Unnecessary evils

As if sideline reporters already weren’t regarded with politicians, lawyers and general media types as among the lowest of professional lowlifes, we now have the whole Lisa Guerrero thing.

Memo to other sideline reporters: It isn’t helping.

Guerrero — an impressively endowed former Los Angeles Rams cheerleader, actress and, yes, sports reporter — was hired before the season to replace pregnant Melissa Stark on the sideline for ABC’s “Monday Night Football.” That’s the same Melissa Stark who replaced Lesley Visser three years ago for the generally acknowledged reasons that she was blonder, prettier and 20 years younger, albeit obviously far less experienced.

When compared with Guerrero, some are remembering Stark wistfully — in fact, fashioning her into an amalgam of Jim McKay, Brent Musburger and Edward R. Murrow.

It was third and long for Guerrero before she even took the field. Even though she worked as an anchor and reporter for several Fox sports shows, most recently the testosterone-rich “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” Guerrero also had acted on the soap opera “Sunset Beach” and played such roles as a “hired bimbo” (according to one of the Web sites devoted to her) in the movie “Batman Returns.”

Not least of all, she did a provocative photo shoot for FHM magazine before joining ABC. This, by the way, was not to be confused with an earlier FHM shoot of another female sideline reporter, Jill Arrington of CBS.

The critics accordingly predicted the worst for Guerrero. So far, score one for the critics.

In ABC’s first regular-season game between the New York Jets and Washington Redskins, Guerrero looked ill at ease and ill-informed. Instead of addressing the camera, she glanced down at her notes, which reporters on less-watched sidelines never do. She proudly called herself a former “soap opera vixen” and topped it all off by asking Redskins quarterback Patrick Ramsey about facing his ex-teammates even though he had never played for the Jets. The only ones who appeared even more uncomfortable than Guerrero were Al Michaels and John Madden in the booth.

Last Monday, in an overtime win by Bill Parcells and the Dallas Cowboys over the New York Giants at the Meadowlands, Guerrero was as invisible as she had been revealing in FHM. Dramatic story lines, strange plays, collapses and comebacks — the game had it all, especially in the second half. Yet from late in the third quarter up to and including overtime, she was nowhere to be seen. We saw more of the Redskins’ LaVar Arrington in that annoying McDonald’s commercial than we did of Lisa.

Those in the business are loath to criticize ABC or Guerrero publicly. Privately, everyone’s having a good laugh. But they’re not just laughing at Guerrero.

Nowadays, from high school games on cable access to “Monday Night Football” and in other sports, too, a Tom, Dick or Lisa stands poised, mike in hand, ready to take the viewer down to where the action is.

That’s the idea, anyway.

“It’s almost a non-essential role,” said Jim Lampley, who helped create it when he joined ABC’s college football telecasts as one of the first two full-time sideline reporters in 1974.

Said Armen Keteyian, who fills the job for CBS on its NFL broadcasts, in addition to other reporting duties: “I think the reputation of the sideline reporter is deteriorating. It’s become more of a sideshow down there than an actual profession.”

Added former Redskins running back John Riggins, “My personal opinion is, we don’t need sideline reporters.”

Riggins is a sideline reporter on Westwood One’s NFL radio broadcasts.

John Dockery, who did it for years on TV and now roams the sidelines for the Monday night radio broadcasts, concurs. “For the most part, it’s a waste of time,” he said, meaning how others do it.

Said Visser: “I think some people observe that the job has been devalued.” She quickly added, “That’s not the case for everyone,” and said that there are people like Keteyian, Dockery and others who do the job well. But no doubt about it, a distinct buzz of negativity about the position has been added to the general noise.

“Obviously there are people there because of their knowledge and substance,” said Lampley, who went on to myriad broadcasting jobs and now is best known as the voice of boxing on HBO. “People have done viable and valuable things out of that role. Still, at the end of the day, could you do the telecast without it and generate the same content? Sure. All they did with this was create another on-camera role and begin concocting a reason to be on the air.”

When they’re on the air. Sideline reporters appear for just a few minutes during a three-hour football telecast, but the ire they generate is almost inversely proportional to their face time. Few were skewered with as much delight as Eric Dickerson, who labored, apparently with some English language issues, through two painful seasons on “Monday Night Football.” Recently, sideline reporters seem even more centered in the conversational crosshairs.

Last year “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney said on a radio show that women have “no business” being down on the field talking about football. The expected tidal wave of criticism ensued and Rooney apologized. But he held fast to the notion that sideline reporters are essentially useless. Few seemed to argue with that.

“I don’t think it’s a gender issue as much as it’s a personnel issue,” Keteyian said. “I think you can find people who are pleasing to the eye but also qualified to do the job.”

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Playing against Notre Dame early in the 1977 season, Pittsburgh quarterback Matt Cavanaugh was sacked and suffered a broken wrist. It was a hideous injury, the bone breaking through the skin, and right there with a first-hand look to convey the news, on the field, was Lampley.

“Keith, there goes the national championship,” Lampley told broadcaster Keith Jackson and millions of viewers, correctly predicting that Pitt, which won it all the year before, would not repeat (Notre Dame finished on top). Later, Lampley was struck by a revelation.

“I thought to myself, ’Well, I finally did something,’” he said. “I realized this was the most significant piece of information I had ever provided.”

It took only three years for Lampley, who was hired fresh out of grad school with Don Tollefson in what was seen as a bold move by ABC. Until that moment, his final game on the field before moving to the booth, Lampley said he “felt like I was in a straitjacket.”

Television executives were undeterred. But the idea still struck many as too radical. Coaches literally felt their turf was being invaded. Writers believed sideline reporters put them at a competitive disadvantage. In probably the first and only time these long-standing adversaries joined forces, both groups tried to halt the practice.

It might have ended there, and perhaps the world would have become a better place. Certainly fewer people would be working in broadcasting. We’ll never know, because Lampley had become friendly with coaching legends Paul “Bear” Bryant and Darrell Royal, the president and incoming president of the coaches association, and neither had a problem with it. The gates were open.

“I think there’s little respect for the job,” said Dockery, a former player who, as a sideline reporter for NBC, once asked Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz a tough question after a tie and suffered the anger of Fighting Irish fans, alums and Holtz himself.

“Am I insulted? X number of years ago, I might have been,” Dockery said. “When you see Lisa out there with her entourage and her makeup, OK, why isn’t that you? Fifteen years ago, I might have said, ’Yeah, I want that to be me.’ But I did it. And I was able to do it on my own terms, which was nice.”

Personalities aside, the general criticism of sideline reporters seems to focus on the notion that most can’t or won’t report and that very little information, insight or knowledge is added to what the guys in the booth are talking about. And when someone does reveal something juicy, like a blowup on the Chicago Bears’ bench a couple of years ago reported by Pam Oliver on Fox and Mike Adamle on local radio, everyone gets exercised. The NFL quickly jumped in and warned about future indiscretions.

“To call them reporters is sort of a misnomer based of limitations,” said Fox’s lead game producer, Richie Zyontz. “You have rules you have to abide by.”

But it’s not just based on limitations. Keteyian, ESPN’s Suzy Kolber and a few others actually try to report and dispense relevant information (relevant being a relative term), dispelling the popular notion that the only news available concerns injuries. But most sideline reporters, especially former players, are happy to supplement the booth simply with additional commentary and maybe a little added schtick.

Whether this is good or not isn’t the point. It’s another way of doing the job, and some people like that sort of thing. Fox plucked former Baltimore Ravens defensive tackle Tony Siragusa, a large fellow with a sense of humor (at least for an ex-athlete) from the “Best Damn Sports Show Period” and put him on the sideline. With Dick Stockton and Moose Johnson taking care of the nuts and bolts in the booth, Siragusa’s role apparently is to provide comic relief.

It sure looks that way. During the Giants-St. Louis Rams game two weeks ago, while Rams quarterback Kurt Warner was acting in a dazed, peculiar manner in the huddle and on the bench, as we learned later, Siragusa talked about how hot he was (never mind the players) and how he could sure go for a hot dog.

The next week, while the Atlanta Falcons were disintegrating against the Redskins, Siragusa commented on the game while hamming it up with the Falcons cheerleaders and later a DJ.

That’s fine with the Goose. In an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News before the Rams-Giants game, he said he doesn’t consider himself a reporter.

“I’m there to have fun,” he said. “The game is serious enough. The people around it shouldn’t be that serious.”

Mission accomplished.

On the flip side are reporters like Keteyian. Although he is a familiar face on TV (Keteyian does in-depth features for the “NFL Today” pregame show and reports for HBO’s “Real Sports”), he is rooted in the print world. Keteyian wrote for Sports Illustrated and co-authored a book about college recruiting, and he approaches his job from that journalistic standpoint.

“I’m not down there performing any tricks or doing any dances,” he said. “It’s not a platform for performance. It’s a platform for information, insight and perspective. … I have a way of preparing, and I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of 20million people.”

Keteyian said the job “has some history to it,” citing the work of Lampley, Visser, Irv Cross, Dockery and Jack Arute.

“There have been some very professional people who have roamed the sidelines and reported from down there,” he said. “I think the NFL is the premium place to be on network television in sports. They should have the very best people working it. And I don’t believe that’s the case at times. And I don’t believe college football, which is another tremendous platform in our business, should be a training ground.”

Keteyian concedes he is “fighting right now to remind people there is a value to this position.”

Probably no network gives its sideline reporter as much air time and freedom as ESPN on its “Sunday Night Football” telecast. Kolber is considered the fourth person in the booth, along with Mike Patrick, Paul Maguire and Joe Theismann, and she relishes the role.

“I can tell stories,” she said. “I can see things the guys in the booth can’t see. And that philosophy is prevalent at ESPN. The network has made the push to give more significance to the sideline job. … I’d like to believe there is a major difference between what we’re doing and what the others are doing, and you can’t draw a comparison.”

Keteyian said sideline reporters — all broadcasters, really — have the same obligation as coaches and players to “learn how to be a pro.”

“That should be the goal of everybody,” he said. “Not being a joke, not being unprepared, not being silly. It’s nuts and bolts storytelling. If you can’t tell a story down there in 25 or 30 seconds with a beginning, a middle and an end, there should be somebody else down there.”

Sounds like a good idea. Perhaps someone should look into it.