The "Big Daddy."

The business of sports television boomed during the 1970s. At the beginning of the decade ABC, CBS, and NBC televised a combined 787 hours of sports yearly. By 1979 that figure had increased by 72 percent, as sports telecasting hours totaled 1,356. In the 1950s ABC had ranked a weak third among the three major televison networks; in the 1970s ABC achieved dominance that was largely due to the phenomenal viewer numbers generated by the network's glitzy sports coverage. The New York Times called television in the 1970s the "big daddy" of sports. Certainly during the decade big-daddy television paid out billions to professional and college sports in order to acquire broadcasting rights — and certainly made much more in return. That professional and big-time college athletics partly owed their continued survival to television had become clear. Yet it had also become clear by the...