Pre Game Show

The Ravens have tapped Baltimore native and veteran local sportscaster Tom Davis to call the TV play-by-play on the three preseason games that are available for local telecast, including tomorrow night's opener.Davis, who is host to the Orioles pre-game show on Home Team Sports and does morning sports updates on WQSR (105.7 FM), will be joined in the booth by analyst Paul Maguire, with former Colts linebacker Stan White doing sideline interviews.The telecast airs live at 7: 30 tomorrow night on Channel 54, with a replay at noon Sunday on Channel 45. It will be produced by HTS.On the radio side, Infinity, the team's carrier, has announced that Steve Davis, Channel 45's weekend sports anchor, will be host of the pre-game and halftime shows, starting tomorrow.

*TC After fighting the NFL pre-game show battle with Fox and ESPN with a hand tied behind its back, NBC joined the club and expanded its "NFL on NBC" to an hour, beginning next season, in an announcement made at the league's meetings in West Palm Beach, Fla., yesterday.In expanding the show from its current 30-minute format, NBC made a number of affiliate-friendly moves that helped sell the move to local stations that might not have been so willing to accommodate the sports division.For instance, NBC has promised to give five minutes of commercial time to local stations in the first half-hour to sell as their own to compensate for the revenue that might be lost by the expansion, which, in some markets, like Baltimore, will cut into lucrative local Sunday news shows.

It could have been worse.The rampant egomania (two Deion Sanders commercials) and self-congratulatory tone (the Diana Ross halftime show) of the Super Bowl could have been flat-out insufferable in the hands of any other network than NBC.And that's not to say that NBC, presented with a whopping television audience, didn't indulge itself more than once.To be sure, virtually every show on the network's prime-time lineup got at least one promo, and what was billed as an update during the pre-game show was not even a cleverly veiled promo for its basketball and tennis coverage.

While nearly everyone else made changes in their NFL coverage for this season, the folks at Fox elected to stand pat on their successful 1994-95 introduction to sports broadcasting.And why not? In its first year, Fox not only brought new sights and sounds to what has been a staid product, but won the ratings battle with its funky-fresh pre-game show over NBC and narrowly lost out on game coverage by four-tenths of a ratings point.In year two, Fox is getting closer to delivering as much steak as sizzle, but the network has distance to travel before it presents a package that the serious football fan can totally embrace.

NBC's NFL coverage always seems to be in a state of flux, with adjustments and fine tunings all over the place. In just the past five years, the network has had three different pre-game show hosts, broken in three new studio analysts and switched its No. 1 booth analyst three times.Those normally would be the signs of a network in panic, yet this year's changes -- adding Joe Montana to the studio and teaming Phil Simms and Paul Maguire together with Dick Enberg -- come after NBC won the regular-season race last season and drew its highest pre-game show rating in five years.

Believe it or not, beyond all the bluster about introducing the nonfootball fan to the biggest game of the year, there really is a credible reason for a two-hour Super Bowl pre-game show, and hype master Brent Musburger has it."There's an economic component here," said Musburger, who will be host of ABC's shindig from Miami on Sunday afternoon (4 p.m., Channel 2). "There are a lot of advertisers who want to be associated with the Super Bowl, but there just aren't that many availabilities during the game, so we have a longer pre-game show."

BRISTOL, Conn. -- Which of the NFL pre-game show casts has been together the longest?Go to the head of the class if you picked the gang at ESPN's "NFL GameDay," the program that coordinating producer Bob Rauscher describes as "the pre-game show without a game."Starting with the nucleus of host Chris Berman and analyst Tom Jackson -- finishing up their eighth season together -- and adding Joe Theismann, Chris Mortensen and newcomer Phil Simms, to go along with a solid core of field reporters and production crew, you get a solid show each week.

Say this about "Fox NFL Sunday," the network's one-hour football pre-game show: It has improved over its eight-week run.Also say this: It still has a way to go.Like the rest of Fox's ballyhooed NFL coverage, the pre-game show premiered with promises from network officials that it would be different from anything that had been seen before.When co-host Terry Bradshaw opened the first show by riding into the Hollywood studio on a horse, the promise of originality had been fulfilled.But change isn't always good, and neither was that first program, which expanded 30 minutes of solid material into 60 minutes of exasperation.

So, that was some thrilling quilting bee on Fox yesterday, eh?Just kidding. In perhaps the most significant single day in sports broadcasting since the premiere of "Monday Night Football," Fox kicked off coverage of the NFL yesterday, and let's just say it's a work in progress.After spending $1.58 billion for four years of NFC telecasts, Fox delivered a lot of sizzle, but not so much steak on opening day.To start, the one-hour, Los Angeles-based pre-game show, "Fox NFL Sunday," was 30 minutes too long, as analysts Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson had lots to say, but little of value.

Outfielder Jeffrey Hammonds will be inserted into the starting lineup tonight, probably in left field, manager Johnny Oates said.Hammonds, who was reactivated Thursday after being on the disabled list since May 10 with a strained right knee, returns to the club after a week of extended spring training in Florida."