They are calling it the mother of all parties. Dick Clark is the producer. Rod Stewart, Elton John, Barry Manilow and Vanessa Williams will be among the performers. Pele will be a doorman. President Bill Clinton will welcome the international television audience of an estimated 600 million, which is more than twice the 260 million worldwide viewers who watched last year's Super Bowl.
And you thought basketball and football led the world in sports hype. You thought only American sports could turn an announcement into a television event big enough to wipe out an entire Sunday afternoon.Today's World Cup Final Draw will have the world's attention riveted on the Las Vegas Convention Center as officials of FIFA, soccer's governing body, pull 24 pingpong balls out of a bowl.
They would have used Caesars Palace, but it was too small.
Technically, they could have done this in a motel room in Birmingham or Antwerp or Kansas City. They could have drawn up the brackets for the 1994 World Cup - the first to be played in the United States - on a large napkin or the back of a calendar. They could have had a conference call.
But well beyond the tradition of the NCAA's Selection Sunday, of the NBA's Lottery Day, of the NFL's Draft Day, and of Geraldo Rivera's opening of Al Capone's vault, FIFA decided on . . . this.
It will take three hours to draw the 24 balls in front of a select Convention Center crowd of 3,500 VIPs. Maybe 10 minutes for the actual draw, preceded and interrupted by singing, dancing, welcoming and, in the international style, kissing alternate cheeks. Each of the U.S.'s nine World Cup cities (San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Orlando, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Chicago and Boston) will get a moment to introduce themselves. Tom Selleck will present Los Angeles, Lou Gossett, Jr. will present New York, Jim Belushi will present Chicago and Tony Bennett, of course, will present San Francisco.
The Harlem Globetrotters, even though they play a sport where you can use your hands, will make a cameo appearance. So will Beau Bridges and Joanna Kerns and Ben Vereen and Martin Landau.
Sophia Loren, who pulled the pingpong balls out of the bowl at the Final Draw party four years ago when Italy hosted the World Cup, will not be a part of the festivities this time, except as one of the 600 million viewers.
Las Vegas has been packed all week with soccer officials, players, coaches and groupies from around the world. Each of the 24 nations that have qualified for Cup '94 is well represented to make sure nothing unusual is done at the Final Draw, even though no one is sure just how the draw is done exactly. By comparison, the NBA's salary cap is easier to understand. Teams will be weighted according to their previous World Cup success and which of the U.S. venues best suits their nationality. As Las Vegas sports writer Steve Carp wrote, "The draw is tougher to absorb than Mechanics of Viscous Fluids. More complex than Multivariable Calculus."
And he meant the drawing process itself, not the concept that 600 million people will spend three hours watching it all take place.
U.S. World Cup organizers are hopeful that all this hype will convince Americans that they should get excited about the actual Cup itself, which will take place next summer. That they will see all the commotion and just naturally jump in line.
"This is World Cup soccer," said Alan I. Rothenburg, America's World Cup chairman, "the sporting event that can put a war on hiatus, and unite mankind through a universal love of the game. It's the green pitch, the rhythmic roar and chant of the crowd, the waving flags and painted faces, the samba lines and colorful costumes, the national songs. It's the beautiful ball-handling, the effortless play and skillful tactics of the masters of the game . . ."
And that's not to mention the Final Draw.
Dire predictions to the contrary, Americans may indeed take to the world's biggest minor sport when the World Cup arrives in six months. Anything that can take itself seriously enough to rent Las Vegas for a weekend to set up its tournament bracket can't be all bad. Office pools should be just around the corner.