Department of English, University of Louisville Phone: (502)852-6770 or (502)852-6801. Fax: (502)852-4182. I think Jim McKay was worst at melodramatizing, sentimentalizing, trivializing sports, in which, as far as I could tell, he had no interest. He was coiner or at least promoter of the offensive nicknames for young female gymnasts, for instance--in some ways the worst stuff surrounded Olga Korbut and later Nadja Comanech (I know this is spelled wrong). She was brilliant but relatively expressionless, so was dubbed "the porcelain doll" as I recall. Re 1972: all through that Olympics, ABC's announcers kept ending every paragraph of copy with "on our primetime weeknight telecasts." After the Israelis were taken prisoner, of course the world was horrified, and the announcers were serious and solemn--& some of them actually did some news reporting, it seems to me. But my recollection (and it's only that) is of McKay seeming particularly aggrieved, as though the whole thing was something done to him personally--until he said, with grief in his voice, "we're just so sorry that this had to happen on one of our primetime weeknight telecasts." It may be that I misremember, or it may be that he was just so used to the phrase it came out w/o thinking (in fact I suspect it did) but it seemed to typify what I had disliked about him for years. bitnet tbbyer01@ulkyvm; internet [log in to unmask] Thomas B. Byers Department of English/University of Louisville Louisville KY 40292