THE WRITING ON (AND OFF) THE WALL INSTANT GRATIFICATION CHANGED TV FOREVER.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH

So maybe he's not directly responsible for today's on-demand mentality, the immediate-gratification impulse or the increased need for speed. Not to mention longer and longer NFL games.

But Tony Verna accepts it.

``It's OK, blame me, I have big shoulders,'' the 70-year-old said from his Pacific Palisades home the other day.

It goes back to the Army-Navy game played in Philadelphia 40 years ago today - Dec. 7, 1963. Verna created something that was eventually referred to as ``instant replay,'' and on that day it was put to use for the first time in a live, televised sporting event.

And instantly, our sports world would be forever changed.

OK, it actually took a few years before replay machines were a standard piece of equipment in all the network TV trucks. But you get the idea.

Verna, CBS' director on NFL games, had been working on a process to link tracks of videotape that could be shown immediately after the offensive team headed back to its huddle. He had been frustrated dealing with all the dead time between plays and wanted to show some of the action away from the ball that only the people at the game could see.

``We needed to bring up the energy level of the game,'' he said. ``You could eat two hot dogs between the time Norm Van Brocklin threw an interception and the next play was run.''

About the best any network could do at the point was to show taped highlights of plays at halftime and after the game. But Verna, who learned about how the video tracking worked while a part of CBS' delayed presentation of the 1960 Rome Olympics, found a way to use an audio cueing system to help his engineer track a play and get it back on the screen more quickly.

The first major hurdle was to get permission from the network execs to have a 1,200-pound, two-inch tape machine called an Ampex VR-100 put on a rental truck and lugged from CBS' studios in New York to Philadelphia.

The second was to make sure the contest was not compromised for this experiment.

``That was a huge game in that time, especially since it was delayed by the assassination of President Kennedy,'' Verna recalled. ``I was afraid to death.''

On the cab ride from the hotel to the game, Verna warned play-by-play man Lindsey Nelson that he wanted to try out this new idea. Nelson was, of course, skeptical.

Verna hoped the first replay would have been with Navy quarterback Roger Staubach, who already had been given the Heisman Trophy. But during the first half, Verna failed on several attempts to synch up the right plays in time.

It wasn't until the fourth quarter, when Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh faked a handoff, then rolled into the end zone for a 1-yard touchdown that pulled the Cadets to a 21-15 deficit that Verna's magic worked.

All Verna had time to tell Nelson in his earpiece was: ``Here it comes.'' After about eight seconds, Nelson told the viewing audience: ``This is not live! Ladies and gentleman, Army did not score again!''

That was the only time it worked. Afterward, Tex Schramm, then the sports director at CBS who later went on to become the general manager of the Dallas Cowboys, phoned Verna and told him: ``My boy, what you have done here will have such far-reaching implications we can't begin to imagine them today.''

``And he was right,'' Verna said.

Verna's next chance to use ``instant replay'' - a term Verna credits play-by-play man Pat Summerall with coining, and one that never was trademarked - wasn't until about six months later.

``Try putting on a telecast today without it,'' challenged Verna, who left network sports TV in 1980 to take on world satellite production and Internet video streaming.

He also has a company developing something they call ``instant instant replay,'' where the viewer can pick out the replay instead of the supplier.

So when will it be ready? Patience, please.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1) no caption (Kim Clijsters)

(2) JON KITNA

(3) TERRY FRANCONA

(4) JIM FASSEL

(5) - Dalla Mavericks owner Mark Cuban

Box:

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