CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz is a man living out his dream.
The former KSL sports anchor will be the prime-time host of CBS's coverage of the 1998 Winter Olympic Games from Nagano, Japan."For our industry, it's the most rewarding thing you can be part of," said Nantz, who was a daytime host for CBS in both 1992 and 1994. "If you are a football player the dream is to one day be in a Super Bowl. A basketball player, you want to make it to the Final Four and the NBA Finals. And, certainly, in sports broadcasting the ultimate is to one day be there to broadcast the Olympics."
There is one thing he would like better than doing the 1998 Games from Nagano - doing the 1998 Games from Salt Lake City.
"Salt Lake missed out by just one vote (in the IOC polling)," he said wistfully. "I'd love to do the Games from Salt Lake. I treasured my time there and I'd love to share Utah with the rest of the world."
Unfortunately for Nantz (and for viewers), NBC has the rights to the 2002 Salt Lake Games, so he won't be involved.
"I wish it weren't that way," Nantz said.
LOWER RATINGS: Going into the 1998 Nagano Games, CBS is already cautioning critics not to expect to see ratings equal those of the 1994 Lillehammer Games.
How could they? The 1994 numbers were pumped up to incredible levels by all the interest in the Nancy Kerrigan-Tanya Harding figure skating soap opera. What could possibly match that?
"Maybe getting Tiger Woods to skate in the men's competition would do it," said Rick Gentile, CBS's senior vice president for Olympics.
Maybe.
PROBABLY NOT: There's nothing the folks at CBS Sports would like more than to grab back a piece of the NFL rights. But they're not expecting that to happen.
"We are still a longshot to get a piece of the NFL," said CBS Sports President Sean McManus. "We are not, certainly, going to bank the future of CBS or CBS Sports on getting a piece of pro football. If we do, it'll be a huge benefit. But we're certainly not going to go out of business without it."
The way the "negotiations" work is that the NFL presents each of its TV rights holders - Fox, NBC, ABC, ESPN and TNT - with a figure that those entities can either accept or reject to retain their rights. If they say no, then the league can put the package out for bid.
"It's difficult to imagine that there's a number out there that CBS would say yes to to that somebody else would say no to," McManus said. "And that scenario has to happen for us to get to the NFL.
"I think we're going to be aggressive and I think our numbers are going to be competitive, but I don't think they're going to be so overly competitive that we're going to blow someone else out."
But don't be surprised if CBS doesn't grab some of the other sports franchises out there in the coming months.
"Any other upcoming negotiations, whether it be the NBA, Indy 500, World Figure Skating Championships, major-league baseball - we'll be competitive," McManus said. "We have a play to acquire some of those events. We won't acquire them all, but I guarantee we'll acquire some of them."