Instead, he steered the conversation toward what he felt was the bigger issue and the reason he had decided to go back to producing football games at age 55. But Ohlmeyer wasn't there to talk about announcers. The two men sat down to breakfast a few days later at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles, where Tagliabue suggested Ohlmeyer consider the veteran ESPN reporters Tom Jackson and Robin Roberts for the job.

He picked up the phone and called Ohlmeyer at his home in Beverly Hills to set up a meeting. But ABC was refusing to confirm or deny the reports. Tagliabue knew Ohlmeyer as the man who had taken NBC's entertainment division from dead last to the top of the TV universe, and he hoped that the Limbaugh reports were either a joke or a marketing ploy. Now, if the newspapers were to be believed, the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh was up for the announcer's job. In March, following the worst season ever for ''Monday Night Football,'' ratings-wise, ABC convinced the programming guru Don Ohlmeyer to come out of retirement and retool the show he produced in its heyday. The continued ratings slump last year only hammered home his point. During those negotiations two years ago, Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports, had angrily ended his network's 33-year relationship with the league, saying that he ''refused to put the livelihood of its employees at risk'' by entering into such an imprudent deal. In the last go-round, ABC, CBS, Fox and ESPN anted up a record $17.6 billion over eight years, which, they quickly discovered, made it impossible for them to make money. Tagliabue had been feeling the heat from the networks that televise the league's games. commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, knew too well, exactly the opposite was true. playoffs in full swing and kickoff still four months away, this kind of publicity would have ordinarily been a testament to the strength and power of the N.F.L. Last spring, newspapers across the country were publishing articles almost daily about ABC's search for a new ''Monday Night Football'' announcer to join the veteran Al Michaels in the broadcast booth.

Hail mary football tactic