Fox show hurt Hamilton

The folks at NBC sports are accustomed to patting themselves on the back when it comes to their Olympics coverage. A lot of it is well deserved; a lot of it is unrelenting hyperbole.

Executive producer David Neal — who has learned the art of self-promotion from the master, NBC Sports and Olympics chairman Dick Ebersol — gushed like Old Faithful during the TV critics press tour in Pasadena, Calif., when he described his team of skating announcers and analysts.

"We've got the '27 Yankees or the '72 Dolphins, whatever accolade you choose to use to describe them," Neal told TV critics before the Torino Games began. "We've got the deepest, most incredibly talented group that you'll ever see concentrated on one Olympic venue — Dick Button, Scottie Hamilton, Sandra Bezic, Tracy Wilson, along with Tom Hammond, Andrea Joyce and Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, the very famous Canadian pair from Salt Lake City four years ago."

It's hard to argue with him in terms of the skill level, what with all those Olympic medal winners. Although some of them — most notably Sale and Pelletier — have yet to prove themselves as sportscasters.

The biggest problem, however, may be that these people aren't all under exclusive contract to NBC. Which allows them to go out and work on other projects.

Including Fox's "Skating with Celebrities," which has made the once-reliable Hamilton look downright foolish.

Hamilton, the popular 1984 gold medalist who has been an analyst at four previous Olympics (Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano for CBS and Salt Lake for NBC). And he's always been a little excitable, but, hey, he is really into figure skating, and it is the Olympics.

But he's brought the same level of enthusiasm to the cheesy "Skating with Celebrities," and it's downright ridiculous. Yelling himself hoarse while he exhorts viewers to appreciate the skating skills of Dave Coulier, Deborah Gibson, Kristy Swanson, Jillian Barberie, Todd Bridges and the others is just embarrassing. For him, that is.

Even those of us who don't know a thing about figure skating can tell that Fox's dopey show with D-list celebrities attempting to perform on ice isn't exactly the Olympics. And to see him on that show, it looks like Hamilton can't tell the difference.

I fear he's created a situation like the one encountered by Leslie Nielsen or Ted Knight. After we saw those actors in tour de force comedic roles (Nielsen as detective Frank Drebin in "Naked Gun" and Knight as anchorman Ted Baxter in "Mary Tyler Moore," it was hard to see them in serious roles.

At the very least, Hamilton needs better career advice.