Fox Has Almost All the Lanes Covered

There was a big commotion at City Hall on Wednesday. All but one lane on Spring Street was blocked off, and a large crowd lined the sidewalk in front of City Hall.

It was all for a Fox Sports “Road to the Super Bowl” promo featuring James Brown, Howie Long, Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson and more than 300 extras.

The shoot involved Fox’s NFL pregame show cast riding in a vintage Ford convertible followed by motorcycle policemen and a limousine.

Fox Sports marketing chief Eric Markgraf said the gist of the promo was that the Fox guys believe all these people have come out to honor them, but actually they are there for a presidential motorcade. City Hall simply served as background.

Trivia time: How many members of the U.S. Olympic softball team played for UCLA?

Cardinal and gold glory: Klete Keller, who anchored the winning U.S. men’s 800-meter freestyle relay team at Athens, spent two years swimming for USC. Keller kept alive an amazing streak in which at least one Trojan has won a gold medal in every Summer Olympics since 1912.

And since 1904, there have been 358 Olympic athletes and coaches with a USC affiliation. No other university has had that many.

Edge here to Bruins: There are 35 athletes and coaches with a USC affiliation participating in Athens, but there are 55 with a UCLA affiliation.

Another Bruin connection: Ursula Rothfuss, who works as a designer in UCLA’s communications department, is not an athlete or a coach but is involved in Athens in a different way.

Rothfuss, whose family in Germany manufactures table tennis equipment, and a colleague, Karen Donndorf, designed the tables being used for the table tennis competition.

Z best: Terrye Jackson, 42, of Springdale, Md., has become queen of the couch potatoes, successfully setting a Guinness world record by watching the Olympics for 50 hours 7 minutes. She broke the old record for consecutive television watching by two minutes while competing in an NBCOlympics.com contest held at Orlando, Fla.

Her streak didn’t end because she fell asleep. In fact, she said it was going to be tough to fall asleep. “I’ll probably have to take a warm bath and then I’ll be able to sleep,” she said.

Overly realistic: “Sony PlayStation 2 owners previewed the new Athens 2004 game,” comedian Argus Hamilton told the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s a video-game simulation of the Olympics. It’s so realistic you can’t even play it till you’ve gone through a two-hour background check.”

Trivia answer: Five -- Lisa Fernandez, Stacy Nuveman, Amanda Freed, Tairia Mims and Natasha Watley.

And finally: “Dodger Manager Jim Tracy, who now has no setup man and a new ace pitcher in an ace bandage, may not get a new contract,” Channel 9’s Alan Massengale said. “But he might get manager of the year.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.