MEDIA WATCH: SUPER BOWL HYPE IS CROWDING OUT OTHER VOICES

By Al Mattei

Founder, TopOfTheCircle.com

Add it up: some 150 hours and countless employees from one group of networks, a comedy special on another, another network broadcasting from a party, and a seven-hour preview show, all for a single occurrence.

What's the event? A presidential inauguration? Man landing on Mars? The coming of the Messiah?

Nope. The 1999 Super Bowl.

The hype over one single game on electronic media in the United States has in 1999 not only become tiresome and overbearing at times, it has also begun encroaching on the turf of other sporting events.

Events like David Duval's record-shattering 59 in the final round of a PGA tour event, or the movements within NBA teams as they try to recover from the 1998 lockout, or the 24 Hours of Daytona have been pushed out in the name of Super Bowl hype.

It's not as though this hype has anything to do with good sports journalism. For the three weeks encompassing the conference championships and the 33rd Super Bowl game, the game of football has been covered from every conceivable angle -- third-string quarterbacks, hometowns of prominenent players, and media-induced controversies between coaches have been part of the media storm.

The entire fortnight before the Super Bowl was consumed with the "Who Said What?" angle between Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan and Atlanta Falcons coach Dan Reeves, and it seemed as though it was the only story in town, other than words exchanged between Denver receiver Shannon Sharpe and Atlanta defensive back Eugene Robinson.

However, the media wound up paying shamefully little attention to Robinson's late Saturday night arrest for allegedly soliciting prostitution. ESPN's Sports Reporters show ignored the story altogether. So did the Fox on-air broadcast of the game itself. Robinson got beaten badly several times by the Denver offense, and the arrest was not discussed until well into the second half.

The amazing thing about the pre-Super Bowl hype is that the host network -- Fox -- wasn't even doing the majority of the hyping. Disney unleashed its ESPN minions onto the Super Bowl site, sending nine anchor people to Florida and custom-building a set in Miami. ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPN.com -- every property short of the ESPN Zone restaurants were obsessed with every single aspect of the game.

Other networks have been desperate to get in on the Super Bowl bandwagon. MTV and USA Network scheduled counter-programming during halftime to siphon off audience from the contest. And they do it using a technique borrowed from every liquor store and bar in America. They avoid using the copywrited phrase "Super Bowl" and use "The Big Game" to get around that little problem. In the process, they hopelessly confuse Stanford and Cal football fans everywhere.

Still, there is hope. Tuning around the dial for the Jones Communications cable system in sububan D.C., there was plenty of alternative programming the Friday before Super Bowl XXXIII. There was not one, but three women's college basketball games: Wisconsin-Penn State, Old Dominion-George Mason, and Johnson-Bowie State.

Would it be that there was similar sports counter-programming during the football season, not just at the end!

What do you think? Email us at topofthecircle@aol.com, and we'll try to print a random sampling of your opinions, as long as you are willing to give us your name and where you are from.