Play by Play
Page 21
As murky and complicated as the Kerrigan–Harding drama was, so was the result of the Baiul–Kerrigan battle. It saddens me that too often the topic is the attack and not the competition. In recent years, and particularly lately with a new film out about those events, I’ve read timelines and other forms of coverage of the attack and the Lillehammer competition. Very often the skating is reduced to a single line: “Nancy Kerrigan won a silver medal.” Now, for fans of the sport, that simple summary falls short of what they recall of the night of the twenty-fifth when the two young women took to the ice.
CBS’s ratings for the short program and the long program remain among the top fifty or so for any broadcast in American television history. An appetite existed and CBS was there to whet it and feed it. For our part, Scott and I had to deal with the on-ice drama far more than we did the rest. That was how we both wanted it. In our introduction, we showed Oksana Baiul entering the rink. She was the world champion. We showed Nancy Kerrigan, the leader going into the long program, and we highlighted Katarina Witt, a longtime star and sentimental favorite who was likely making her last Olympic appearance on ice.
Harding wasn’t really in medal contention after the short program, finishing tenth. Still, she was going to be a part of our broadcast, as were other skaters down the ranks. That was always a part of the plan. What none of us could have anticipated was how much drama would surround her effort. Tonya came out on the ice for her warm-up and seemed to have trouble with her laces. When it was her turn to compete, I made a brief mention of the tortured path that she had taken to get to the Olympics. We showed her off the ice furiously working on her skate, and I mentioned other times when costume difficulties and other distractions had figured in her competition. Scott added that Tonya was experiencing every skater’s nightmare—to have an equipment or costume issue just before going out onto the ice.
The public address announcer introduced Tonya but she didn’t step out. The crowd grew restless but the rules stated that Tonya had two minutes to take her position following her introduction. As the countdown went on, Scott said that he’d never seen anything like this before at any competition. The bizarre nature of the Harding saga could potentially lead to her being disqualified. Things got even stranger.
Tonya got out on the ice in time, started her program, and then stopped. She skated over to the judges and showed them her broken skate lace. Per the rules of the competition, she was allowed to make the repair and come out later to skate again. When Tonya’s skate lace broke, we had to be the ones to deliver the rules and policies to an audience that was composed of far fewer knowledgeable viewers than ever before. That kind of audience is typical for an Olympic broadcast, which draws in casual sports fans. Because of the suspicions that fell on Tonya and her group, a far greater number of viewers was drawn in. That increased the pressure on us to make them feel comfortable.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the Canadian skater Josée Chouinard, who was forced out of her routine and rushed onto the ice after Tonya Harding cut short her program to ask for, and receive, a “do-over” that was within the rules. In many battles there is always collateral damage, and Josée was, in Scott’s and my estimation, treated unfairly. As for Tonya, despite all the anxiety the equipment failure produced, she skated decently, ranking seventh in the long program, good enough to place her eighth overall.
As for the performances of Oksana and Nancy that night, words wouldn’t do them justice. As Scott said, both women skated their hearts out and skated beautifully and demonstrated great mastery. The atmosphere was electrifying and each set out to do what they had planned to do and trained to do for years. I wrote earlier that for a competition to truly become a classic, a lot has to be at stake. Seeing these two athletes rise to the occasion still causes the hairs on my arm to rise in appreciation and wonder at their abilities. With so much on the line, with no one else out there but themselves, they each blocked out all the distractions and immense pressure to perform as well as they possibly could.
I have no real understanding of the physics involved in burying a metal pick attached to a blade, attached to a boot, attached to a foot, that’s attached to the rest of a human body that can propel it several feet into the air. Never mind how that human body can also spin and land. Never mind how it can rotate at such a rate of speed without disorienting the brain that controls that body. In terms of the mastery and manipulation of physics, we might as well be talking about a particle accelerator and how it operates. Both have some element of danger involved as well. To be honest, I don’t really want to fully understand at a granular level how these marvelous athletes do what they do. I want to, and do, appreciate what they do. I have a fairly firm grasp of what’s involved in making a tackle, rising up to fire a jump shot, rolling a putt, but how you do a quadruple toe loop is beyond me. I like that about the sport. I like the speed, the precision, and the grace and the violence that precedes the grace. I would much rather marvel at how these athletes perform a death spiral than marvel at what must have gone on in someone’s life that they would even contemplate the assault of another competitor.
What took place on the ice that night embodies what I love about sports. Both Oksana and Nancy had to overcome adversity. Nancy’s was well documented, while I’m not certain many remember that on the day before the final, Baiul suffered a cut in a collision with another skater during practice. There was no Curt Schilling bloody sock on display, but her grit can’t be questioned. Worse than the cut, she wrenched her back so severely that she needed two legal painkilling injections in order to compete the next night. Had I slept funny and woken with a stiff back, I would have likely needed similar treatment just to go to breakfast, never mind propel myself around the ice.
All of the women in that final, including Tonya Harding, transcended the sometimes mean-spirited, misguided, and, frankly, malignant fascination that had become l’affaire Harding-Kerrigan. I’d rather talk about the controversy over the final determination of the victor than what led up to it.
In the end, attempting to quantify the decision that saw Oksana Baiul crowned Olympic champion is difficult. It would be nice if there were some unanimity in the appraisal of that result. I know that both of them rightly believed that they had done enough to win. The judges declared for Oksana versus Nancy. I suppose that growing up in the sport and getting to the level of achievement each had, they had a better understanding of the nearly nebulous differentiations that separate gold from silver. It’s not like you can, as in chemistry, assay the difference between the two metals.
Just so you can understand how close it all was, here are those quantitative results based on qualitative evaluations of their performances:
Oksana Baiul
Jumps
Triple Lutz, Triple Flip, Triple Loop, Triple Salchow, Double Axel, Double Toeloop, Triple Toeloop, Double Axel + Double Toeloop
Judges
UK
POL
CZE
UKR
CHN
USA
JPN
CAN
GER
Required Elements or Technical Merit
5.6
5.8
5.9
5.8
5.8
5.8
5.8
5.5
5.7
Presentation
5.8
5.9
5.9
5.9
5.9
5.8
5.8
5.9
5.9
Ordinal
3
1
1
1
1
2
2
3
1
Rank
1st
Nancy Kerrigan
Jumps
Double Flip, Triple Toeloop + Triple Toeloop, Triple Loop, Triple Salchow + Double Toeloop, Triple Lutz, Double Axel
Judges
UK
CZE
UKR
CHN
USA
JPN
CAN
GER
Required Elements or Technical Merit
5.8
5.8
5.8
5.7
5.7
5.8
5.8
5.7
5.8
Presentation
5.9
5.8
5.9
5.9
5.9
5.9
5.9
5.8
5.8
Ordinal
1
2
2
2
2
1
1
1
2
Rank
2nd
In the end, that all came out to a 5–4 decision in favor of the young Ukrainian. After the competition was over, Scott and I went to do post-production work in the truck. Our live to tape efforts were done, but we needed to do voice-overs to augment the graphics and scores and replays that would be added to the telecast. By four A.M. we were nearly done. In the last segment, Scott was going to explain that the difference between gold and silver came down, arbitrarily, to what the German judge had decided. He was judge number nine and had gotten that number nine by the luck of a draw—a number pulled out of a hat that put him in the ninth chair. His name was Jan Hoffman, a former skater who had competed against Scott. He’d given Baiul a 5.9 for presentation and Kerrigan a 5.8. That was the margin of victory. Of course, he did his scoring simultaneously with the other judges and didn’t know that his was the “deciding” score.
Just as we finished up that final segment, we got a call from a production executive in Lillehammer. He told Scott that he should identify whether the German judge was from the East or the West. The implication was clear. Baiul was from the Ukraine. An East German judge might be biased toward her because of the communist connection. Scott tried to refuse, but in the end Scott had no choice, and he reluctantly and subtly referenced Hoffman’s ties to East Germany. On the drive back to our hotel, he was still upset, thinking that he’d done Hoffman an injustice. What difference should it have made which Germany the man was from? Scott believed that the judges had gotten the decision right. Why did politics have to enter into it?
As it turned out, the East vs. West question was the first one I encountered when I returned to the U.S. No one wanted to seem to talk about the fact that the judges, in Scott’s mind and in the minds of many other experts, had made the right call.
Later, the Swedish referee spoke with Jeré Longman of the New York Times and other journalists to shed some light on the final, controversial result. She didn’t vote, but she was the one who supervised those who did. She stated that in performing her role as a judge for thirty years, she’d never faced such a difficult decision. When pressed for specifics, she cited Nancy’s decision to reduce a planned triple flip to a double near the beginning of her program. Nancy’s speed was somewhat slower than her fellow competitor’s as well. Both those actions left the judges with the impression that she was being cautious. That presumption influenced their marks.
What I found interesting was a few of her other statements. She believed that Oksana was “an artist on the ice,” Nancy was a “little more cold,” Oksana’s presentation comes “from the heart, the inside,” Nancy’s was “nice.” Others, including those in Nancy’s camp, were stunned that Baiul received some of the marks for technical merit that she did. Nancy’s program was more difficult; despite that early doubling of a triple flip, she did two triple jumps in combination—no step in between. Oksana did no combination triples. Nancy skated clean while Oksana had two slight bobbles that resulted (or should have) in a deduction of points. Ms. Lindgren, the Swedish referee, made an important distinction between clean and good. She stated that in the judge’s minds, the other elements of the program besides jumps—spins, spirals (a move in which the skater’s body is 90 degrees to the ice and a leg lifted overhead), and footwork—all needed to be considered. In her estimation, that was where Oksana edged Nancy: quality, not quantity, separated them. Lindgren equivocated on that as well. She said that either of them could win but in the twenty seconds allotted for the judges to produce their scores, a choice had to be made.
Those assessments are arguable, but in the end no one needed to shed any tears for Nancy. A couple of days after the competition ended, her agent announced some of the endorsement deals she had signed. She was also set to host SNL.
I don’t recall how well received her performance was. To be honest, I don’t have the heart to judge her. The same is true for how she and Tonya conducted themselves on and off the ice: it is not for me to criticize or praise. Being forced to do so would be a real nightmare. I prefer to just remember living out my dream.
Chapter 11
Conference Lines and Passions
As much as I enjoyed covering figure skating and other events for CBS, along with the network I felt the absence of NFL football in my life. So, when CBS began covering the NFL again in 1998, I was very happy. I got to work with Dan Dierdorf, the former St. Louis Cardinals lineman, as the number two team. Dan broke my streak of primarily working with former quarterbacks, including Pat Haden. Though we were no longer working together, Pat and I remained good friends. Pat phoned me in the spring of 1999. At the time he was under contract at NBC. He and Dick Enberg were doing Notre Dame football. Pat and I exchanged pleasantries and then he got to the point of his call. He had it on good authority, his own, that Dick Enberg wasn’t completely happy at NBC.
Dick was enjoying an amazing career, but I could understand his feelings. He and Bob Costas had equal stature at NBC. Having two big dogs living in the same house can cause problems if both of them want to be the dominant one. I could see Dick’s point. He’d been brought on to be the number one guy and now he had to share some of that spotlight with Bob. I could see NBC’s point, too: Bob is one of the best broadcasters the industry has ever seen. Something had to give, and Pat wanted me to be aware of the situation. He urged me to keep my eyes open for any signs that Dick Enberg was making himself available to CBS. The repercussions of that might be me losing my number two standing in the ranks of our NFL broadcasters.
Ultimately, though, I dismissed either scenario as highly unlikely. Dick had been with NBC for years. He was a valuable asset. Why would they let him go? With John and Pat entrenched at Fox, CBS had Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms at number one. They worked well together and seemed poised to become a fixture in the booth for years to come. Would CBS upset that?
I didn’t think so, but ours is a complicated business.
In late October 1999, Dan Dierdorf and I were in Foxborough, Massachusetts, for a game between the Patriots and the Broncos. Lance Barrow, my producer at the time, wasn’t with us when we arrived on-site. He was down in Augusta, Georgia, meeting with CBS executives. They did this frequently so no alarm bells went off. When he arrived, he took me aside and said, “I just want to give you a heads-up. I think they’re seriously talking to Dick Enberg, and it may affect you. So just be aware that that is going around.” I thanked him but didn’t lose any sleep over it. It was inconceivable to me that Dick would leave NBC. Even when Rudy Martzke, the sports media reporter for USA Today, also ran a few lines in his column echoing what Lance had just told me, I was still nonplussed. His version was slightly different. Dick was making himself available to CBS. Either way, I saw Dick’s move as a 100-to-1 longshot. We had a new favorite in the starting gate anyway. Jim Nantz had taken over as the number one guy for all of CBS sports coverage. Why would Dick Enberg want to come here and end up in the same position he had with NBC?
By the time the NFL season was entering its stretch run, the answer to that had drilled its way through my thick skull. As John Madden had said to Rupert Murdoch, it’s always about the money. That’s when I really started to worry. I put in
a call to Sean McManus, the President of CBS Sports. I told him, “I just want to talk to you about these rumors that I keep hearing about Dick coming over to CBS. I certainly can’t imagine that that would affect me.”
He said, “Well, let me explain. We are talking to Dick, and he has made it known that he would be available to come with us. But I don’t really see it happening, because he’s so established at NBC. He’s a big-ticket item.”
I wanted to put in my two cents: “But, you know, I’m the number two guy, and I can’t see him as number two.”
Sean said, “Well, I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
The line went quiet. Something told me there was a “but” about to make its presence known. “But, in the unlikely event that he did come over, how would you feel about switching back to college football and becoming the lead voice on the SEC?”
Being the team player that I am, I said all the right things. However, in the back of my mind, I saw this as a demotion. The SEC was a great NCAA conference. CBS and Sean McDonough had been covering the league since 1996. Still, if you were going to fly that pennant on the CBS flagpole, it would have been hanging well below the NFL.
Sean said, “Well, good. I’m glad you called. I’m glad we talked about it. I’ll keep you informed.”
I hung up the phone, turned to Nancy, and said, “Honey, pack your bags for Tuscaloosa,” because from the tone of Sean’s voice it was obvious that something was happening.
And it did.
Sean McDonough left CBS. I took over his slot as the voice of the SEC, and Dick Enberg came over and worked with Dan Dierdorf in the number two slot.
I was not thrilled but what choice did I have?
From 1995 to 1998, I’d actually made a change myself, leaving CBS to work at TNT doing NBA games, the NFL, and whatever other assignments they had for me, often track and field. My time there was okay, with the exception of working on the NBA telecasts with Doc Rivers, Chuck Daly, and Danny Ainge, which was absolutely wonderful. Coming back to CBS after that brief hiatus didn’t give me much leverage with the network. I’d just have to see how things played out.