Posted: Monday, February 14, 2005 12:00 am
CORVALLIS - If sarcastic, wisecracking, sports-related comedy of the absurd is your thing, ESPN Classic has just the show for you: "Cheap Seats, without Ron Parker."
Parker, described in the show's lead-in as "an anchor with attidude," was ostensibly to have been the "Cheap Seats" host until being crushed when a videotape cabinet tipped over and fell on him.
Penciled in at Nos. 2 and 3 on the depth chart behind Parker - the fourth name listed, viewers are shown, was Ryan Leaf - were brothers Randy and Jason Sklar, Parker's tape-library assistants, and together they stepped into their old boss' role on the show that takes "a new look at some old games."
Basically, what the brothers do is watch reruns of various events, many of them of the trash/fringe sport variety - a billfishing tourney staged by Steve Garvey, a celebrity bowling tournament hosted by Bobby Bonilla, and something called "Super Dogs/Super Jocks" are but three examples - while carving up the event and its telecast with acerbic remarks of the type bandied about in, well, the cheap seats.
Perhaps the show has a particular resonance for me, sitting as I do five rows from the top of Gill Coliseum for every Oregon State men's basketball home game. And suffice it to say that if Randy and Jason were to turn up at Gill, they'd have no trouble keeping their schtick going throughout their visit - not because of the Beaver team, which plays expertly at home (witness Sunday's 90-73 thumping of No. 11 Washington) but because of certain aspects of the overall experience.
Entering the coliseum before the UW game, for example, I watched the woman in front of me, accompanied by two young girls, try to get in with just two tickets. She responded to the ticket-taker's request for a third one by identifying herself as the wife of a prominent athletic department employee, whom she mentioned by name, and said her threesome always entered with just two tickets because that was all they had.
The guy at the turnstile ultimately relented and let the trio in, leaving me and the other patrons in the vicinity to wonder a) if she was telling the truth about who she was and b) if she was who she said she was, then why couldn't she have come up with one more pass to the game?
Ticket or no ticket, though, the fellow was right to let them in since it served to make the crowd look more like the sellout that it really should've been with the 11th-ranked team in the country in town. The official attendance, including vocal pockets of Huskies fans, was listed at 9,696, about 700 under capacity.
While smaller than it should've been, the collection of Oregon State fans on hand was enthusiastic enough except for the relentlessly listless herds in either end zone who for years have shown all the emotion of a warehouse full of crash-test dummies.
So unwilling are they to leave their feet or wave their arms that they might as well hold up signs wishing good luck to enemy free-throw shooters.
Also on the subject of spectators, the "Beaver Dam" - the group of OSU students who sit in the lower level opposite the team benches - is sufficiently energetic but largely uncreative, and it's also prone to putting down its own school without even realizing it.
To wit: Late in the game, the Dam began a chant of "Over-Rated" toward the Huskies. That is perhaps the least intelligent chorus in the history of heckling, since basically what it says is, "You must not be as good as everyone thought or we couldn't possibly be beating you."
Bottom line, the view from Gill's cheap seats reveals this: the Beaver coaches and players are holding up their end of the bargain, at least at home, where OSU has lost only to Pac-10 leader Arizona, and now it's time for other people connected with the university to help create a top-flight atmosphere befitting a team striving gamely to be a winner.
-By Steve Lundeberg. He can be reached at steve.lundeberg@lee.net.