Era to end when Summerall signs off tonight

By Bill Griffith, Globe Staff, 2/3/2002

ometimes, you just have to hang on and get pulled along.

So it was for John Madden. Oh, he knew football. Heck, he'd coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl title, but this broadcast business was all new to him.

Looking back to the 1981 day when he was paired with veteran broadcaster Pat Summerall, Madden said, ''I looked for that rope trailing behind him and hung on for dear life.''

That was roughly 450 games, 19 NFC Championship games, and seven Super Bowl broadcasts ago. It will end today when they broadcast the Super Bowl. Summerall is stepping aside as the No. 1 play-by-play man for Fox. He makes it clear he's not retiring, that he will take some time off and decide what future broadcasting interests he'll pursue. It could be a return to covering tennis or golf. He wouldn't rule out doing more football. At age 71, he feels - and sounds - fine, even in the youth culture at Fox.

For Madden, the change will be traumatic.

He admits that, in some ways, he never let go of that lifeline in more than two decades. ''I never passed myself off as a broadcaster,'' said Madden. ''I'm a football guy - a coach and teacher - who does TV. I always was confident he'd take care of all those TV things that I didn't know about or have an interest in.''

There were times when the neophyte Madden would still be talking after the network had gone to commercial. And the time he was doing a game introduction and wondering why Summerall hadn't donned his headset - until it dawned on Madden that he was sitting on it.

But it worked: Summerall, a man of few words, and the bombastic Madden. It got to the point where they could finish each other's thoughts.

''The thing is, he knows the game,'' said Madden. ''He played it and coached it. He was an analyst before he was a play-by-play guy. Not anything would go on that he hadn't seen before.''

So two weeks ago, when Summerall announced he was moving along, a part of Madden went into denial. ''Part of your brain is telling you you're not going to be together forever,'' said Madden. ''The other part of your brain says you are going to be together forever. I listened to that part of my brain.

''It was like a kick in the stomach. You think that for 21 years you've been with someone and now you're not going to be with him anymore. It's been 21 more-than-great years.''

It wasn't all that long ago that the news of Fox's No. 1 play-by-play man stepping aside would bring rejoicing at a rival NFL network. But the landscape has changed. Now it's the cable networks that are perceived as the enemy in the battle for broadcast rights to major sports.

Last Sunday, after the Patriots' victory over the Steelers in Pittsburgh, the CBS studio crew of Jim Nantz, Mike Ditka, Randy Cross, and Jerry Glanville signed off with a moving tribute to Summerall, noting that he'd called 13 of his 15 Super Bowls for their network.

Greg Gumbel, Summerall's CBS counterpart on play-by-play, said, ''There's no broadcaster I've identified with more than Pat.''

Fox's Cris Collinsworth said, ''My first Super Bowl [in 1982] was Pat and John's first Super Bowl together. When you grow up thinking of all the great experiences, having them do the games, you have to think of it as the end of that era. They are a living dynasty. We've all taken it for granted how great they've been.''

For his part, Summerall, the man of few words, says he has nothing special planned for the farewell broadcast. Will he be emotional?

''It's going to be difficult, I know that,'' he said. ''I'll be trying not to spoil the fact that the game is the thing. I don't know of anything being planned.''

Fox Sports president Ed Goren said coyly, ''Tune in, stand by, and you will see. I suggest every Nielsen set stay on through the postgame for a very special moment.''

Summerall said he has heard from ''people I haven't talked to in a long time,'' over the past two weeks, among them Chris Schenkel and Frank Gifford.

''Chris is quite ill, but we ended up talking a long time,'' said Summerall. ''He was the first person I worked with in this business. And I was surprised to hear from Frank. He left this business [in the purge from ABC's ''Monday Night Football''] feeling totally different than I am in leaving Fox.''

For the world of football broadcasting, Super Bowl XXXVI will mark more than the end of the season; it will also be the end of an era.

WBCN program director Oedipus can be a busy guy during Patriots telecasts. He's on the phone to the engineers on site, having them fine-tune the delay in the radio broadcast to be in synch with the telecast so we can turn down the TV sound and listen to Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti in stereo. ''Because the TV feed bounces off a satellite, you have to delay Gil's voice between three-fourths of a second and 1.5 seconds,'' said Oedipus. ''I don't mind it if Gil's a little ahead of the TV, but only a touch.'' For the record, the tweaking is done for the majority of us, who get the TV feed via cable. Dish subscribers' signals are further delayed by multiple ''bounces,'' so those viewers can find Santos describing a play before the ball is even snapped on their screens ... The ''Madden Cruiser'' - he's on the third of the buses since he started traveling by land in 1987 - averages 25,360 miles during a typical season ... Channel 25 leads off its Super Bowl coverage today with ''Battle in the Big Easy'' from 1-1:30 p.m. with Butch Stearns, Rob Nikoleski , Jodi Applegate , Bianca de la Garza , and David Wade all in New Orleans ... That's followed by the much-copied All-Madden Team special (1:30-3 p.m.), the formal pregame show (3-6 p.m.), and kickoff just before 6:30 ... The game should provide Channel 25's ''News at Ten'' with its best-ever lead-in audience ... It was both a backhanded compliment and prediction on the game when Goren said, ''I've always said this about Pat and John: Of all the broadcast teams in football, and maybe all sports, they tend to hold an audience longer in a bad game.'' ... Fox sideline reporter Ron Pitts(son of ex-Packer and Super Bowl I participant Elijah Pitts) on working the game: ''It's different for the Super Bowl from the standpoint that there's many more people on the sidelines and it's tougher to wade through all the people. I'm not talking about credentialed media, but those who can't tell you who the starting tackles are.'' ... If you have your game face on early, the ''Edge NFL Matchup'' (ESPN, 8:30 a.m.) is a great X's-and-O's preview ... The close relationship between flagship station WBCN and the Patriots has paid off for listeners all week. Patriots vice chairman Jonathan Kraft, who does an ''Owner's Box'' segment for WBCN's pregame shows with Bill Abbate and Pete Brock, has been doing a daily version from New Orleans, calling at noontime to chat with Nik Carter. Kraft will be back with the regular crew today.

Lanny Wadkins attended Craig James's broadcasting school this winter, a sure sign that something was up. It was. He's becoming a full-timer with the CBS golf announcing crew in July when lead analyst Ken Venturi retires after a record 35-year broadcasting career ... One sign of the times: The NBA recently moved from NBC to cable; this week, NBC signed on to do a couple of beach volleyball tournaments this summer ... Second sign of the times: High school running back Lorenzo Booker of St. Bonaventure High in Ventura, Calif., will announce his college decision live on Wednesday's 6 p.m. ''SportsCenter.'' ... Trying to make a bigger splash in the Boston media pool can be frustrating. The Red Sox ticket price story got a big ride this past week. NECN's Chris Collins had it chapter and verse two weeks back, but no one picked up on his ripples ... Tomorrow's Beanpot on NESN (Harvard-Northeastern, 5 p.m.; Boston University-Boston College, 8 p.m.) may be buried in a sea of celebration or a puddle of tears over the Patriots. Either way, it's a belated official start of our winter seasons ... Sportscaster of the Year Awards: for Massachusetts - Channel 4's Bob Lobel(eighth time); nationally - ESPN's Chris Berman(sixth time). Meanwhile, The Sports Business Daily named ESPN president George Bodenheimer the 2001 Sports Industrialist of the Year ... Alternatives to Super Bowl-watching today include '' Bud Greenspan Presents Michelle Kwan '' on ESPN at 6 p.m. It's the first ESPN-commissioned project for the man known for his Olympic-related documentaries. ESPN will follow with ''Raging Bull'' at 7 p.m. ... ESPN's coverage of the Australian Open women's final last Friday night pulled a 0.9 rating in Boston, but nationally it did a 2.32 (1,994,000 households) - the second-biggest tennis audience ever for the network, trailing only the 1996 Lipton Championship (2,414,000 homes) between Andre Agassi and Goran Ivanisevic.

Bill Griffith's e-mail address is griffith@globe.com