From Booth to Sidelines

The path from the sports field to the broadcasting booth has been well trod since the 1940s, when retiring athletes were lured to radio work.

Coaches and managers eventually joined in on the fun, and television dollars made announcing that much more attractive.

The road is now traveled both ways and cuts across several sports, including a recent run of TV commentators making the move to the dugout or sideline without prior experience guiding a team.

Bob Brenly left Fox Sports to become the Arizona Diamondbacks’ manager, while Buck Martinez left ESPN for the Toronto Blue Jays. Isiah Thomas left NBC Sports for the Indiana Pacers.

None of the three had ever been in charge of a team.

“There’s nothing we can do about his lack of experience,” Toronto general manager Gord Ash said when Martinez was hired. “He doesn’t have it. We can’t make it magically appear. I don’t have any fear of him being not able to adapt to this very quickly. He’s worked at every thing he’s done. He became a pretty darn good broadcaster in pretty good time.”

In the past week, ESPN’s John Mackovic returned to coaching, taking the football job at Arizona, while former NBA and college coach P.J. Carlesimo landed a studio analyst post with NBC.

And there are plenty of examples of people going back and forth between the two worlds--Mike Ditka, Jimmy Johnson, Joe Torre and Jim Schoenfeld to name just four.

Both sides benefit from the cozy relationship. Networks get high-profile commentators to help draw viewers to shows and thereby sell advertising, while the “talent,” in TV parlance, get to keep themselves visible and in close contact with their sport’s owners and general managers.

Some announcers get TV contracts that contain escape clauses allowing them to jump to a coaching job.

“Getting involved on this side keeps me involved in the league,” Carlesimo said Thursday. “My clear preference is to coach. If the right coaching opportunity comes around -- NBC was real good about that.”

Not everyone sees the movement between the two worlds as 100 percent healthy, though.

“If we get a feel that someone just wants to be here for a year and use the visibility and get back into coaching, we’re probably not going to use that person. We have passed on some people because of that,” said ESPN vice president Al Jafee.

“We don’t want to be used as a halfway house for coaches.”

Rent-an-analyst arrangements are not necessarily anathema to the networks, though.

“My attitude is, if it makes us better, it’s a good thing. Even if it’s just for one year, so be it,” Fox Sports president Ed Goren said. “We’re not in the business of standing in the way of people’s careers.”

Goren also pointed out a benefit of having former employees such as Brenly scattered about the world of sports.

“He has a better sense of our world. When we go in to do a game in Arizona next season, the manager might be a little more cooperative than usual,” Goren said.

Who knows -- maybe some day we’ll witness the marriage made in sports-as-business-and-entertainment heaven: Washington owner Daniel Snyder, who charges admission to practice, hiring XFL announcer Gov. Jesse “The Body” Ventura to coach the Redskins.

NFL SCHEDULING: The NFL and ABC Sports would love to institute some form of flexible scheduling to allow “Monday Night Football” to avoid late-season duds like this week’s game between New England and Kansas City (which had the second-lowest rating in 31 years of “MNF”).

The other broadcast networks with NFL deals, Fox and CBS, aren’t too keen about the idea.

“‘Monday Night Football’ has games that are not all that meaningful and there are thoughts about what would make a better schedule for us,” ABC Sports VP Mark Mandel said Thursday.

For nearly two years, there have been discussions about some system to improve late-season TV exposure for the league.

“The question is if we didn’t lock in all of our games until some trigger point later in the year, is it feasible? And how would it affect everybody logistically?” said Dennis Lewin, the NFL’s senior VP for broadcasting and network television.

“ ‘Monday Night Football’ would be a beneficiary of it, but the design would be to help the league.”

One proposal would leave the final four weeks of the season open. CBS and Fox each would get to choose its top game once, and ABC would get to pick its game for the other two weeks.

“We’d be open to discussing anything that would improve NFL ratings, but definitely not something that would help the Monday night package at the expense of the Sunday afternoon packages,” CBS Sports president Sean McManus said.

“We all get some good breaks and some bad breaks with respect to the schedule but in the long run, over the course of five years, the breaks seem to even themselves out.”

BROADCAST NEWS: ESPN airs the Heisman Trophy presentation Saturday, starting at 5 p.m. Pacific . . . CBS and Fox will have interviews with fired Redskins coach Norv Turner during their NFL pregame shows Sunday. Fox’s Howie Long talked to Turner and his replacement, Terry Robiskie, on Wednesday, while Lesley Visser of CBS is slated to interview Turner on Saturday. . . . ESPN2 has the season’s third “NHL Rules” broadcast Tuesday night at 4:30 p.m. Pacific, with the Flyers at the Predators. The series explains hockey rules and strategy.