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Remote patrol

By SHARON GINN
Published August 12, 2006

REMOTE PATROL

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While the NFL's true weekly showcase now falls on Sunday nights and belongs to NBC - and who isn't delighted that kickoffs are at 8:15 instead of 9? - the Monday Night Football franchise lives on at ESPN. The new MNF crew debuts Monday with Mike Tirico, Joe Theismann and Tony Kornheiser calling the Raiders-Vikings preseason game.

Much of the focus in the coming weeks will be on Kornheiser, the newspaper columnist-turned-broadcaster in his first analyst role.

"I'm the one that's going to have to fit in, and I get that," said Kornheiser, co-host of ESPN's Pardon the Interruption. "The toughest thing for me, I think, is when people say, 'Be yourself.' " I am sarcastic. I am a wise guy, and I don't know how good that works in three to five seconds."

MNF preseason games start at 8, but regular-season matchups start at 8:30, a half-hour earlier than its ABC counterpart in recent seasons. The Bucs appear just once, Nov. 13 at Carolina.

NEWSMAKERS

- Bay News 9's Rock Riley, sports anchor and host of the nightly call-in show Sports Connection, returns to radio today. He is hosting a one-hour weekly show on 620-AM (8 a.m. Saturdays). Called Rock Riley's Rockpile, the show features call-ins and chatter about local sports mixed with some humor. "You have the ability to have more leeway in what you can do on the radio compared to what you can do on TV," he said. Riley spent several years at 620-AM before joining Bay News 9 in 1997.

- Former coach Dick Vermeil joins the NFL Network as an analyst this season for four games. Vermeil, who recently retired after five seasons with Kansas City, will work alongside Bryant Gumbel for two games as well as the Insight Bowl and Senior Bowl.

- ESPN2's BassCenter, a Saturday-morning SportsCenter spin-off covering fishing and other outdoor sports, was canceled this week, effective immediately.

CHANNEL SURFING

- HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel returns at 10 p.m. Tuesday with an in-depth look at Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Sports. Ebersol, who assembled the team for Sunday Night Football and created the network's Olympic tradition, was pulled to safety by his older son, Charlie, in a fiery 2004 plane crash that killed his younger son, Teddy.

RATINGS WATCH

- The debut of NBC's Sunday Night Football was the highest-rated preseason game in two years, since the Aug. 30, 2004, Tennessee-Dallas game on ABC earned a 7.6. NBC earned a 6.8 (9.6 locally) for the Eagles-Raiders Hall of Fame Game. By comparison, last year's MNF coverage of the game earned a 6.2 for ABC.

[Last modified August 12, 2006, 02:37:41]