The Case of the Missing Super Bowl Broadcastt

The new four-year NFL contract with five network entities, worth roughly $3.6 billion, has a mystery element to it. Call it “The Case of the Missing Super Bowl.”

As announced, ABC (which paid $900 million in this contract) will televise the 1991 Super Bowl; CBS ($1.06 billion) will broadcast the 1992 Super Bowl; and NBC ($752 million) will do the 1993 Super Bowl.

That leaves the last of the Super Bowls in this four-year package, the 1994 game. Which network will get it? Do the cable networks, ESPN ($445 million) or Turner Broadcasting ($445 million) have a shot at it?

We are assured the 1994 game won’t go to pay-per-view. NFL and network sources revealed they had worked out a novel arrangement under which the 1994 Super Bowl will be on one of the three major networks.

The game will go to the network which, during the new contract, appears to need it most. After a year or so, the NFL will study the marketplace and determine which network is losing the most money . . . or making the least. The most needy will be awarded the Super Bowl for $40 million.

This plan is not set in stone. Should all three networks be making huge profits off advertising, some other system will be devised to award the 1994 Super Bowl to one of the three broadcast networks.

This arrangement was worked out in the main by commissioner Paul Tagliabue and Browns owner Art Modell, head of the league’s TV committee. The NFL long was a shrewd and enlightened bargainer with the networks under Pete Rozelle. This whopping deal with the innovative Super Bowl provision illustrates that the league is still in good hands with Tagliabue and commands respect from the networks.

One aspect of the deal has NBC, which last televised the Super Bowl in 1989, moving back a year in the rotation. It will televise the 1993 game, while CBS moves up a year to televise 1992.

NBC is not unhappy about this. The 1992 game is in Minneapolis, a less attractive site for entertaining advertising clients than the ’93 game on the West Coast. And because it comes just before the 1992 Winter Olympics makes it a tougher sell to advertisers. It is attractive to CBS, however, because it is a good promotional lead-in to those CBS-televised Olympics.

Packer is losing touch: CBS basketball analyst Billy Packer is a blackguard, a scoundrel, a scalawag, a rascal, a purveyor of piffle. He is a devilish imp not to be trusted. And he is a man who should be given a sabbatical from basketball to restore his sanity. Soon.

During the first half of Sunday’s telecast of the Connecticut-Syracuse game, Packer told Brent Musburger that he had come up with and soon would reveal “the greatest statistic in the history of sport.”

“The greatest statistic in the history of sports.” Wow. What could it be? Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak? Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game against the Knicks? UCLA’s 88-game winning streak?

In the second half, after Musburger guessed it was his own bank account (a not inconsiderable quantity for sure), Packer revealed his prize: the 80 games without a loss that Jerry Tarkanian has on the Long Beach State floor. This includes all the games when he was the coach at Long Beach State and those he has won as coach of UNLV playing at Long Beach State.

That was Packer’s “greatest statistic in the history of sport.” Does anybody but Packer even care about Tarkanian and Long Beach State?

He revealed the stat had come to him in the wee hours the previous night as he watched UNLV win a tournament game at Long Beach State. Nuthead that he is about roundball, he knew about the string and added the most recent UNLV victories to come up with his “greatest statistic.”

When I excoriated Packer for pulling the biggest hoax since an Iranian phone plotter suckered President Bush, he laughed and stuck to his declaration. He said he didn’t do this to hold an audience because the game was so good it didn’t need such gimmicks. Nor would he accept any other legitimately immortal statistic thrown at him. And he kept laughing.