For a college football team, one of the sought-after bonuses of a bowl game is the national television exposure.
Kansas University got highly favorable treatment on the Mizlou Network at the Hall of Fame Bowl Thursday. The trouble was, the Jayhawks couldn’t muster enough offense to take full advantage of the image-building opportunity. They were beaten 10-0 by Mississippi State, whose defense proved to be every bit as formidable as that of the Jayhawks.
KU had come from behind to win four times during the second half of its 8-3 regular season, and Thursday’s commentators repeatedly point out the 10-0 halftime deficit was by no means beyond the Jayhawk’s reach. But quarterbacks Steve Smith and Mike Frederick simply couldn’t trigger an attack as well as the injured Frank Seurer might have done. Fortunately, the Kansas defense had another outstanding afternoon, or the score easily could have been 24-0.
The Jayhawks handed the Bulldogs a gift touchdown on Darren Green’s kickoff fumble in the first 12 seconds of the game and never were quite able to overcome the momentum that turnover gave Mississippi State. Without that quirk of fate, the score might well have been only 3-0, so well did the KU defense perform.
Thus the Jayhawks continued their trend for failing to impress, and generally losing, whenever they appear on television. KU nipped Arkansas State 17-16 on regional television earlier in the season for one of the bright spots in the video picture. Kansas’ only post-season victory in six tries came in 1961 with a 33-7 triumph over Rice in Houston’s Bluebonnet Bowl. That lone win was nationally televised.
Boosting KU’s chances for favorable TV exposure Thursday was the fact the play-by-play announcer was Merle Harmon, a former KU Sports Network announcer who has made it big at the professional broadcast/telecast level. Harmon and color man Danny Abramowicz, former star pro receiver, both had done their homework. They had the name pronunciations down well and went out of their way to say positive and complimentary things about both teams and their players. They also had studied the individual players and coaches of both teams and treated all of them well. Both seemed prepared and interested.
Harmon, with his solid background at KU, was able to inject a good many Kansas-oriented sidelights that other announcers would have missed.
Duane Dow handled the sideline interviews during the game, but that phase of the coverage was spotty because the time set aside for the interviews was so short. It was inevitably a case of having to rush back to the main broadcast booth. When a long KU penalty late in the game needed explaining, and Harmon and Abramowicz were both in the dark, there was no Dow explanation available.
Mutual handled the radio coverage of the game and also did a generally good job. One of the secondary radio announcers pronounced Jeff Schleicher as “Schlicker,” Tim Friess as “Friss” and Chris ToBURen as “TOW-buren.” But even these blivvies were a far cry from the butchery of five or six names of KU basketball players by network man Curt Gowdy when the Jayhawks played UCLA, and lost 83-76, at Eugene, Ore., in 1978.
Another plus of the KU treatment by the television announcers came when its band was given about a five-minute halftime period to show its “Wizard of Oz” wares. The Marching Jayhawks, directed by Tom Stidham, were introduced as “one of the finest college football bands in America.” Kansas followers, of course, are inclined to agree. And once again, the KU musical group seemed to rise to the big occasion, far better than the Jayhawk football offense was able to do.
For all the gimmickry and tricky formations modern college bands engage in these days, the KU group still seems to have an edge on the vast majority of the units it competes with because of its big, unified and harmonic sound. Mississippi State’s band used its TV time well, but most of the bands the KU group goes head to head with simply cannot offer the same huge sound that head man Bob Foster, Stidham et al get from their youngsters.
One complaint of the band coverage might be that there were not enough long-range camera shots to show the overall formations rather than specific musicians or small groups of performers. But through it all, there was that imposing sound of the KU band, no matter where the camera lenses roamed.
Announcers Harmon and Abramowicz tried hard to avoid negativism.
But Abramowicz’s displeasure couldn’t be disguised when he noted that all-league receiver Wayne Capers of KU had just dropped his third catchable football. Abramowicz starred with San Francisco and New Orleans and once held the record of catching a pass in 105 straight games, a mark since broken by Philadelphia’s Harold Carmicheal at 126.
The commentators made it quite clear that Kansas had gone to a bowl game without the services of a man who did a lot to get them therequarterback Seurer. And they made it clear that stand-ins Smith and Frederick had their limitations. But they managed to do it without detracting from either of the latter or without discounting the solid game, particularly on defense, that Mississippi State played.
Just as Kansans are likely to be pleased by the treatment the Jayhawks got from Thursday’s Hall of Fame Bowl telecast, so are the Bulldog rooters likely to be satisfied with how they were made to look.