Abc Sports

Just five weeks after they worked the Super Bowl for the network, ABC yesterday dismissed former Maryland quarterback Boomer Esiason as its "Monday Night Football" analyst, as well as longtime producer Ken Wolfe and director Craig Janoff. The network announced that it will bring back one of the founding fathers of "MNF," Don Ohlmeyer, who produced the show during its halcyon days when Frank Gifford, Don Meredith and Howard Cosell worked the booth. " `Monday Night Football' is a part of the fabric of my being," said Ohlmeyer, who headed the entertainment division of NBC for most of the 1990s.

* Richard Abrams, 56, who led the test flight division of Lockheed's top-secret "Skunk Works" as it developed the YF-22 fighter plane, died Thursday of undisclosed causes in a District of Columbia hospital. He joined Lockheed's Advanced Development Co., otherwise known as the "Skunk Works," as a senior engineer in 1980. He was honored in April by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronomy for his work on the YF-22A Advanced Tactical Fighter and the F-117 Stealth Fighter. He also wrote "Corsair at War."

NBC Sports has gained an unlikely but familiar presence for its broadcast of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City: Jim McKay, the Baltimore-based commentator known best for leading a dozen Olympic broadcasts on ABC dating back four decades. McKay, 79, said he's excited at the thought of joining NBC's Bob Costas next year to narrate profiles of Olympic athletes and offer commentary on the day's events. But it will be quite a change to see himself on the Peacock Network, he acknowledged.

Roone Arledge, the ABC executive who did as much to shape the look of American network television as anyone except its founders, died yesterday of complications from cancer. He was 71. Mr. Arledge was pronounced dead at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. A 36-time Emmy winner, Mr. Arledge, who retired in 1998, defined thinking outside the box from the moment he arrived at ABC in 1960. Among the groundbreaking programs he introduced in his career - which included a decade as president of the network's news and sports divisions - were Monday Night Football, Wide World of Sports, Nightline and 20/20.

On the heels of last fall's groundbreaking "A Passion to Play" special, chronicling the progression of women's athletics, ABC Sports makes history again Sunday (1:30 p.m., Channel 2), when it airs the Virginia-North Carolina women's basketball game from Chapel Hill.Though CBS has aired the women's Final Four for 12 years and at least three regular-season games for the past three seasons, Sunday's game marks the first time that a network that doesn't carry the tournament has broadcast a women's game.

Sure, we kid the World Cup. If Germany gets eliminated, we can all say, look, Ma, no Hans. If you're rooting for your favorite African team, you could say the squad is Ghana get it done. And if that South American club is relying on two players, it would be a matter of a pair of guys powering Paraguay. Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week. Try the schnitzel. A week from today, the World Cup begins its monthlong run on ESPN and ABC. The soccer enthusiasts - the ones who TiVo Premier League games and wear Azzurri jerseys to the office - along with much of the world, can hardly wait.

In TV, a smart, bawdy new novel about the highly charged world of network sports, Caesar Fortunato proves impossible to work with, as he's an unfaithful, lying, gambling, drug-addicted hothead. And Fortunato is the good guy. Author Brian Brown based the character not-so-loosely on the late ABC Sports producer Chet Forte. Through his innovations, Forte was a force in shaping how sports were rendered on television - whether an amateur track meet or a Super Bowl. But his type - deeply flawed, passionate and headstrong about holding off ratings-obsessed corporate executives - has all but disappeared, Brown argued.

The last time ABC Sports had possession of the Super Bowl telecast, there were real worries about possible bombs bursting in air, beyond those in the lyrics of "The Star-Spangled Banner."The 1991 game, played in Tampa, Fla., was staged during the Persian Gulf War, and security issues were, to say the least, heightened."I don't think it got to us until we had private meetings with the people in charge of security and they were going over how we should react if we were taken," said Frank Gifford during a recent teleconference with TV sports writers.

It only took a couple of months for Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms to do the kind of mock bickering that old broadcasting couples master after years together."