The Worldwide Leader takes it indoors

by Joe Bramhall, December 27th, 2006, 7:00 am

Are you ready for even more football? ESPN certainly hopes so. The top cable sports channel, which this season took over the venerable Monday Night Football franchise, inked a five-year broadcasting deal this month with the Arena Football League that will put at least 26 games on ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC starting next year. As part of the deal, ESPN also gained a minority stake in the indoor football league, a move that suggests the sports network will be pulling out all the stops to promote the AFL.

Over the past five years that the AFL was broadcast on NBC, I doubt I saw much if any screen time devoted to arena football coverage on ESPN, and little mention of it on its top-ranked Web site. But given that the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports has a virtual iron lock on what is and isn’t news in sports entertainment these days, I’m sure we’ll be hearing all about the joys and thrills of indoor football in the months to come.

Looking at the announced TV schedule for 2007, it’s interesting to note that of the 18 regular season games, 11 of those contests involve either the Chicago Rush or the Philadelphia Soul. What’s interesting about that is ESPN personality and former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka bought a stake in the Chicago franchise. Ron Jaworski, another ESPN announcer, is president of the Philadelphia team. I’m guessing there might be some finger wagging by the network’s ombudsman about that.