Home >  Sports >  Columnists

Sunday, January 12, 2003

This much is indisputable, unreviewable. Steelers-Titans was a tremendous telecast last night by CBS.

Everything a viewer could want was in there. Plenty of replays. Tangible drama. No interruptions.

Did you notice? The network gave us 24 minutes in the third quarter without selling any soap. Injuries, timeouts, nothing got in the way of the game, except for a couple of repetitive promotions about network programming. Then, in the fourth quarter, when the plot thickened, it gave us another 29 uninterrupted minutes. Two injuries, two punts, two field goals, too much Neil O’Donnell, and still CBS refused to take our eyes off The Coliseum.

In the final 21 minutes of the broadcast, between the two-minute warning and the overtime end, there was just one stoppage for a word from their sponsors.

Bless your pointy little heads, TV people.

If only every network followed such a broadcast blueprint. In the final hour and a quarter, let’s pause for, say, three commercial breaks. For that, we would gladly withstand all the shameless promos about “ ‘Star Search,’ the show taking America by storm” -- sorry, nothing with Arsenio Hall as host does that to my country.

You want replays, CBS is here for you. In the fourth quarter, the network cued up 64 of them. Compare that to 54 plays. It’s a bad ratio that played flawlessly.

The questionable penalty on the Tennessee hit on Steelers receiver Hines Ward, we saw that five times. The somersaulting, neck-snapping dive by Steelers linebacker James Farrior, we saw that six times. The network cameras and replay dudes were this good: We could see Titans kicker Joe Nedney say “thank you” to quarterback Steve McNair for getting him closer for the potential winning field goal at regulation’s end, then we could see him on a replay after his miss mouthing the words “bad snap.”

Granted, a network gets to work with 50 percent more cameras and additional goodies in its production truck come the playoffs. That explains why some regular-season games look like high-school channel stuff, by contrast. The telecast last night, though, was a sports-TV masterpiece. If it doesn’t win an Emmy for production or photography, then Floridians counted the votes.

The telecast wasn’t without a hanging Chad Scott or two. McNair’s fake on his touchdown pass to tight end Erron Kinney fooled the main sideline cameraman. And Dan Dierdorf practically ruined dinner by uttering something about “the umbilical cord of every blue jersey is connected to Steve McNair.” Cut it out, puh-leeze.

There were a smattering of things Dierdorf and Dick Enberg missed: They didn’t point out Scott’s second-quarter interception was helped by his right shoulder, the only place a guy with a broken right thumb and a cast could’ve caught the pass. They didn’t make enough of Tennessee’s third-down conversions until deep into the third quarter. And did Bonnie Bernstein really provide the sideline report that Steelers receiver Plaxico Burress sustained “a left hinjury?” Or was that “hingery?”

Otherwise, the announcers were nearly up to the lofty level of the photography and production. There were excellent shots of Jeff Reed’s Steelers field goals coming so close to the uprights that “they took paint off,” as Enberg kidded. There was the view of Steelers Coach Bill Cowher mouthing “bullspit” and nearly throwing his headset in anger. There was Dierdorf correctly (if not grammatically) predicting before Ward’s two-point conversion throw: “Remember, they got about four guys in their lineup that can pass.” That was followed by four replays showing how close the Titans came to tipping away Ward’s tying completion to Burress.

In the overtime, Enberg talked about showing the replay of Dewayne Washington running into Nedney, but CBS went to a commercial instead. Local affiliate KDKA-TV then took control and accidentally inserted “The Jerome Bettis Show” instead of their live postgame report, so we don’t know if the network folks corrected that miscue. On this night, though, they delivered the goods.

Ward with a towel over his head, after the back-to-back Justin McCareins catches to arrange the winning field goal, was a great sum-up-the-reaction shot. Cowher running Joe Paterno-like after the referee was even better. Best of all, we got no affront from cars and beer and nonsense most of the second half.

We blessedly got the chance to love it live and enjoy the drama almost as intimately as being there.