'83 Chronology-Power Plays

Event Date: february 11th, 1983

Event Description: USFL Radio Coverage

Source: New York Times/UPI

The United States Football League, which has television contracts with ESPN and ABC, also will have national radio coverage on the ABC radio network.

ESPN's play-by-play announcers will be Jim Simpson and Tom Kelly and the color commentary will be done by Paul Maguire and Don Heinrich. The radio team will be Fred Manfra and Dan Lovett.

Simpson and Maguire will do the Monday night games and Kelly and Heinrich the Saturday night games. The ABC radio network will carry two games a week.

Simpson was a broadcaster in the American Football League and Maguire was a player. Kelly is a veteran West Coast play-by-play man and Heinrich a former NFL quarterback with the New York Giants.

ESPN's 34-game schedule begins on Monday, March 7, with the former O-State coach Jim Stanley taking his Michigan Panthers to Birmingham to face the Stallions. ABC, which will televise the playoffs on July 9-10 and championship game on July 17, will carry Sunday afternoon telecasts throughout the season. Keith Jackson will do ABC's play-by-play and Lynn Swann will do the color. Unlike the NFL, the USFL will allow microphones on the sidelines. Tim Brant, a Washington, D.C., sportscaster, will do ABC's sidelines work.

In other USFL news;

The United States Football League hasn't played its first game yet, but it has already produced a hot rivalry: between competing unions. Ron Baron, a New York lawyer who heads a new group called the United States Football League Players Association, said his representatives had visited seven training camps and come away with authorization cards representing 30 percent of the players on five of the teams.

''The overwhelming majority,'' he said, ''want nothing to do,'' with the National Football League Players Association and its president, Ed Garvey. That's not the way Garvey sees it. ''They have not had too much success,'' he said, ''We've had about 12 players call us and say, 'Can you help? We don't want to end up with this outfit."

Stories-(NYT-UPI)