Ebersol

Westminster football coach Tim Ebersole is stepping down after two seasons to take a position as an assistant at his alma mater, Shippensburg (Pa.) University.Ebersole, who also teaches business math at Westminster, went 7-13 in his two years as Owls coach, including a 5-5 season in 1994. He will be leaving Westminster on Feb. 1."Of the five programs I've been involved in, this is the toughest to leave," he said. "I really developed a close relationship with the kids and the coaching staff, and the administration has been so supportive to our program."

If there is one television sportscaster to whom the adjective “legendary” can honestly be applied, it is Al Michaels, play-by-play announcer of NBC's “Sunday Night Football.” From almost two decades in the booth at ABC's “Monday night Football,” to his “Do you believe in miracles?” call of the U.S. victory over the Russian hockey team at 1980 Olympics, Michaels' resume and the history of the biggest moments of TV sports are practically one and the same. Michaels and his colleagues on NBC Sunday Night Football will be in Baltimore when the Ravens meet the New England Patriots.

Wherever Westminster girls basketball coach Dick Ebersole goes during practice, a yellow sheet of paper follows. On that piece of paper is the types of drills he plans to run his squad through. And beside each notation is the starting and ending times for each drill. For Ebersole, who doesn't shy away from the "basketball junkie" label, that yellow sheet of paper is a blueprint for success. "I'm a stickler for perfection and this is my classroom," he says, referring to the gymnasium.

When Westminster's Dick Ebersole picked up career win No. 200 last Thursday, the coincidence was not lost on the 15th-year coach. The 90-34 victory in the first round of the North Carroll Holiday Tournament came against Francis Scott Key - the team he broke in with from 1977-79. What's more, among the crowd that day were Kim Duppins-Stanton, a dominant center on those teams, and Kim Jenkins, a former Eagles point guard whose daughter, Erin, now plays for Key. "I thought, `How ironic, especially to have two of my really stellar players there at that game,' " said Ebersole (200-128)

Westminster forward/center Emily Bollinger stood near her team's bench and tried to explain how it fell apart in the fourth quarter last night at South Carroll. The Owls couldn't find good shots, kept making turnovers and saw the game fall away from them. "It was a lot to deal with [today]," Bollinger said quietly. This was a long day for the Westminster girls. It began with coach Dick Ebersole's surprise resignation, and a few hours later, the Owls had to play South Carroll. Westminster hung in for a while but ran out of gas in the fourth quarter as the Cavaliers pulled away for a 57-47 victory in a Carroll County game.

Yesterday was "Phil Simms Day" on the television sports circuit: As he was getting a big-time assignment with NBC, his old job as studio analyst at ESPN was being filled by former Green Bay Packers receiver Sterling Sharpe.Simms, the former New York Giants quarterback who left ESPN in a messy feud last spring, hit the jackpot yesterday, being named to NBC's re-formulated No. 1 team, alongside analyst Paul Maguire and longtime play-by-play man Dick Enberg.The three will do a practice game in Cleveland on Aug. 6, then debut Aug. 13 for a Green Bay-at-Pittsburgh exhibition.

Marv Albert, who was banished from broadcast sports television nearly two years ago after his conviction on assault charges, will return to NBC Sports and the NBA. The network announced yesterday that Albert, a 20-year NBC veteran, will return to call NBA games next season, as well as boxing in the Summer Olympics next year and men's hockey during the 2002 Winter Olympics. For Albert, who had been wooed by Fox to do NFL games, the chance to return to the sport he has been most closely associated with, basketball, and the network he has been identified with, NBC, were too strong to pass up. "I love the NFL, but, to me, the NBA is everything," Albert said in a national conference call.

COPENHAGEN - - That Rio won the 2016 Summer Games is easily understandable. The International Olympic Committee fancies itself a force in global affairs. As in the case of breaking Olympic ground by giving the 2008 Olympics to China, the world's most populous country, Friday's vote was a chance for the IOC to say that by giving the first Olympics to South America, it will have aided the development of Brazil, the most populous country on the continent. That Chicago was eliminated in the first round, as shocking as it seemed, also was understandable, given the IOC's Byzantine internal politics, its fractious relationship with the country whose companies have been its cash cow and the way the host-city election system is structured.

Now, CBS knows what it's like to be Baltimore.Yesterday, the network that ushered in the big-bucks age of televised football with the 1958 Baltimore Colts-New York Giants title game was cast aside by the National Football League.The NFL awarded NBC the final portion of its four-year broadcast package -- rights to the American Football Conference games -- capping a week of frantic bargaining that saw the upstart Fox television network shake up the world of televised sports.Call it Married to the NFL, for about $4.3 billion.

Unlike four years ago in Atlanta, when NBC's word of the day to describe its Olympics coverage was "plausibly live," the phrase "the complete Olympics" will govern the proceedings from Sydney, Australia. That term not only describes a slick marketing strategy, but also reflects NBC's rather broad multi-media coverage plan, spread out among three different delivery forms -- the over-the-air network, two cable channels and a World Wide Web site. At the heart of the 441 1/2 hours of television coverage is the decision to air virtually all of it on tape.