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On the air
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 31, 2003
From the ashes of its last football venture -- if you try, you can still smell the spectacular crash of the XFL burning -- NBC has its fingers crossed that the Arena Football League will fly high as it begins its coverage of the indoor league Sunday.
NBC Sports president Ken Schanzer calls it the building of a new sports property in American television, even if the underappreciated and underpublicized AFL has been around for 17 years (seriously: 17 years).
For NBC, it is a huge and possibly face-saving venture, considering it let the NFL get away in 1998, lost the NBA and Major League Baseball as well and lately has given viewers little reason for tuning in (unless, of course, you like ice skating, triathlons and skateboarding).
For the AFL, it is a chance to prove it can be America's fifth major sport. It long has touted itself as such but has been unable to shake the minor-league image.
Here are some reasons the latest foray into spring football could work for both the AFL and NBC:
-- Expectations are realistic. Schanzer said he will exercise patience as the league grows. And the venture already is profitable, he said, thanks to an impressive lineup of sponsors.
-- The Super Bowl as a lead-in. Coming off the most-watched NFL season, the AFL's start is perfectly timed, as opposed to the April kickoffs of the past.
-- Sunday football. As the XFL proved, no one wants to watch professional football Saturday night. So the AFL has all but abandoned its traditional Friday-Saturday format.
-- No competition. Sure, the NASCAR season on Fox starts in two weeks, but by then NBC hopes to have nabbed some devoted new fans. Not to mention, an alternative to Sunday's racing schedule is not such a bad thing for a love-it-or-hate-it sport such as NASCAR.
-- A serious approach. With Tom Hammond, Pat Haden and Michael Irvin, the No. 1 announcing team already is superior to the XFL's silly bunch, and NBC is not billing this as some circus promotion.
-- The action. The XFL was just bad football. The AFL offers plenty of scoring (though some would view this as a negative, as the league offers almost no defense).
For the AFL, NBC's exposure may be the watershed moment in a league desperate for one. Television exposure has always held it back, those in the AFL insisted. Cable wasn't getting it done, and even when it had an agreement with ESPN, the sports network treated it like an unwanted child, sometimes tape-delaying big playoff games.
NBC could give some stability to the AFL, which despite a long-time presence doesn't exactly brim with it; going back just five years, of the 14 teams in the league then, five remain as they were.
Will the AFL on NBC be a hit? A moderate one, probably, but that could be enough to give the league some credibility, and sports fans a reason to turn to Channel 8.
AROUND THE DIAL: Fox Sports Net will televise four USF home baseball games this season: March 22 against UAB, April 5 against East Carolina, April 26 against Houston and May 15 against Memphis. The Memphis game is at 7 p.m., the rest at 1 p.m.