Sport on TV: Overweight, over-the-top and over here

CHANNEL 4 started broadcasting American football 11 years ago, putting out a round- up programme at 6pm on a Sunday. Clearly, some sharp Channel 4 executive had looked at the success of Harry Secombe's Highway, over on ITV, and shrewdly worked out that there was a market for early Sunday evening programmes in which large, padded men were buffeted by fluctuating weather conditions.

Many of us had never seen anything like it. Imagine those first audiences, stacked with puzzled Brits trying to work out how a player could be sacked and yet remain on the pitch; and still more puzzled viewers who had got the wrong channel and were asking themselves, 'Who are all those people mobbing Harry Secombe?'

The original programmes brought in action which was already a week old, but a million tuned in straight away. In 1985- 86, the viewing figure rose to 3 million. And that's without factoring in the trippers who tuned in for the Super Bowl at the season's end.

Since then, the fans have fallen away slightly. For the 1990-91 season, the programme moved to a glamorous, mid- evening Sunday slot, enabling live coverage from the US. But that didn't really take off, and this season we're being offered the sensible compromise - The American Football Big Match, a Monday-night slot featuring the best game from Sunday. Assuming that few people are dotty enough to watch both the original broadcast and the Saturday repeat, televised American football currently attracts a hardcore following just under the 2 million mark.

That's chicken-feed, of course, in television terms. It's hard to know precisely what it says about our nation that, given the choice between watching some of the finest athletes America can breed and looking on while berks in rubberised swimwear bop each other with plastic truncheons, an overwhelming majority of us opt for Gladiators. The time for American football to take off in a big way here has passed. That notion now seems very Eighties - something born in the period of opulence when, like softball, NFL action proved popular with the kind of stockbrokers who ladded about in wine bars after work, drinking champagne out of each other's shoes. In the end, there is something about another nation's national sport which doesn't translate.

Yet Channel 4, bless them, persist. (And the sooner they have the nerve to jump in on baseball and basketball and thus become a surrogate American sports channel, the better.) The pictures are sponsored by Budweiser, whose slogan is 'Proud to be your Bud'. Given the ratings, you would hardly blame Channel 4 if they hung out their own modified version - 'Desperate to be your friend.' In fact, they deserve credit for not being panicked into over-sell. The tone of this season's coverage is earnest, committed to the game, big on statistics and tactics, though without being tediously furrow- browed.

This is no small achievement, given a sport which is basically one or two moments of religious transcendence supplemented by a torrent of maths. From the basic yardage and passing figures, out to the more eclectic 'average weight of line' comparisons and 'turnover' ratios, we are, let's face it, in train-spotter heaven.

In the early years, Channel 4 tried to lighten the load by commissioning, for the studio sections, the comedy duo the Vicious Boys. The funny thing about the Vicious Boys was, they were staggeringly unfunny, and there was widespread rejoicing when they were sacked (English meaning).

Mick Luckhurst lasted longer as presenter and was clearly a pleasant chap, but perhaps not dynamic enough to prevent the wavering viewer from making a very simple five- yard rush to the kitchen for a cheese sandwich. Now we get Gary Imlach, a Brit in a studio in Atlanta, in conversation with Bob Golic, an American in a studio in LA.

Sadly, because of the exorbitant costs involved in providing the satellite hook-up, there is no money left in the programme's kitty to buy either of them a desk. But both cope valiantly with what must be the television presenter's ultimate gymnastic challenge - the stand and deliver position.

The game images are lifted wholesale from the US and thus come with a refreshingly nonsense-free commentary. The downside is that we see, rather too frequently, the tactics board gimmick, in which computerised chalk lines appear over a frozen image to explain all movements. Eleven years in, and no one of British origins has yet made sense of one of these. Match of the Day has occasionally used the same technology during post-game analyses, where the marks function, in effect, as sub-titles for the hard of Hansen. In both cases, the effect is utterly baffling.

Still, this week, Joe Montana stormed back from injury to help the Kansas City Chiefs see off the Buffalo Bulls. The commentator Mike Ditka's qualified enthusiasm had a poignant ring: 'Right-at-ya football] Ya gotta love watchin' that stuff. I do, anyways.'