The Time of the Television Football Freak

WHEN football first appeared on the home screen, TV coverage involved little mort than a camera somewhere high above the 50-yd. line and a commentator who simply repeated the picture in words. Today the commentators are usually articulate experts, and batteries of cameras peer at the players everywhere but in the shower rooms. Hoisted on cranes, mounted on helicopters and shuttled along the sidelines, they can in effect keep the viewer everywhere at once. Using zoom lenses to peek into the huddle, or directional microphones to pick up the violent crunch of behemoth meeting behemoth, modern TV crews make the action so real that bulldozing backs sometimes seem to plunge over the goal line onto the living-room rug.

Such shots require a precise and intimate knowledge of the game, and no one is more aware of what is called for than CBS Director Tony Verna, the man who will choreograph the coverage of this week's Super Bowl. An 18-year veteran of TV sports coverage, he has been drilling his squad of 100 technicians and production people with the single-minded drive of an electronic Vince Lombardi. He is studying game films and continually revising his play book, a 36-page treatment of the deployment and minute-by-minute moves of men and equipment. In the TV equivalent of a football tactic known as "flooding the secondary," he will scatter 15 cameras, 40 microphones and 84 TV monitors around the stadium--the most equipment ever amassed for a football game. In the CBS control room, Verna will continually monitor shots taken by each of his cameramen. All through the game he will have to make snap decisions about which view he wants on the air. The job, says Verna, will be like "playing blindfold chess. I've already played the Super Bowl game in my head five or six times." In each make-believe version, CBS wins.

During a game, every time the quarterback calls signals, the TV cameramen have to second-guess him. Lest they be faked out, they learn like any linebacker that when the offensive linemen charge, it is usually a run; when they pull back, it is a pass. Verna's goal is to place the viewer on the 50-yd. line and then, through the cameras, let his eyes roam as they might if he were actually in the stadium. When a field-goal attempt is imminent, for example, the scene cuts to the kicker warming up on the sidelines. When there is a break in the action, one camera or another takes a lingering look at the inevitable pretty blonde cheerleader.

With all that, many viewers find that seeing the game on TV is not as good as being there--it's better. True, if they jump to their feet in time, fans who go to the stadium can often witness a startling play in its entirety. But if they are TV-trained, more often than not they feel lost without an instant replay. More than any other innovation, it is the ability to take a second look at what has just happened that has kept the armchair fan riveted to his TV set.* Not only can he second-guess a referee's call, but he can count on savoring thrilling moments in slow motion and from different perspectives.

Verna is only too well aware that despite the sophisticated electronic devices, TV is not infallible. In a game between the Washington Redskins and the San Francisco 49ers, Quarterback John Brodie fouled things up by faking out the defense--and the CBS cameraman--to hit Wide Receiver Gene Washington with a 78-yd. scoring bomb. All that appeared on home screens was a shot of Washington loping into the end zone. Like Lombardi, though, Verna wins more than he loses. In a similar situation in another 49ers game, Verna was so confident that Brodie would throw to Washington that he sent one of his portable "mini" cameras 50 yds. downfield from the line of scrimmage. Sure enough, Washington caught a Brodie pass only a few feet from the sideline camera and raced into the end zone for a touchdown; Verna's viewers saw it all in a stunning instant-replay closeup. It is in such moments that TV football freaks are born.

In recent years, that birth rate has been phenomenally high. In ever-increasing numbers, football fans lose themselves for hours every weekend in trancelike wonder before their home sets. The true TV football freak will watch anything that wears a helmet and moves--and he has ample opportunity.

For many, the season kicks off inordinately early--in the heat of July when the top team in the National Football League plays the College All-Stars. After that, for the next six months, the pros play 78 exhibition games followed by 182 regular-season games, followed by six playoff games, followed by the game: the Super Bowl.

This Sunday, reaching from Manhattan penthouses to Mississippi farms, from rec rooms and rectories to the White House and Whitey's Bar and Grill, Super Bowl VI will draw an estimated 62 million U.S. viewers. In addition, it will be aired live in Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Panama, Korea, the Philippines and West Germany, and replayed by videotape in England, thus bringing closer the day when the football freak will be a worldwide phenomenon.

* Recognizing the appeal of instant replay, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is currently erecting a 20-ft. by 48-ft. screen at one end of the stadium so that fans--and possibly the referees--can enjoy a second look at important plays.

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