Analyzing a Super Mismatch Not Quite as Simple as ABC

ABC, which will televise the Super Bowl on Jan. 29, has been handed a game that oddsmakers are saying will be a three-touchdown mismatch between the mighty San Francisco 49ers and the lucky San Diego Chargers.

Network reaction:

“We’re not playing the game, we’re just broadcasting it,” said play-by-play man Al Michaels. “So much is made in situations like this that the network is upset, that the announcers would rather have these teams than those. That is so much gobbledygook.”

Said Dan Dierdorf: “Al, how do you spell gobbledygook?”

Dierdorf also said, “Whichever AFC team made it, it would have been the prohibitive underdog. The only way we would have been disappointed is if some other team than San Francisco or Dallas was in it.”

Frank Gifford: “Yes, in all honesty, we would have preferred Dallas and Pittsburgh to be involved. San Diego has been very dramatic, but, yeah, we’re disappointed, and it would be wrong to say otherwise.”

Jack O’Hara, ABC’s executive producer of sports: “This is the Super Bowl. It is the biggest event of the year by far. It consistently gets ratings in the low 40s and shares in the mid 60s. This game will be no different.”

Dierdorf: “I can’t imagine anyone who is predisposed to watch the Super Bowl not watching it just because of the matchup. If San Francisco and San Diego played 10 times, the 49ers would win eight, nine times. We’ll just hope we catch the one or two other times. We’ll hope for a competitive game, and if it isn’t, we’ll do our darndest to make it entertaining.”

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San Diego fanatics: Michaels said people around the country may think of Charger fans as laid-back Southern Californians, but that is anything but the case.

“Of all the places we’ve worked the past three or four years, Jack Murphy Stadium is as loud, boisterous, crazy and electric as any place we’ve been,” he said.

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Zinging a rumor: The story goes that Barbra Streisand had agreed to sing the national anthem in Miami, but Commissioner Paul Tagliabue nixed that by saying he had already promised his good friend Frank Gifford that Gifford’s wife, TV personality Kathie Lee, could sing it.

Said Gifford: “It’s been said Paul Tagliabue and I are best friends. We are acquaintances. It came totally out of left field last summer when Kathie Lee was asked to sing the national anthem.

“She is a tremendous singer and is deserving of the honor. But she said on her show (“Regis and Kathie Lee”) that she was willing to bow out (to make room for Streisand).

“We called Marty Erlichman, (Streisand’s) agent and a good friend of ours, and he said neither he nor Barbra had heard anything about it.

“It was all the figment of a some promoter’s imagination in Miami. This promoter was trying to get Streisand to sing in some concerts, or something like that.

“It was first printed in the Miami Herald and then the National Enquirer and has since taken on a life of its own.”

Say what you want about Kathie Lee, but anyone who saw her sing with the Boston Pops on television on Christmas Eve knows she won’t embarrass herself.

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More peaceful now: The last time ABC televised a Super Bowl was in 1991, when the New York Giants defeated the Buffalo Bills on Scott Norwood’s missed field-goal attempt in Tampa, Fla., 20-19. It was the only one-point Super Bowl.

The game was also significant because it was played right after the start of the Persian Gulf War.

Said Gifford: “We didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation until the morning of the game and we met with security people and some members of a SWAT unit. We were briefed on how to react if we were taken. I remember thinking, ‘Taken?’ They were talking about terrorists storming our booth, kidnaping us and taking us hostage.”

Said Dierdorf: “They explained there were (SWAT team) snipers at the other end of Tampa Stadium with us in their line of fire. I looked over at Al and at Frank and figured out right away if someone was going to get hit by a sniper’s bullet, it would be me.”

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ABC newcomer: Boomer Esiason, who impressed ABC with his work as a studio analyst on the wild-card games Dec. 31, has been added to the Super Bowl pregame show. It’s said that ABC also tried to get Phil Simms, but his employer, ESPN, plans to use him on its pregame coverage.

ABC was able to borrow Lesley Visser from ESPN. She’ll work the San Francisco sideline during the game, and Lynn Swann will work the San Diego sideline.

There is talk that Esiason and Simms are being considered for the “Monday Night Football” booth whenever Gifford decides to retire.

TV-Radio Notes

Recommended viewing: Appearing on the first of Roy Firestone’s new one-hour “Up Close” specials on ESPN Saturday at 5 p.m. will be Steve Young, Pete Rose, Chris Webber and Jerry Jones. Young talks about shaking his Mr. Nice Guy image, and how raising some hell and challenging quarterback coach Gary Kubiak during a game has helped him. Webber, in an interview Firestone calls one of his best, talks openly about what happened with the Golden State Warriors and how he is working on his image. Jones calls his decision to fire Jimmy Johnson the “best decision I’ve ever made.” . . . Chris Myers begins his new role as the host of the nightly half-hour “Up Close” shows Monday. The shows, which will be on at 6 p.m. and midnight in the West, will be done from Miami next week.

Johnson got in some shots at Barry Switzer last Sunday on the Fox postgame show. First, he criticized Switzer for not running out the clock with 1:02 left in the first half when the Cowboys had the ball on their 16. “They take only 32 seconds off the clock and give San Francisco a chance to score another touchdown,” Johnson said. “So instead of having a 10-point lead that was shrinking, the 49ers had a 17-point lead and the momentum.” Johnson also said the Cowboys’ early turnovers might have been avoided if they had worked harder on such things in practice.

On its biggest game of the season, the NFC championship game, Fox missed a crucial moment. None of the cameras picked up Switzer’s tirade when he bumped an official. In a big game, there’s no excuse for missing something like that. . . . Overall, Fox had an incredible first NFL season. David Hill and his people are to be congratulated. . . . Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch denies that his network will lose money on its $1.58-billion, four-year NFC package. He said revenue is up 30% at his 8-year-old network and the cash value of his affiliates was up by an astounding $1 billion.

The NFL’s all-time leader in yards receiving, James Lofton, who has been outstanding in his first year as an NFL analyst on CNN’s weekly “NFL Preview” show, has developed a system for rating receivers and running backs. His ratings will make their debut on this Sunday’s show at 8:30 a.m. Lofton, an academic All-American and engineering major at Stanford, said he has always been fascinated by numbers.

Bill Walton, who will announce a Xavier-Notre Dame game for NBC Saturday at 1 p.m., is making his first trip back to the Notre Dame campus since UCLA’s 88-game winning streak ended there on Jan. 19, 1974, when Walton was the center. . . . Cathy Karp, Channel 5’s longtime and respected sports producer, is leaving the station to become the executive producer of SportsChannel Chicago. . . . On Monday at 7:30 a.m., John Hall, former Times and Orange County Register columnist, will begin doing a weekday commentary on Charlie Tuna’s show on KIK-FM (94.3).