Former Lakers coach Phil Jackson is into LLWS, Brent Musburger says

Brent Musburger isn't trying to hide his affection for the Billings, Mont., Little League team that will play Ocean View of Huntington Beach in Saturday's Little League World Series U.S. division championship game.

Musburger grew up in Billings and his father founded the Little League program there.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this to be happening," Musburger said Friday. Musburger is on the ESPN/ABC broadcast team that will call Saturday's U.S. title game and the International division championship game between Mexico and Japan, as well as Sunday's championship.

Musburger said the entire state of Montana is buzzing about the state's first representative in the LLWS. He said his brother, Todd, even got a text message from former Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who has a home in Montana. "He texted my brother during the game when Montana beat Ocean View," Musburger said.

Musburger said his father coached the first Montana team that won a state championship. "They went to Richland, Washington, for the regionals," Musburger said, "and lost to a team from Santa Monica. That was the first of 21 times that Montana was knocked out of regional play."

When he's on television Saturday, he said, "I'm not going to hide from the fact I'm from Billings. I'm amazed at what's happening but I don't have a stake in the outcome. Whatever happens happens and now it's just frosting on the cake.

"I think California should be favored. They're going to come back with that pitcher [Nick] Pratto who dominated Montana until he left the game. The Montana team goes about its business and if you make a mistake, Montana takes advantage. I think California will press hard and try to score early because as long as you let an underdog stay close, in any sport, the better off it is for the underdog."

-- Diane Pucin

 

 

 

Little League World Series game did big ratings in Los Angeles

The Little League World Series game Wednesday night between Ocean View of Huntington Beach, the team representing the West, and the Northwest team from Billings, Mont., making the state's first-ever LLWS appearance, was the highest-rated LLWS game on ESPN ever in the Los Angeles market.

Ocean View lost, 1-0, on a Montana walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. The game did a 2.6 rating in Los Angeles. The previous highest-rated game in the market was Chula Vista against Warner Robins, Ga., in 2009. That game did a 2.2 rating. The records have been kept since 2001.

Thursday at 5 p.m. PDT, Ocean View will play Clinton County, Pa., the Mid-Atlantic team, in an elimination game televised on ESPN2.

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Mexico wins again in extra innings

Huntington Beach Little Leaguers lose, 1-0

-- Diane Pucin in South Williamsport, Pa.

 Photo: Huntington Beach first baseman Nick Pratto, left, dives to first base as teammate Christian Catano looks on. Credit: Tim Shaffer / Reuters.

USC football: Matt Barkley, Matt Leinart, Tim Tebow talk quarterback sneak

USC pulled off perhaps the most famous quarterback sneak in college football history when Reggie Bush assisted Matt Leinart into the end zone with the so-called "Bush Push" at Notre Dame in 2005.

Leinart, current Trojans quarterback Matt Barkley and Tim Tebow are among the voices in a story about the art of the quarterback sneak play in ESPN The Magazine.

Some excerpts from the conversation-style story:

"I just called "Kill!" in the huddle and everyone knew what we had to do."

-- Tim Tebow, Denver Broncos quarterback

"It's not just a meathead play. There is an art to it. You have to know what the defense is going to do before the ball is snapped, know certain guys will slant a certain way when we're in an empty set or that a team doesn't load the box in the red zone."

-- Matt Barkley, USC quarterback

"I think I had six rushing touchdowns my senior year at USC and three were QB sneaks from the 1-yard line. I stole a lot of TDs."

-- Matt Leinart, Houston Texans quarterback

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-- Gary Klein

Photo: USC quarterback Matt Barkley. Credit: Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times

Parcells Returns to ESPN

Bill Parcells was hired by ESPN as an N.F.L. studio analyst on Wednesday. Again.

Parcells’s roster of coaching and TV jobs is nearly as long as the list of game shows hosted by Wink Martindale. The ex-Giants, ex-Patriots, ex-Jets, ex-Cowboys coach and former executive vice president of the Dolphins has slotted network jobs into his coaching hiatuses since leaving the Giants in 1991.

In that year, he held two jobs. He worked on NBC’s studio show, “The N.F.L. Live,” and co-hosted a weekly program with Mike Francesa on the MSG Network, which was canceled after that season.

Late that season, Parcells backed out of an offer to coach Tampa Bay, then snubbed the Packers.

In 1992, NBC shifted him to game analysis with Marv Albert. That soon ended.

From 1993 to 2000, he was too occupied coaching the Patriots and the Jets (where he spent his final year as general manager) to sign TV deals. But in 2001 he was a guest studio analyst for ESPN, which led to a long-term contract with ESPN in 2002.

“This is the end of it,” Parcells declared of his coaching desires at the time. No one believed him, and a late-season report by CBS (where Parcells has never worked) of a meeting with the Cowboys owner Jerry Jones turned into a four-season interruption in his TV career.

In 2007, freed of coaching, he returned to ESPN. That lasted a season before he left to run the Dolphins’ football operations, a job that essentially ended last October. Now, he’s back at ESPN.

ESPN is now home to three former Jets coaches: Parcells, Herman Edwards and Eric Mangini, who was hired last week. Parcells the studio analyst has never been as interesting or quotable as Parcells the coach. But he had the type of credentials (a 172-130 record and two Super Bowls) that ESPN loves. Mangini’s 33-47 record, combined with his blandness, inaccessibility and secrecy as a coach, do not suggest TV greatness.

ESPN’s publicity department created a selective biography for Mangini. In a see-no-failures news release announcing his hiring, it noted that in his first season with the Jets “he led them to a 10-6 record and a playoff berth after the team finished 4-12 the previous year.” But it skipped the 4-12 record he led the Jets to in 2007 or the twin 5-11 records he led the Cleveland Browns to in his two seasons there.