Football Overload Is Coming

“It’s like carrying Quasimodo on your back while he rings the bells of Notre Dame. You feel your legs explode, and your teeth fall out, and your eyes bleed.”

Who was doing the talking there?

Was it Outdoor Life Network cycling commentator Bob Roll discussing the rigors of the L’Alpe d’Huez time trial at the Tour de France?

Or millions of television viewers assessing their physical condition this November after trying to watch all the football the networks will be throwing at them?

The quote belongs to Roll, but football fans this fall could be feeling the same kind of pain by Thanksgiving as they are rolled off, semi-comatose, in their recliners and pushed in front of the dinner table, forced to take some nourishment in between punts.

We know we’re reaching the end of the football off-season, because the networks are getting more frenzied with their just-hang-in-there, help-is-on-the-way pronouncements, as if we’re road-weary cyclists in France struggling to get to the finish.

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Fans Can Gorge on TV Football for 19 Straight Days!

Moving us closer to that inevitable day when we will be able to see every play of every football game played anywhere any time we want -- Demand Your Video-On-Demand Today! -- the networks will take us to the brink for 19 consecutive days from Oct. 28 through Nov. 15, with no less than one televised football game per day, including 13 days of college football.

During the streak, college football will be seen on every day except Sunday and Monday, those dates still sacred to the national religion known as the NFL.

But there will be college football on Labor Day Monday, Sept. 6, with Miami and Florida State playing on ABC at 5 p.m.

That’s because the NFL doesn’t kick off its regular season until three days later, on a Thursday, Sept. 9, because millions of NFL fans can’t be expected to hold out until Sunday.

Of course, if they are real NFL fans, they already will have had access to the NFL Network’s glut-fest of exhibition games -- 54 in all, beginning with a tripleheader Friday, Aug. 13 and culminating with a taped tripleheader on Monday, Sept. 6, just to get one in the mood for Miami-Florida State that evening.

(That 54 total does not include all the games to be featured on two “No Huddle” shows, which the NFL Network describes as “live whiparound” shows featuring action from as many as eight games a night.)

On a Thursday conference call to announce ABC’s college football schedule, Loren Matthews, senior vice president of programming for ABC Sports, was asked if ratings risked hitting the wall because of so much televised football.

“In all honesty, we’re probably doing at ABC maybe a couple of more [broadcast] windows than I’m particularly comfortable with this year,” Matthews said, “because we’re committed to doing the same numbers we did last year -- and as you know, it’s an 11-game season this year, not 12.

“The way the calendar falls, we’ll actually be fitting those 30 windows into one less week. So from the network standpoint, I think we’re pretty well maxed out.

“Now, having said that, next year, when there’s an ACC championship game, we’ll go to a 31st window.”

Matthews said: “You can only do what’s right for your network and your affiliates and your advertisers and your viewers. But we do have contractual commitments, sponsorship commitments, that really kind of dictate why we’re doing what we’re doing this year.

“As a college football fan, I’ve got to tell you, I love it, I don’t get tired of it. I imagine there could be some negative effect, but you never understand that until you’ve crossed the line. And candidly I don’t think we’ve crossed it yet.”

Matthews gets some frightening support from a USA Today online poll that asks, “Is too much football on TV a good thing?” As of Thursday afternoon, 50.25% of respondents voted for “Don’t stop there -- give us touchdowns every day” and another 24% went for “The Fall 2004 glut merely fits the demand.”

USC on ABC

ABC already has committed to televising four USC football games this season, and will probably air six, the maximum allowed, according to Matthews.

Listed on the schedule ABC released Thursday were USC’s games against Colorado State on Sept. 11, Washington State on Sept. 30, Notre Dame on Nov. 27 and UCLA on Dec. 4.

“Since we’re not doing a nonconference USC away game, we can do up to six USC games,” Matthews said.

“They’ll probably go into the preseason as the consensus No. 1 ... and certainly, we will look to expose them. They’re a fun team to watch. I saw them four times in person last year and they can move it up and down the field.

“The Notre Dame game in prime time on Thanksgiving Saturday is a given. The UCLA game on what we call ‘Championship Saturday,’ the first weekend in December, is a given.”

Matthews said he’d like to broadcast the USC-Washington and USC-Oregon State games but isn’t sure the limits on school appearances per season will allow ABC to televise both.

“I’d love to do them both,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to have enough appearances to do them both. Assuming USC’s as good as we expect them to be, that would probably depend on the Washington-Oregon State game as to which of those teams gets on against USC.”

Lance Times Six

As Lance Armstrong closes in on his record-breaking sixth consecutive Tour de France championship, cycling reporters from OLN and CBS tried to put the accomplishment in perspective during conference calls with reporters this week.

“I would rank this as the greatest individual achievement I’ve witnessed personally, without question,” CBS’ Armen Keteyian said. “I wasn’t around to see Barry Bonds break a record or Henry Aaron break a record. I’m trying to think of something that would compare to this -- Jack Nicklaus, 18 majors.

“When you’re looking at Jacques Anquetil, Eddie Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong -- you’re basically talking about the Mount Rushmore of this sport. I mean it’s Ruth, Gehrig, Mays, Williams and Aaron or putting whoever the top five baseball players in history are. This is Babe Ruth. This is somebody on that mountain separating himself from everybody else.... It’s an incredible achievement.”

From OLN’s Al Trautwig: “You know, in ‘99, Lance, even in his own mind, was an unknown entity. He didn’t know if he could go so well for three weeks. He didn’t know if he could, after he got the [leader’s] jersey in Sestrieres, he didn’t know if he could keep it.

“And now we’re six years further down the road, and tons of water under the bridge, and a lot of experience. And the evolution of not just Lance but cycling as a sport in the American consciousness has increased so dramatically ...

“I get the sense that if he put in an attack, nobody could respond to it. And up until now, he’s depended on his team, and he’s depended on the sort of collapse of his rivals. And once you factor in Lance Armstrong’s desire to win the Tour, you have a big, gigantic target on your back. And Lance will hunt you down like a whimpering cur and tan your hide.”

Courier on Sampras

Pete Sampras is the focus of Fox Sports Net’s “Beyond The Glory” Sunday at 8 p.m. The show features interviews with Sampras’ former coaches and contemporaries, including Jim Courier, who offers this assessment of his on-court rival:

“He played in the wrong era. Pete’s a Joe DiMaggio for tennis. He’s a guy who always believed in letting his racket do the talking for him and was miffed by the fact that as loud as his racket spoke, it wasn’t enough for today’s sound-bite MTV media.”

Larry Stewart is on vacation.