ARE `BEST' LAUGHS COMING SOON?

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH Media

Start with the name, ``The Best Damn Sports Show Period.'' They're just asking for trouble. Period.

The chances that anything such as this lives up to its billing are pretty darn slim. The odds are better that it'll be remembered as ``The Most Lame Sports Show Ever'' when it eventually is shelved for excessive hokiness.

Now factor in the events of Sept. 11. Is anyone in the mood to get into a sports infotainment program that so obviously wants to have an attitude about itself?

Since the ``Politically Incorrect''-format show was quietly added to Fox Sports Net's late-night weekly programming six weeks ago, it has remained at most a blip on the viewers' radar. Any sort of momentum it had built was probably stopped when it took a week off out of respect to the tragedies in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Now, the hour-long program with perpetually caffeine-induced comic Tom Arnold mixing it up with former pro jocks John Kruk, Reggie Theus and D'Marco Farr wants to find its place again. It already moved into a prime-time 7:30 p.m. spot (repeated at 11:30 p.m.) and next month will expand to two hours.

Will anyone care with what's going on? Did anyone care in the first place?

``Fortunately, we have a live audience that kind of tells us what we can do,'' said Arnold. ``Eventually, we got a sense that the audience wanted to blow-out laugh. By the end of the week (when the show came back), it was back to normal.

``Who knows what'll happen tomorrow? We try to enjoy every show and every day.''

Show host Chris Rose said they've been taking their lead from Arnold.

``He's been an entertainer. He said, 'Guys, look, people want to smile and laugh again,' '' said Rose.

Nothing will make the cast forget about Sept. 11 more than the fact that cameraman Tom Pecorelli was among the victims of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.

``We'll always think about Sept. 11 and treat it with respect and dignity,'' said Rose. ``We were personally touched by the tragedy. It was very tough to get back to work, obviously. Tom was a great sports fan. He has a great smile. That's the one thing that helps push us forward.''

Tracy Dolgin, the president of Fox Sports Net, says he's proud of where the show has gone the first six weeks.

``This show has taken shape, it's edgy and it's what people want: more Fox attitude,'' he said. ``It's a sports fans' show and this is the perfect network for it.''

--The missing ingredients: You do a book about the great TV chefs of our time and there'd have to at least be one chapter on Emerill, right?

Just as it would be pointless to try to pound out a hardback called ``Sports Talk: A Journey Inside the World of Sports Talk Radio'' without including, say, Jim Rome, Tony Bruno or Dan Patrick.

Apparently, someone decided the subject can be covered inadequately enough without them.

A book released this week with that sexy title authored by Alan Eisenstock, an L.A.-based screen writer, focuses instead on unnecessarily tedious interviews with such blocks of granite as Arnie Spanier, Lee Hamilton and JT the Brick.

In the opening chapter ``How I Got Hooked on Smack,'' Eisenstock makes the passing reference: ``I was welcomed into the lives of radio legends and spurned by one of the biggies, Jim Rome (the man who coined the term smack).''

In response Thursday, Rome says the reason he ``spurned'' the author was, ``I was completely slammed at the time of his request. If I had one less full-time job and the circumstance were different, I would have spoken to him.''

Based on the result, it's probably best Rome couldn't make the time.

Granted, everyone has their own tastes in sports talk. But when Eisenstock admits his was cultivated with Ed ``Superfan'' Bieler back in the '70s on KABC, that should be the first indication that this bonding experience he gets with this lot of publicity-hungry B-listers isn't going anywhere fast.

If anything, the most entertainment comes from those self-absorbed quotes intended not to be.

One such proclamation from XTRA's Hamilton (not his real name, but Eisenstock fails to point that out) is particularly funny: ``(I am a) journalist first, entertainer second. I get criticized for being too serious. Well, it's my job. I am serious. It's intriguing to me that radio-TV columnists sit there and critique what I do. But, man, they listen at 4:05 every afternoon. And we break a story on them? They go crazy.''

Stop flattering yourself.

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--Weekend baseball programming: ESPN2 will show any game of importance on the final day of the regular season Sunday, including cut-ins of Barry Bonds' at-bats from the Giants series with the Dodgers. The network will wait to see which games will impact the playoffs and also cut in on any others it is not televising in full. FX will have Cal Ripken Jr.'s final game Saturday at 4 p.m., with pregame coverage starting at 3 p.m.

--Mike Fratello back at NBC sounds great, but it shouldn't take more than a week into the network's coverage of the NBA for someone to figure out that adding him to the new studio crew, along with Pat Croce and Jayson Williams, isn't as beneficial as putting ``The Czar of the Telestrator'' back courtside again with Marv Albert on game broadcasts. The network hasn't announced yet who's going to replace Doug Collins on the A-team with Albert, so it must be a real winner.

--The tone ``Monday Night Football'' used both on TV and radio for last week's broadcast from the Meadowlands in New Jersey was perfect. But the Hank Williams Jr. theme returns this week for the St. Louis-Detroit matchup on ABC, and Rams running back Marshall Faulk will be wired for sound for the halftime feature. On Westwood One radio coverage, Matt Millen comes back as a guest analyst for the first time since leaving to become the Lions' president.

--The Bernard Hopkins-Felix Trinidad bout last Saturday attracted about 475,000 buys at $45 to $50, making it the top pay-per-view of the year. HBO replays it Saturday at 7 p.m.

--The Angels' Rex Hudler is one of four analysts Fox will use during the first round of the major-league baseball playoff coverage, starting Tuesday.

WHAT CHOKES

--How is NBC supposed to draw viewers to 0-3 Notre Dame taking on 1-2 Pitt at South Bend, Ind., on Saturday? By throwing on a one-hour special on the Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremony of Mike Krzyzewski, Moses Malone and John Cheney leading into the game. (That's for the rest of the country, mind you. For the West Coast, the basketball show is after the game.) Maybe a more interesting aspect of the Irish program comes from the latest ESPN The Magazine ``Total Access'' piece on coach Bob Davie and a day in his life during a week of a home game.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

no caption (book: SPORTS TALK)

Box: SOUND BYTES (see text)