at home with his wife and 7-month-old daughter for a while.

CABLE VS. DIRECTV

Good news for DirecTV subscribers is the legislation President Clinton signed this week to permit the satellite service to provide local channels. Almost immediately, DirecTV made L.A. channels 2, 4, 7 and 11 available on DirecTV channels 964-67.

The legislation gives DirecTV a leg up in its increasingly competitive war with cable.

Reader Pat Charlton of Manhattan Beach wrote that his cable company, Adelphia, formerly Century, mistakenly blacked out the recent Grand Slam of Golf on TNT because it was supposed to black out a Laker game on TBS. “Hello, DirecTV, and goodbye and good riddance, Adelphia,” Charlton wrote.

Not all mistakes are cable television’s fault, though. The last seven minutes of the Washington State-Hawaii game on Fox Sports Net 2 last weekend were erroneously cut off by a Fox Sports Net 2 technician. “It was our fault, but we have taken measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Fox Sports Net spokeswoman Renee Hawkins said.

IN CLOSING

Speaking of mistakes, there was a good one in this space last week. In an attempt to illustrate how much a billion dollars is, a seven-foot stack of one-dollar bills was equated to $1 million. Several readers pointed out that a seven-foot stack of $100 bills wouldn’t even amount to $1 million. Reader Richard Ramey wrote, “Someone unfamiliar with money should not write about money.” Good point.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What Los Angeles Is Watching

A sampling of L.A. Nielsen ratings for Nov. 27-28.

SATURDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Figure skating: Ice Wars, U.S. vs. the World 2 8.5 15 College football: Notre Dame at Stanford 7 5.6 11 College football: Arizona at Arizona State 7 4.2 14 Golf: Skins Game 7 3.1 9 College football: Grambling State vs. Southern 4 2.0 6 College football: Syracuse at Miami 2 2.0 6 College basketball: Wooden Classic, Duke-USC 9 1.9 5 College football: Vanderbilt at Tennessee 2 1.7 5 College basketball: Wooden Classic, Stanford-Auburn 9 1.1 3 Hockey: Mighty Ducks at Nashville 9 0.9 2

*--*

*

*--*

Cable Network Rating Share Tennis: ATP World Tour Championship semifinals ESPN 1.3 4 College football: Wyoming vs. San Diego State ESPN 0.9 2 College basketball: Georgia Tech vs. Kansas ESPN 0.6 1 Pro basketball: Portland at Clippers FSN2 0.6 1 College football: Pittsburgh vs. West Virginia ESPN 0.5 2 College football: Oklahoma State vs. Oklahoma FSN2 0.5 1 Hockey: San Jose at Kings FSN 0.5 1

*--*

*

SUNDAY

*--*

Over-the-air Channel Rating Share Pro football: Kansas City at Oakland 2 10.5 25 Pro football: New Orleans at St. Louis 11 7.5 19 Pro football: New England at Buffalo 2 6.4 16 Golf: Skins Game 7 3.2 7 Golf: Gillette Tour Challenge (tape) 7 1.5 4

*--*

*

*--*

Cable Network Rating Share Pro football: Atlanta at Carolina ESPN 4.4 7 Tennis: Andre Agassi vs. Pete Sampras ESPN 1.4 3 Women’s college basketball: Tennessee at UCLA FSN2 0.0 0

*--*

WEEKDAY RATINGS: THURSDAY, Nov. 25--Pro football, Miami at Dallas, Channel 2, 14.2/38; Chicago at Detroit, Channel 11, 11.4/26. FRIDAY, Nov. 26--College football, Nebraska-Colorado, Channel 7, 5.4/15; Texas-Texas A&M;, Channel 7, 3.5/10; Louisiana Tech at USC, Fox Sports Net, 2.5/5; Boston College at Virginia Tech, Channel 2, 2.4/7. MONDAY--Pro football, Green Bay at San Francisco, 15.3/23. TUESDAY--Lakers at Seattle, Channel 9, 5.6/9.

Note: Each rating point represents 51,350 L.A. households. Cable ratings reflect the entire market, even though cable is in only 63% of L.A. households.