Politics + Monday Night Football =

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2008-10-30-mccain-obama-mnf_N.htm?csp=34

Chris Berman will tape interviews with each candidate earlier in the day.

"I guess it would be the last time they'll be able to talk to anybody (on TV), except maybe in Hawaii," Berman says.

Berman says he's not sure what he will ask the candidates about ? "there might be something that happens over the weekend that could be timely" ? but suggests the segment could "somehow be a cross between 60 Minutes and the fastest three minutes on television."

MNF is sometimes the most-watched TV program Monday nights, and is usually the night's most-watched show among male viewers. Monday's game probably will draw significant viewership in two hotly contested states given the teams playing: the Washington Redskins, highly popular in Northern Virginia, and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

ESPN had lobbied the NFL to get a game in the nation's capital on the night before Election Day. And it plans to alter its onscreen news graphics on all ESPN TV channels as results roll in Tuesday night: It will have news alerts when ABC News projects winners in given states ? as well as when the overall winner is projected.

'GameDay' flag relay worth a salute

Tom Pounds proves that just one person ? even with no connection to TV sports ? can change what America sees each week.

If he's a true flag-waver.

Not that Pounds, an electrical engineer in Albuquerque, began with any grandiose plan. Having graduated from Washington State in 1981, he was struck by a suggestion in 2003 on the school's cougfan.com sports site from a WSU alum living in Austin. That alum had seen somebody unfurl the WSU flag at an ESPN CollegeGameDay show at Ohio State and wondered: Why not have somebody wave the WSU school flag in the background during a GameDay show in Austin for a Kansas State-Texas football game?

Of course. All Pounds had to do was stay up past midnight with his mom to make a flag, start at dawn to drive 800 miles to Austin and end up getting "sworn at" by unwelcoming fans at the GameDay set who failed to grasp the idea's inherent nobility. Plus, the alum in Austin couldn't make it. (Pounds says he never met him ? "I hope to someday" ? and doesn't even know the identity of the man who first waved the flag at Ohio State ? "maybe this article will help me find him.")

The story could have furled there. But then Pounds heard from a seminary student in Minneapolis ? not an alum, but a WSU fan ? who'd seen the flag and offered to drive it to a GameDay in Madison, Wis. The relay went on: Pound, having assembled an online network of 111 flag-bearing contacts, says the flag was allowed to flutter for ESPN cameras at 70 consecutive GameDays? and Pounds himself, for the sixth time, will wave the flag for the show when it airs before the Texas-Texas Tech game in Lubbock on Saturday.

The flag relay, he says, inspired a non-profit corporation ? the "Ol' Crimson Booster Club" ? that's raised $10,000 to cover flag-wavers' expenses. One flag used is displayed at an alumni center at WSU. Pounds says the flag-waving provoked fisticuffs in Gainesville, Fla. and Eugene, Ore. ? where it's pole was broken ? but now usually draws "respect from crowds."

But this saga of rugged individualism doesn't have a happy ending ? yet. GameDay, which goes to sites of marquee game, hasn't gone to WSU's campus in Pullman.

SlamBall bounces onto network TV

Even by the standards of made-for-TV sports, SlamBall is over-the-top. And Sunday, this sort of basketball/football with trampolines and body blows makes its broadcast network debut on CBS (5 p.m. ET).

Mason Gordon got the idea for SlamBall in 2000, when he was interning for a Los Angeles movie and TV production firm and figured he'd end up going to law school. But he also mused about how basketball and football could somehow be combined.

Eventually, he says, he had a eureka moment: "I got the missing ingredient ? the video game aesthetic. Then it became a fire in my brain."

The result was four-on-four basketball, albeit with players wearing shoulder pads and tackling each other on a padded floor. Plus, there are trampolines around the baskets, which sometimes allow players to get 17 feet above ground. Which can really compensate for dreary calf exercises.

The rules are pretty simple. Dunks and long-range shots count for three points. You can't nail players taking off to land on trampolines. And you can get called for football-style clipping.

Sunday's taped title game ? the eight-team league's title games aired on Versus ? pits the Rumble against the Slashers. "We just have team names," Gordon says. "We want to put them in cities soon."

Gordon says the league's rosters include players who played basketball at schools such as Kansas, Southern California and Georgia Tech. Sunday's show, directed by moviemaker Mike Tollin (Varsity Blues, Coach Carter), will have some big names, such as Ken Carter, now a motivational speaker, whose career was the basis of Coach Carter. He coaches the Rumble. Other SlamBall team coaches include New Jersey Net Kenny Anderson, ex-NBA player John Starks and ex-NFL player Raghib "Rocket" Ismail.

Gordon says SlamBall is always ready for new players: "We're looking for good athletes who want to fly."

Can you hear me now? Yes

As electronic eavesdropping seeps through sports, players, coaches and officials who've worn TV mikes occasionally chafe at their words going straight to our ears. But one sport has long let its free speech become fair game ? NASCAR.

But then, NASCAR doesn't have a choice. Fans began showing up with scanners to listen in on drivers and their crews in the 1980s. "NASCAR has always been supportive," says ABC/ESPN producer Neil Goldberg, who first worked race coverage in 1982. "But the radio waves really are open to the public. And it's every (race) team's right to try to fool everybody by changing their frequencies."

But Goldberg says ABC/ESPN, airing this weekend's Dickies 500, does "sanitize" profanity by using a 1.5-second delay ? "just like you wouldn't get to hear what a quarterback says the sixth time he's sacked."

Individual drivers are miked to be on-air reporters during caution periods, and last season ABC/ESPN began archiving every second of driver-crew audio so any of it could be retrieved during races.

Occasionally, viewers hear testy exchanges. Or comedy, like when Tony Stewart last year talked about a race leader he was about to pass by saying, "Hear kitty, kitty, kitty ? come get you some of this."

And TV crews, says Goldberg, can sympathize with any drivers who feel they have always have to watch what they say: "Fans' scanners listen in to our production truck ? we've become a show within a show."