ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 23, 1995 TAG: 9512250021
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ON THE AIR
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
If you click on your television sometime in the next 11 days and see a football game and you're confused about just which game it is, you'll be in good company.
Beginning with today's NFL tripleheader - yes, the usually ESPN Sunday night game moves up a day - there will be 30 NFL or college football games on the tube through Jan.2, when the Fiesta Bowl on CBS will settle the mythical national championship between Florida and Nebraska (8:30 p.m., WDBJ Channel 7).
The amazing fact about the perennial glut of college bowl games is that there are fewer games on Jan.1 than in recent years. That number drops to six, including games on ESPN, ABC, CBS and NBC at the same time. There are four games on Dec.29, including the bowl game that gets the least mention, the Division I-AA Heritage Bowl for historically black colleges between Florida A&M and Southern (La.).
And the two state bowl teams? Virginia's Peach Bowl date against Georgia next Saturday (8 p.m., ESPN cable) starts a half-hour later than the North Carolina-Arkansas game in the Carquest Bowl (7:30, TBS cable). Virginia Tech's Sugar Bowl game on Dec.31 against Texas (7 p.m., WSET Channel 13) is the only college game that day, after NFL wild-card playoff games on Fox and NBC.
The only day in the next 11 without a football telecast is Tuesday. What, do the networks think everyone is out that day returning gifts?
SUPER LEAD-IN: The 12-team NFL playoffs begin next weekend with four games, with ABC airing an AFC and NFC game next Saturday at 12:30 and 4 p.m. on WSET. On Sunday, Fox will have an NFC game (WJPR/WFXR Channels 21/27) and NBC has an AFC contest (WSLS Channel 10).
Pairings won't be determined until Sunday or Monday night, if the season-ending Dallas-Arizona game is a wild-card factor. The eight teams playing next weekend include the three wild-card teams from each conference and the division champions with the worst records. The two division champs in the AFC and NFC with the better records receive first-week byes.
The Super Bowl will be telecast by NBC Sports for the third time in four years. Super Bowl XXX from Tempe, Ariz., is scheduled Jan.28 with a 6:15 p.m. kickoff at Sun Devil Stadium. Dick Enberg, Paul Maguire and Phil Simms will call the game.
Also, all NFL playoff games will be aired by CBS Radio and will be broadcast locally by WFIR (960 AM).
BOWL SPECIAL: WDBJ will air ``Sweet Seasons,'' a live, half-hour bowl special from New Orleans next Saturday at 7:30 p.m. WDBJ sports director Mike Stevens will anchor the show from New Orleans, where he will cover Virginia Tech's Suger Bowl preparations for Texas, while sportscaster Roy Stanley will report live from Atlanta just minutes before Virginia's Peach Bowl kickoff against Georgia.
OUTDOOR TV: This doesn't mean you should take the Magnavox to your front yard. Cox Communications, the Roanoke Valley cable system that reaches 55,500 homes, will add ``Outdoor Life'' as a new programming service starting Wednesday.
The Times Mirror network will join ``BRAVO'' and ``E! Entertainment TV'' as new Cox offerings on its Standard Service package, which goes to 95 percent of its subscribers. This sports network is like putting Bill Cochran on TV for 24 hours a day, OK?
Outdoor Life, on Channel 46, bills itself as ``television with a view'' and the first 24-hour advertiser-supported network devoted to outdoor recreation, conservation, wilderness and adventure.
The network has eight major programming themes, led by outdoor exploring, fishing, hunting, cooking, conservation and marine and winter recreation. There also is a viewer call-in show, entitled ``1-800-OUT-DOORS.''
It's another step in what TV programmers like to call ``narrowcasting,'' where a network is focusing on a particular audience segment, with particular interests. This one is men and women, age 18-49, and probably not couch potatoes.
HAPPY RETURNS: ESPN's ``Scholastic Sports America'' will celebrate its 10-year reunion Sunday at 5 p.m. with a one-hour special that reunites hosts Chris Fowler, Sharlene Hawkes and Dan Debenham, and also replays a 1986 piece with Emmitt Smith, then a star running back at Pensacola (Fla.) Escambia High School.
The only national show devoted to high school sports also asked an ESPN panel to pick its favorite nickname from the list of unusual the show has presented over the years. The winner was the Poca (W.Va.) Dots, followed by the Argyle Socks of Los Angeles, Cairo (Ga.) Syrupmakers, Sleepy Hollow Headless Horsemen of Tarrytown, N.Y., and Webb Feet of Bell Buckle, Tenn. In case you wondered, the Community Cut Throats of Ketchum, Ind., finished seventh, just ahead of the Hoopeston (Ill.) Cornjerkers.
FALLEN LEAVES: Don't be fooled when you tune in the Merrill Lynch Senior PGA Shootout on Christmas Day (ESPN, 4:30 p.m.). The two-hour telecast was taped at The Homestead's Cascades course in mid-September. That's why there will be leaves on the trees in Hot Springs. Of course, the show's host did have the gallery singing, ``We Wish You a Merry Christmas'' for the TV audience.
If you're going to wager an unsuspecting friend on the 10-man, nine-hole shootout ... Dave Stockton won.
AROUND THE DIAL: WSLC Radio (610 AM) will carry broadcasts of the three Bowl Alliance games. The Salem station has Virginia Tech's network feed from the Sugar Bowl on Dec.31, and will simulcast the game on sister station WSLQ (99.1 FM). WSLC also has the Orange Bowl on Jan.1 and the Fiesta Bowl, for the national championship, on Jan.2. ... WSLS will begin carrying coach Bill Foster's Virginia Tech basketball show sometime in January. The station is waiting to hear from Tech on the show's start. When the Foster show debuts, it will air at 11 a.m. Sundays, followed at 11:30 by Virginia coach Jeff Jones' show. The UVa show currently airs at noon.
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ESPN. ESPN broadcaster Chris Fowler interviews Emmittby CNBSmith, then a high school athlete at Pensacola (Fla.) Escambia, in
1986 for Scholastic Sports America.