BRING IN 'DA NOISE, BRING ON 'DA GRAPHICS.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

Ccccccrrrrrr . . .

. . .zzzzzzOOOMMMMMMPPHHH!

Quick, look out the window. Maybe the recycling truck has finally picked up the neighbor's '62 Impala with its forklift and is shoving it hood-ornament-first into the ``metal only'' bin.

No such luck.

The horrific commotion is coming from the TV screen - a graphic on the Green Bay Packers' success rate inside the red zone has just landed with a clap of thunder and a mind-numbing thud that more than suggests to the home viewer, ``Hey, this is important stuff, so please pay attention.''

Before we can gasp, the numbers dissolve and this steel door clangs back shut like on the opening of ``Get Smart,'' except we're smart enough not to get our nose too close to the screen.

It takes two off-tackle runs and the huddle before the third play for us to catch our breath. What's the deal?

We know graphics serve an important function on a sports telecast. Forget, for a minute, that a startling percentage of the viewers can't read past a ninth-grade level and had to buy the ``Stars Wars'' trilogy so they could hit the pause button and finally read that scroll of words that explained the beginning of each movie.

Without graphics, the rhetorically gifted play-by-play man would have to say everything - down, distance, time left, every player's name, every player's (not so) vital statistics and, heaven forbid, the score - then have no time to find the right cliche to explain what just happened.

Graphics give us a chance to be interactive with the telecast. We can ingest this extra, special information that'll give us an edge on those who just left the room to relieve themselves but can still hear the announcers blather on from the bathroom.

Graphics, in essence, are good.

But for some reason, graphics today have become TOO %(&-cents LOUD!

The average viewer must have a high threshold for this kind of ear-piercing nuisance. How else would a show like ``The Nanny'' get any ratings.

But somewhere in the last few years - and we're not going to blame all of this on Fox Sports, but it's a heckuva place to start - some upstart started this same-game, new-'tude approach and decided what works on a video game should work on a TV sports telecast.

When video games first came out, the ones considered the best were those that could come closest to recreating a real TV sporting event. It didn't hurt when sportscasters like John Madden, Marv Albert and Al Michaels recorded phrases that were electronically inserted into the games to add to the realism.

Eventually, that was surpassed by the need to make video more exciting than real TV.

All of the sudden, if someone scored a goal on a video hockey game, the net would burst into flames. Now that's something real TV can't duplicate. Nor, we think, should it try.

The next best thing, then, would be to bring video-game excitement to the telecast. Maybe they could fake the viewer/zygote out and make him think he was watching a video game with real players.

Somewhere, obviously, the network with John Madden led the BOOM in the graphics boom for TV producers who couldn't just show ``the game'' any more but felt compelled to compete with a $49.95 cartridge. ABC's ``Monday Night Football'' actually has electrical sparks coming off their graphics, which NBC has now tried to copy. CBS is considering it for Martha Stewart's Sunday morning show.

Watch something - anything - on the Classic Sports Network. Some would call the graphics used by the networks not-so-way-back-when functional, but nothing else. They had the personality of an egg timer, because, well, that's all we asked of them. They were functional, easy to see.

Now watch something Sunday. The graphics come in Dolby. They're more over-the-top than Drew Carey's secretary. You don't know whether to read them or have them checked for friction realignment at Brake Depot.

Graphics that assault the senses are senseless. Just because the volume knob goes up to 11 doesn't mean you have to use it to get that extra umpf.

You know what it'll come down to. Someone demanding a new ratings system for TV sporting event. ``This game has been rated XL for extra loud. Parental discretion is advised.''

Microphones on the field are a tremendous innovation, but now we see the net result. The sound guy is competing with the camera guy for attention. And the graphics guy is caught in this terrible love-triangle.

And the viewer suffers.

This graphic violence must stop before we all suffer the consequences. The day will come when a network hires a Fran Drescher to do play-by-play because the graphics have become too competitive with the rest of the broadcast.

And we don't need that, do we?

WHAT'S IN A NAME

KCOP Channel 13 weekend sports anchor Newy Scruggs has never hid the fact that his real first name is Albert. He has gone by his nickname since grade school.

When a station producer and news anchor tried to ``have fun'' with Scruggs on the air by using his real name during Sunday's telecast, Scruggs saw it as two co-workers trying to embarrass him.

And no one named Albert needs any more embarrassment these days.

Scruggs confronted the two after the telecast, and after losing his temper, was sent home on a two week unpaid suspension. No one at KCOP helped quiet the situation either by leaking the story to rival KTLA Channel 5 gossip monger Sam Rubin, who then reported that Scruggs beat up the producer in question.

Scruggs admitted he grabbed the producer by the sweater and threatened him, but didn't hit him.

`I feel bad about it and it wasn't professional of me,'' Scruggs said. ``But I did not beat anyone up. I was wrong. I lost my temper. But what they did was unprofessional.

``I didn't start anything, but unfortunately I learned the hard way that I shouldn't finish anything either.''

News director Steve Cohen did not suspend either producer Brian Skelton or anchor Robert Kovasik for their part in the incident.

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH . . .

One-on-One Sports' L.A. affiliate on AM-1540 finally switched from Spanish-language to sports-language at midnight Monday. The greatest impact it will make should be the mid-days, where Peter Brown's material snuffs out all established competitors. On the weekends, One-on-One's NFL scoreboard shows should be the equivalent of having a satellite dish without the TV monitor. . . .

XTRA-AM (690), which will carry the CBS Radio feed of the NLCS and the World Series, has fit baseball's playoff games this week into its schedule whenever it doesn't conflict with its better staff-generated programming on the San Diego station and on its L.A.-based AM-1150 station. KNX-AM (1070) gave up first dibs on the baseball postseason. . . .

Bret Lewis will do Saturday's Cal State Northridge-Portland State game from Portland, then do the Sunday night sportscast on Channel 5. . . . Steve Jahnke, a long-time sports producer in L.A., found himself purged in the latest KCAL Channel 9 managerial budget cuts.

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

The local flavor to this week's Sports Illustrated as two Valley baseball legends illustrate how filling out a lineup card can be interpreted as a rough draft to a more interesting piece of literary work. CSUN baseball coach-turned-New York playwright Bill Kernen is the focus of the SI ``Focus'' piece. He said people ``thought I was crazy'' when he gave up a $100,000 CSUN income.

But his second play, ``A Graveyard Symphony'' began a three-week run Sept. 18. Then, Houston Astros manager and former Taft star Larry Dierker reveals his book smarts (between tobacco spits) and admits he's at his laptop an hour a day plugging away at a diary. He also reflects on Valley life in the '50s: ``It was such a wonderful place, not the smoggy, super-urban area it is today.'' That's OK, Larry. We get the point.

WHAT CHOKES

The fine line between dumb-luck clever and dumb-luck stupid. It's that Sprint cell-phone ad with 49ers coach Steve Mariucci in a panic to call former coach George Siefert. It keeps showing up - usually on ``Monday Night Football,'' particularly last week during the San Francisco-Carolina game, precisely in the fourth quarter after the Panthers cut the 49ers' lead to 27-14 and were threatening to make a game of it. So the Mariucci ad pops up and . . . you know the punch line - a TD pass to Jerry Rice. The same Jerry Rice, of course, who has the season-ending knee injury and has been on camera all night long pacing the sideline in street clothes. Next week, Mariucci will go to the second option - Dwight Clark, back of the end zone.

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Box: SOUND BYTES (see text)