==Scully may have no control over the Curt Smith book coming out next spring, but new Dodgers manager Joe Torre is completely on board with a book on his memoirs, done with Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, that will come out in the spring of 2009 -- giving Torre enough time to update his Yankees' 12-year stint with his time spent in Chavez Ravine. Doubleday will publish the yet-to-be-named book, but would not disclose how much Torre was paid to participate, except to say there were "no incentive clauses in the contract," said Willie Thomas, editor-in-chief of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, in a statement.
A publicity blurb on the book says in Torre's new book, he will explain his "decision to walk away from the job of manager of the Yankees, but only as the endgame in explaining in unprecented detail what history will record as the 'Torre Era'."
Ten years ago, Verducci did a book with Torre for Bantam Books called "Chasing the Dream: My Lifelong Journey to the World Series."

==ESPN NHL analyst Barry Melrose has decided that it was prudent to apologize to the mayor of Newark, N.J., and the fans of the New Jersey Devils for making a joke about the area around the team’s new Prudential Center arena. Melrose, during a video segment posted on ESPN.com last week, called the new arena a beautiful new building but then added: "Don't go outside if you have a wallet or anything else, because the area around the arena is just horrible." That caused Newark mayor Cory A. Booker to request an apology, since, as he said, “All of us make mistakes, but it's a shame when it's at the expense of 300,000 people (the population of Newark).” Said Melrose, the former Kings coach: “I was trying to be funny and I'm sorry it didn't come through that way. No excuse. When I talk I don't want to offend anybody. I love hockey and I want Newark to be a success. I certainly never wanted to hurt the feelings of the people of Newark or the people of New Jersey. There was no malice on my part." Melrose now says he wants to come to Newark to have lunch with Booker and tour the area around the arena.
Just as long as he’s got one hand on his billfold.

==FSN’s newest “In My Own Words” on Dodgers manager Joe Torre, interviewed by Charley Steiner after Monday’s press conference, continues to air on the network today (10:30 p.m., FSN Prime), Saturday (10:30 p.m., FSN West) and Sunday (10 p.m., FSN Prime), as well as a few more times next week.

Which leads into this headline and story from today's Onion Sports:

Joe Torre Signs Classiest Contract In Managerial History

==Steve Lavin, part of the ESPN2broadcast team that'll be covering the first two UCLA games of the season next week, had this prognosis on how far his former team can go in its attempt at making the Final Four for the third consecutive year:
“This year’s Bruins have the experience, skill, quickness, size, strength and depth to do it. They have balance in all aspects - a roster of talented post and perimeter players, a balance of upperclassman and underclassman, a balance of quickness and strength, a balanced offensive attack both inside and outside. Clearly, the challenging and diverse Pac-10 schedule will prepare UCLA for any style of play they will face in their opponents during the NCAA Tournament. If they can avoid injuries to one of their key players and earn another good NCAA Tournament draw, I would not be surprised to see a 12th national championship banner hanging from the rafters of Pauley Pavilion come April.”

==Your weekend football viewing roster:
The NFL:
Sunday:
10 a.m.: Denver at Kansas City, with Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf on Channel 2 (up against CBS' other games in this window: Cleveland at Pittsburgh, Jacksonville at Tennessee and Buffalo at Miami)
10 a.m.: Minnesota at Green Bay with Dick Stockton and Brian Baldinger on Channel 11 (up against Fox's other games in this window: St. Louis at New Orleans, Philadelphia at Washington and Atlanta at Carolina)
1 p.m.: Dallas at New York Giants with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on Channel 11 (up against Detroit at Arizona and Chicago at Oakland on Fox and Cincinnati at Baltimore on CBS)
5:15 p.m.: Indianapolis at San Diego with Al Michaels and John Madden on Channel 4
Monday:
5:30 p.m.: San Francisco at Seattle with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser on ESPN. Drew Carey, the comedian and new host of “The Price Is Right,” is scheduled to join the "MNF" crew as well. Carey, a Galaxy season-ticket holder, is for some reason backing a group trying to get a Major League Soccer franchise in Seattle. And he’s not involved in efforts to get the pro kickballers in his hometown Cleveland?

The local college football (with BCS ranking)
Saturday:
12:30 p.m.: No. 9 Arizona State at UCLA with Dan Fouts, Tim Brant and Todd Harris on Channel 7
5 p.m.: USC at Cal with Terry Gannon, David Norrie and Jeannine Edwards (the same tired threesome from last week's USC-Oregon State telecast) on Channel 7

The rest of college football (with BCS ranking):
Today:
4:30 p.m.: Bowling Green at Eastern Michigan with Dave Ryan and Tom Luginbill on ESPNU
5 p.m.: Rutgers at Army with Sean McDonough and Chris Spielman on ESPN2

Saturday:
7 a.m.: ESPN College GameDay comes from Williamstown, Mass., the site of Division III Amherst College at Williams College in the 122nd meeting between the two. OK, because .... ? Well, it's the show's 150th remote episode. The first one? For those trivia buffs, it was Nov. 13, 1993 when it went to South Bend, Ind., before No. 1 Florida State beat No. 2 Notre Dame ... aw, the good old days of Irish gridiron. ESPN provided this breakdown of GameDay trips: It has originated from games involving 58 different schools; 44 schools have hosted the show, from 50 different sites (adding in neutral site games). Florida remains the team that's had the most appearances either been the home or road team at a GameDay site -- 23 times.

9 a.m.: No. 12 Michigan at Wisconsin with Dave Pasch, Andre Ware and Erin Andrews on ESPN
9 a.m.: Wake Forest at Clemson with Pam Ward and Ray Bentley on ESPN2
9 a.m.: Indiana at Northwestern with Eric Collins on ESPN Classic
9 a.m.: Penn State at Temple with Clay Matvick and Larry Coker on ESPNU
9 a.m.: Michigan State at Purdue with Thom Brennaman, Charles Davis and Charissa Thompson on the Big Ten Network (also at 9 a.m. on BTN: Minnesota at Iowa)
9:30 a.m.: Texas A&M at No. 6 Missouri with Joel Meyers and Dave Lapham on FSN West
9:30 a.m.: Kansas State at Nebraska with Ron Thulin, Kelly Stouffer and Lewis Johnson on Versus
11:30 a.m.: Air Force at Notre Dame with Tom Hammond, Pat Haden and Alex Flanagan on Channel 4
12:30 p.m.: Auburn at No. 10 Georgia with Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson on Channel 2
12:30 p.m.: Illinois at No. 1 Ohio State with Brad Nessler, Bob Griese, Paul Maguire and Bonnie Bernstein on ESPN (also: Florida State at No. 11 Virginia Tech and Texas Tech at No. 14 Texas in pay per view in this window)
12:30 p.m.: No. 13 UConn at Cincinnati with Doug Bell and Charles Arbuckle on ESPNU
12:30 p.m.: Wyoming at Utah with Tom Hart and Trev Alberts on CSTV
3:30 p.m.: Baylor at No. 5 Oklahoma with Bill Land and Gary Reasons on FSN West
4:15 p.m.: Virginia at Miami with Mark Jones and Bob Davie on ESPN2 (Note: The final game played at the Orange Bowl)
4:45 p.m.: No. 15 Florida at South Carolina with Mike Patrick and Todd Blackledge on ESPN
5 p.m.: No. 4 Kansas at Oklahoma State with Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit, and No. 8 Boston College at Maryland with Dave Lamont and Chris Spielman on ABC/ESPN's pay-per-view package, going regionally against the USC-Cal contest shown locally.
7:15 p.m.: Washington at Oregon State with Barry Tompkins, Petros Papadakis and Jim Watson on FSN West
8 p.m.: San Diego State at UNLV with Carter Blackburn and Brian Jones with CSTV
8 p.m.: Fresno State at Hawaii using Fresno State's local coverage, on ESPN2
What isn't available: No. 2 LSU at Louisiana Tech

==That college football is big business is apparently news to viewers of public broadcasting, since PBS has decided to do a four-part series called "The Business of College Football" during its nightly business report frim Monday through Thursday next week (5:30 to 6 p.m. on KCET Channel 28, replayed at 1:30 a.m. each night). Did you know: Ohio State's football program generated $105 million in revenue last season! The series starts with a look at Texas Tech's program, which has gone from an endowment of less than $50 million to now becoming a $700 million program. Jeff Yastine reports.

==CBS is taking the blame/credit for creating a small controversy over how the sound came through on its broadcast of the New England-Indianapolis game Sunday. Conspirary theorists on the Internet claimed that it sounded as if the Colts were piping in additional crowd noise and then awkwardly cutting it during the game at the RCA Dome, and there were several clips of CBS’ broadcast on YouTube.com to back the accusations.
CBS spokesperson LeslieAnne Wade said the suspect audio heard on the telecast was caused by tape feedback in the production truck. A statement from the Colts: "We trust this will put an end to the ridiculous and unfounded accusations that the Colts artificially enhanced crowd noise at the RCA Dome in any way."
Two seasons ago, the Colts also denied speculation on ESPN Radio that it had piped in sound during a Monday night game against Pittsburgh, which the Colts won 26-7.

==Sunday’s New England-Indianapolis NFL game on CBS ended up with a 20.1/36 national rating. The previous best Sunday afternoon regular-season game was 22.2/41 for Dallas-San Francisco in 1996, but CBS says its records of metered markets don’t go past 1987.
KCBS Channel 2 reports that the Southern California household rating for Sunday's Patriots-Colts game was a 17.0, while the average number of people watching locally was 1,384,000. The last time an NFL regular-season game got that high a rating in this market was October 20, 2003 for a Monday night Oakland-Kansas City game on ABC also did a 17.0. The most watched NFL game this season in L.A. before last Sunday was the Chicago-San Diego Sept. 9 opener on Fox (11.7).

==Jim Lampley, Max Kellerman, Emanuel Steward and unofficial judge Harold Lederman will be part of HBO’s telecast of the Sugar Shane Mosley-Miguel Cotto pay-per-view telecast Saturday from New York’s Madison Square Garden (6 p.m.). Suggested retail price: $49.95. HBO also recently announced that Kellerman will expand his broadcast role by resuming the “Boxing After Dark” late-night events starting in January, working with Bob Papa and Lennox Lewis.

==ESPNU – not ESPN nor ESPN2 -- has announced that Steve Physioc, recently replaced by Ted Robinson on the Fox Sports Net Pac-10 college hoop package, will be among its primary broadcasters for the upcoming men’s college basketball season. Physioc, rumored to be replaced by the Angels on FSN and Channel 13 games starting in 2008, joins a motley crew of ESPNU announcers that includes Dave Armstrong, Clay Matvick, Jim Barbar, Quint Kessenich, Anthony Calhoun and Michael Reghi -- otherwise known as the entire group of kids picked last in the fourth-grade nation-ball free-agent draft.

==The Associated Press reports that Saturday in China, tonight's Milwaukee-Houston NBA game has some juice.
Yi Jianlian vs. Yao Ming, playing against each other for the first time, "is the two best basketball players in the country coming to play in the best basketball league in the world,” said Wang Meng, a sports writer who covers the Rockets for Titan Sports, a Beijing-based newspaper, told the AP. “It doesn’t matter who wins. It’s the best thing that can happen in China, because people will be excited either way.”
The game airs in the early morning Saturday on 19 television stations, including CCTV-5, the country’s government-run network. It also will be available on two Webcasts and on video-enabled, wireless phones.
Wang said the game is expected to draw more than 200 million viewers in China. By comparison, last week’s New England-Indianapolis game in the NFL drew an average audience of about 34 million. Last year’s Super Bowl drew an average of 93 million.
They’ll meet in Milwaukee on Feb. 2 and will team up in the Olympics in Beijing.

=For those who are asking: Yup, FSN West has dropped Jungle Jack Haley as its pre- and post-season Lakers analyist / comedian, replacing him with the less loquacious and far duller Norm Nixon, who last had a broadcasting gig around here as a analyst on Clippers radio games. Yes, it does make it tougher to pick among the bottom of the barrell in our annual Best and Worst of Southern California Broadcasters TV personality poll, but Nixon could be a comporable replacement given ample time to converse with some sort of detached expertise about Laker goings-on.

==Sunday’s Chicago Blackhawks’ game against Detroit from the United Center on Comcast SportsNet marks the start of a new policy shift by the team to start showing more home games. Bill Wirtz, the team’s chairman for 41 years until he died in September, was adament about televising home games, believing it hurt game attendance instead of expanding the team’s fan base. He would only allow a few games a year to be televised, only if they were sold out well ahead of time. New chairman Rocky Wirtz, Bill’s son, announced a new seven-game deal Monday with Comcast to start showing games from the United Center. "If this is a success and we're doing well and bringing people out, we would be crazy not to televise more games," Rocky Wirtz said. Games on the local over-the-air network, such as WGN, could also happen for the first time since the 1970s. "The No. 1 criticism we had was, 'Why aren't home games on TV?' It made a lot of sense for us to do it,” Rocky Wirtz told the Chicago Tribune this week.

==The official 2007 World Series DVD is already announced it will be released by MLB Productions and Shout! Factory on Nov. 27, with Boston Red Sox fan Matt Damon doing the narrating, having beaten out Ben Affleck in a "rawks-paypa-sizar" contest.

==ESPN says it has a deal with Microsoft to add full-length games, TV shows and video game programming to Xbox LIVE, the online games and entertainment network featured in Xbox 360. “Establishing this relationship with Microsoft on Xbox 360 provides an innovative way to reach our target demographic through this dynamic next-generation entertainment console,” Matt Murphy, senior vice president, Digital Video Distribution, Disney and ESPN Media Networks, said in a release. “This agreement embodies our mission to deliver the best sports content to fans, and does it through an exciting and robust platform that reaches millions of people.” For video gamers, ESPN content on Xbox LIVE will include the 2006 and 2007 seasons of “Madden Nation,” an ESPN reality series taking fans inside the world of Madden NFL football competitive gaming. More info at http://www.xbox.com/xbox360.

==Because of Cris Collinsworth scheduling conflicts -- and there would seem to be many, considering what he does for NBC and HBO and whomever else asks him to climb up on the John Deere and mow their lawns -- the NFL Network says it will draft Deion Sanders and Marshall Faulk to its broadcast of games Saturday, Dec. 15 (Cincinnati-San Francisco) and Thursday, Dec. 20 (Pittsburgh-St. Louis), with Bryant Gumbel doing the play-by-play. Collinsworth works with Gumbel on six NFL Network game telecasts. A year ago, the NFL Network had Dick Vermeil as Collinsworth’s replacement. Sanders and Faulk ended up filling in for Vermeil at halftime of last year’s Dallas-Atlanta telecast when Vermeil came down with a sore throat. The first NFL Network live game telecast is on Thanksgiving (5:15 p.m., Indianapolis at Atlanta) and concludes with the Saturday, 5:15 p.m. New England-New York Giants game that could cap off the Patriots’ quest for an unbeaten season.

==Tuesday marks the 25th anniversary of the death of boxer Deuk-Koo Kim – the result of collapsing after a knock-out blow by Ray Mancini – and ESPN Classic marks the moment by airing a documentary, “Triumph and Tragedy: The Ray Mancini Story,” at 5 p.m. that day. Mancini fought Kim in a WBA lightweight title bout on Nov. 13, 1982 in Las Vegas. It ended in the 14th round after Kim was knocked out and sent to the hospital, brain dead and on life support, dying four days later. Mancini has not really given an extensive interview about the fight until this documentary, which includes highlights from the 13th and 14th round, replayed for the first time in years. Actor Stacy Keach narrates the piece that includes interviews with family members of Kim's in South Korea as well as the acting ring physician. The marketing promotion that was used for that bout, by the way: “Kill or be killed.” Sunday’s ESPN “Outside the Lines” will have a piece on the fight as well Sunday at 6:30 a.m. (9 a.m. on ESPNEWS).

==The Golf Channel has the second of a two-part "Golf Central" feature on USC sophomore golfer Jamie Lovemark airing today at 6 p.m. The reigning NCAA men's champ who led the U.S. to a victory in the recent Walker Cup is talked about by USC football coach Pete Carroll and Tour pro Phil Michekson in the piece, which includes reporter Steve Burkowski spending time with Lovemark on campus.

==Yes, it seems longer, but last Monday marked only the fifth anniversary for ESPN's “Around the Horn,” where sports columnists from various major newspapers around the country pretend to take a stand on a sports-related issue for the sake of trying to sound clever and out-slime the other sporty combatants. ESPN’s public relations department says the show “continues to post impressive numbers” since its Nov. 4, 2002 debut, with an audience increase of 12 percent this quarter over last year and actually penetrating 811,000 homes. We can't help but doubt those figures.

==And finally:
ESPN The Magazine is using “SportsCenter” anchor/reporter Kenny Mayne as the new “Outtakes” interviewer, starting with the Nov. 7 issue that came out this week. In his first column, Mayne interviews former ESPNer Dan Patrick, who did the “Outtakes” column when it started in 1998. A brief excerpt of how that Q-and-A went:
Mayne: “You know, you rarely had me on your radio show.”
Patrick: “ I couldn’t compete with your humor. It’s like Leno never having comedians who are better than him. It was comedy envy on my part; that’s why I couldn’t have you on.”
Mayne: “ As I understand it, I’m supposed to ask popular-culture questions now.”
Patrick: “ It’s called pop culture, Kenny. Man, they’ve got their work cut out with you.”
Mayne: “Finally—how much did you get paid for this, so I know I’m not getting cheated?”
Patrick: “ They paid me minimum wage, hourly, and I got subscriptions to ESPN The Magazine for all my friends. So, four—well, three—people got subscriptions.”