Phi Beta Football

Cleveland's Frank Ryan faded, stood up in the slot, and looked for his receiver, Gary Collins. Firing a waist-high bullet pass, he hit Collins in the end zone. This was the first touchdown in last week's National Football League championship between the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts (see SPORT). Almost half the people in the U.S. saw the play, some 80 million of them on CBS television, and the TV viewers got a bonus dividend that the people in the stadium could not have. Instantly after the touchdown was scored, the same play appeared again on their TV screens; but this time the picture concentrated on Collins, running his pattern through two zoning defenders, cutting for the corner, then cutting back toward the goal posts and turning with perfect timing to look for the ball, which was right there to be plucked out of the air.

All three Cleveland touchdowns were scored on Ryan-to-Collins passes, and each time CBS instantly reran the play, showing how Collins got into the clear. If football, as many people think, has become the national sport, television has made it so. And the game's high degree of intelligibility on the screen is to a large degree due to the instant rerun device known as the isolated camera.

While half a dozen ordinary cameras are watching the main action, an isolated camera or two will zero in on one player and exclusively follow him in a developing play. The isolated camera records its pictures on tape. If the selected player proves to have been the key man on the play, his performance is rerun for the audience, while the teams are huddling for the next play.

In Orr Out? When Cleveland's bisonic fullback Jimmy Brown turned the right corner and went 23 yards down the sideline, it was not only a fabulous run, with Baltimore tacklers hitting him and ricocheting in all directions; it also seemed possible that he might have stepped out of bounds. CBS immediately ran the play over again. An isolated camera had followed Brown from behind and it showed him weaving, feinting, then driving down field a few inches in bounds.

If isolated cameras generally vindicate referees, they sometimes make them look bad too. Later in the same game, Baltimore Quarterback Johnny Unitas faded back from his own 42 and hit his flanker, Jimmy Orr, with a 43-yard pass that was apparently going to set up Baltimore's only score. The referee said that Orr had caught the ball out of bounds. But an isolated camera had been watching, and seconds later the TV audience could plainly see that Orr's catch had been in bounds.

The networks have other devices too. Directional microphones that look like small radar screens pick up the grunts and thwacks produced by the action on the field, also a percentage of profanity that is edited out by the Profanity Man, who monitors the sound tape. The mikes also pick up some fascinating sideline chatter. In the North-South game from Miami, with 22 seconds to go and the score tied at 30-30, North Coach Ara Parseghian conferred with Quarterback John Huarte on the sidelines, telling him: "Call waggle on the right. If the ball is in play and the clock is running, call clutch. Line up in pro and throw the ball quick." Every syllable was picked up clearly by an ABC directional mike. Back to the game went Huarte and did as he was told--throwing three quick passes to Jack Snow, the third for the winning touchdown.

Time Out for Commercials. ABC has a stop-action technique that presents a still shot when a mere rerun would be less illuminating. Buffalo, for example, has a place kicker named Pete Gogolak, who was born in Hungary and kicks with his instep like a soccer player. To make his style clear, ABC showed him approaching the ball, then stopped his foot at the exact moment of contact. ABC also has a device that will convert video-tape into slow motion, and ABC hopes soon to be able to turn a play into slow motion while it is actually going on.

NBC has refrained from all the elaborate devices like directional mikes and isolated cameras because it only broadcasts college games, and the conservative National Collegiate Athletic Association does not like such gimcrackery. Some critics of the coverage of pro games agree with the N.C.A.A. position, pointing out that football may be turning into a mere TV show. In some pro games, a network man in earphones stands on the sidelines and signals to the referee when it's time to stop the game for a commercial. But these complaints are captious. Television football coverage is obviously in the hands of people who are doing a superlative job and who know the dangers of overdoing it. "An isolated tape rerun," says ABC's sports producer Roone Arledge for example, "is like a footnote in a book. It often provides interesting additional information, but you don't want to find one after every word. We have to be discreet."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.