Irv Brown deserves a guest appearance in an ESPN football broadcasting booth.
ESPN is trumpeting the fact that the network’s 2014 college football schedule on its various channels drew more than 200 million viewers — the most ever.
And the sports behemoth will televise a record 32 bowl games during the holiday season — beginning Saturday with five games, including Colorado State vs. Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl (1:30 p.m., ABC) and Air Force vs. Western Michigan in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl (3:45 p.m., ESPN).
Jan. 1, ESPN will televise the inaugural College Football Playoff semifinal games. It also will televise the national championship game Jan. 12.
Brown, a longtime sports talk-show host on Denver radio and a former Final Four basketball referee, was with ESPN when the network started televising college football games. He is part of broadcasting history:
• On Sept. 8, 1979, Brown was at Folsom Field as a broadcaster for Colorado’s 33-19 loss to Oregon. It was the first college game ESPN televised, on the network’s second day of operation. (The highlight of the previous day: live coverage of a slow-pitch softball game.)
The CU-Oregon game wasn’t a live telecast, however. Viewers saw it two days later on tape delay.
• On Sept. 1, 1984, Brown was the ESPN analyst when Pittsburgh, playing at home, beat Brigham Young 20-14. That was ESPN’s first regularly scheduled live telecast of a college game.
Get him talking, and Brown’s memory bank overflows with nostalgic information.
“The CU-Oregon game was Chuck Fairbanks’ first as Buffs coach,” Brown recalled.
“It was on tape delay because the NCAA controlled all live commercial network broadcasting contracts, and ESPN was out of the loop.
“But ESPN took the gamble and taped the game. As I recall, it drew a decent audience. But the tape-delay decision sure generated a lot of conversation.”
CU’s star players in 1979 included cornerback Mark Haynes and offensive tackle Stan Brock.
Before the start of the 1984 college football season, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges and conferences had the right to schedule their own TV sports events.
Thus, Brown was in the booth in Pittsburgh as sports history was made: ESPN began is lengthy record of live college coverage.
Brown’s play-by-play partner in the two games was Jerry Breen, a popular Southern California sportscaster.
During his ESPN tenure, the 79-year-old Brown said he was in the football booth for “at least 50 games” taped and live, working with such notable broadcasters as Stu Nahan and Jim Simpson.
Brown’s final live game was in the late 1980s, when he covered Purdue’s home win over Michigan in a key Big Ten game.
A suggestion: ESPN’s Chris Fowler, a CU graduate, will have play-by play duties during the College Football Playoff, working with analyst Kirk Herbstreit. Brown should be invited into their booth to talk about the birth of ESPN’s coverage of college football.
Veteran Denver journalist Dusty Saunders writes about sports media each Monday in The Denver Post. Contact him at tvtime@comcast.net.
Year-end sports reports will be as prevalent as Santa Claus commercials on TV this holiday season.
One to savor for HBO subscribers: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel” (8 p.m. Tuesday), which concludes its 20th season with a roundtable recalling stories covered by 11 correspondents, including the venerable Frank Deford, during 2014.
You won’t find predictable recaps about the careers of Tom Brady, LeBron James or the San Francisco Giants or visit famous noisy stadiums and arenas for repeats of key games.
Instead, correspondents recall optimistic and controversial stories from around the world, along with a discussion of important (and negative) off-the-field events.
A highlight: Deford and former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason talking about a story they have in common: a child with cystic fibrosis.
