Bears and Dolphins Will Be Going After Some Big Numbers

Talk about big games. You can’t get much bigger than the one ABC is offering Monday night--the Chicago Bears (12-0) against the Miami Dolphins (8-4), the last NFL team to finish a season unbeaten. The Dolphins were 17-0 in 1972.

Monday night’s game at Miami is even bigger than William (The Refrigerator) Perry.

The Bears beat their last two opponents, Dallas and Atlanta, by scores of 44-0 and 36-0.

If you’re thinking about a record rating for Monday night games, the mark to beat is a Nielsen of 26.8. It was set in 1978 by Dallas and Washington.

Two games attracted the next-highest Monday night rating, a 25.3. The games were Pittsburgh vs. San Diego in 1980 and Philadelphia vs. Miami in 1981.

The Bears’ 44-0 blowout of the Cowboys on Nov. 17 recorded a national Nielsen rating of 22.5, impressive for a Sunday afternoon.

Ratings for Monday night games this season are about 15% higher than they were a year ago.

Hard-hitting Joe: Has anybody noticed the recent improvement of commentator Joe Namath? His delivery still isn’t the best, but no one can accuse him of pussyfooting. His comments during last Monday night’s San Francisco-Seattle game had some bite.

About Seattle Coach Chuck Knox’s play-calling, he said: “I don’t understand the Seahawks’ offensive philosophy, at all. They haven’t been able to move the ball all half, and suddenly they think they can go 80 yards with a minute left. . . . This is just poor play-calling. Maybe they should go back to letting the quarterbacks call the plays.�

With the Seahawks trailing, 19-0, Namath facetiously suggested that quarterback Dave Krieg, having a horrendous night, should consider just running out the clock.

Said O.J. Simpson: “I know you, Joe, you’d be throwing, not running out the clock.�

Namath: “I’d be throwing it a whole lot better than this.�

Namath also took a snip at 49er Coach Bill Walsh, who had his team passing late in the game. “What are they doing, passing the football at this point? Good grief,� Namath said.

Double duty: Tonight at 5 on Prime Ticket, announcers Geoff Witcher and Jim Perry can be heard on USC’s basketball game at Syracuse.

Sunday at 4 p.m. on Channel 2, Witcher and Perry can be heard on the tape-delayed coverage of the USC-Oregon football game, which will be played tonight at 9 PST in Tokyo.

How can they be in both places? They can’t. They’ll return from Syracuse Saturday about the same time the tape of the football game returns from Tokyo and will do a voice-over.

So watch, Sunday, to see if Witcher and Perry pretend they’re in Tokyo.

Add double duty: Why are Witcher and Perry working both events? It’s called economizing.

Lorimar Productions, which is handling both, is saving money in two ways. It doesn’t have to hire another set of announcers to work one of the events and it doesn’t have to pay the travel expenses of two announcers going to Tokyo.

Complaint dept.: Bob Argast of Hollywood, a Group W cable subscriber, says he was watching the Air Force-Hawaii game on Prime Ticket last Saturday night when, about a half-hour into the telecast, he got rock videos instead of football.

Such complaints about the fledgling Prime Ticket channel have been commonplace. Tuesday night, a basketball game was shown in the middle of a tape of the USC-UCLA football game.

Although Prime Ticket is to blame for some problems, many are the fault of the individual cable companies. Cable operators, the middlemen who charge for supplying a TV signal that anyone can pick up with a home satellite dish, have always been plagued by snafus.

Prediction: Someday, just about everyone will have a trimmed-down, inexpensive dish, and gone will be the cable industry and all the bad service.

Note: Dish owners were able to watch the USC-UCLA game live last Saturday even though the Trojans were banned from appearing on TV during the regular season.

Add Trojans: USC’s TV ban expires at the end of the regular season, so its game against Alabama in the Aloha Bowl, on Dec. 28 at 5 p.m. PST, will be televised. Channel 11 will show the game in Los Angeles.

The Aloha Bowl will be the same day as perhaps the most attractive non-New Year’s Day bowl matchup--BYU vs. Ohio State in the Florida Citrus Bowl on NBC at 10 a.m. PST that Saturday. The game offers two marquee players--BYU’s Robbie Bosco and Ohio State’s Keith Byars.

Golf, anyone?: Amid all the football and basketball over the holiday weekend will be a golf event, the Skins Game at Jack Nicklaus’ Bear Creek course southeast of Lake Elsinore. It will be televised by NBC on a delayed basis at 2 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday.

It’s called the Skins Game because the four competitors, Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson and Fuzzy Zoeller, play for money--which golfers call skin--on each hole.

The Skins Game, in its third year, is the brainchild of Don Ohlmeyer. “I used to play skins for a dime a hole when I was a kid,� Ohlmeyer said.

Ohlmeyer, former executive producer of NBC Sports who runs his own production company, tried to sell the event to all three networks in May 1983. He ended up striking a deal with NBC in which he would buy the air time. That way, there would be no risk to NBC.

Ohlmeyer, not quite willing to risk $2 million on the venture that first year, brought in Trans World International as a partner.

As things turned out, Ohlmeyer and TWI broke even the first year, made a small profit last year and expect to do at least the same this year.

Add Ohlmeyer: Among the many hats Ohlmeyer wears is one as consultant to ESPN. Nabisco, which is now owned by the R.J. Reynolds Co., backed Ohlmeyer in starting Ohlmeyer Communications in 1982. When Nabisco bought 20% of ESPN, Ohlmeyer and John Martin, hired by Ohlmeyer as president of Ohlmeyer Communications, were given a seat on the ESPN board of directors.

There are those at ESPN who say Ohlmeyer is more than just a consultant. They say he is calling the shots, which has left a number of employees without jobs or in lesser positions.

So how much influence does Ohlmeyer have? “They didn’t hire me as a consultant not to listen to me,� he said.

Notes Another good sign for the NFL, which is experiencing increased attendance and ratings this season, is that NBC has already sold all the commercial time available for the Jan. 26 Super Bowl. Thirty-second spots went for $550,000, one-minute spots for $1.5 million. Last year, ABC sold 30-second spots for $525,000, one-minute spots for $1 million. NBC sold 50 spots, 28 to new sponsors. The rights fee for the Super Bowl is $17 million. . . . Attention, college basketball fans: CBS offers an attractive matchup Saturday at 10:30 a.m.--Georgia Tech vs. Michigan in the Hall of Fame Tip-Off game at Springfield, Mass. Then, at noon, NBC will show “Al McGuire’s Preseason Special.� . . . A woman’s job?: Dan Avey of KFWB, former King commentator who now teaches a sports broadcasting class at USC, has his class produce coverage of a high school football game each week. When the class did Pasadena vs. Muir on Nov. 16, the play-by-play announcer was Carolotta Espinoza, a sophomore from Calabasas, and the commentator was Helen Bottum, a sophomore from Santa Clara.