SPORTSCASTERS BEHAVING BADLY?

By Steve Wulf

If he were just Marvin Philip Aufrichtig, the name he was given 53 years ago, New York City and the sports world would not have been sent reeling last week. But because the divorced father of four charged with assaulting a woman and forcing her into a sex act in a Virginia hotel room last February is NBC's famous Yesss! man, Marv Albert, the city's tabloids and radio shows had a field day. NO! read the front page of the Daily News.

If the longtime voice of ABC's Monday Night Football, Frank Gifford, weren't married to an equally famous and famously sunshiny wife, then his assignation with another woman in a New York City hotel room might not have been that big a deal. But because his wife is talk-show host Kathie Lee Gifford, some juicy supermarket produce called the Globe made a reported $75,000 deal with temptress Suzen Johnson to get the goods on Kathie Lee's sportscaster husband. And it got him bad.

So now Room 1002 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington, Va., and Suite 521 at the Regency Hotel in New York have something in common besides king-size beds and minibars: notoriety for two of the most respected names in sports broadcasting. Last Thursday, at a packed news conference in yet another hotel, the Sheraton New York, Albert said, "I would like to reassert my innocence and reiterate that all the charges against me are false." He then vowed to continue working the N.B.A. play-offs for NBC. In attendance were his four children, one of whom is also a sportscaster (New York Rangers play-by-play man Kenny Albert), as well as Marv's new fiance, independent television producer Heather Faulkner. As for Gifford, an ABC spokesman said, "We're not going to discuss Frank's private life." ABC may, however, want to discuss the 66-year-old former football star's future. A broadcaster's connection to the audience is based on trust, and neither Albert nor Gifford will ever seem the same.

The assault on Albert's reputation dates back to the early-morning hours of Feb. 12. He allegedly invited a 41-year-old hotel receptionist whom he had known for 10 years to his room following his telecast of a New York Knicks-Washington Bullets game. The woman, a divorced mother of two, claims that Albert became enraged when she refused to join in a "three-way" with him and another man and that he threw her on the bed and viciously bit her on the back 10 to 15 times. Then, according to court documents, he did "by force, threat or intimidation engage in an act of sodomy, to wit: fellatio." After the woman sought treatment at a local hospital, the police were notified.

The department moved slowly because "we didn't want another Richard Jewell" and because they wanted to make certain the woman wasn't a "gold digger," said Arlington police spokesman Tom Bell. She may not be that, but she is facing criminal charges for phone calls threatening to kill her former policeman boyfriend, any woman who took her place as his girlfriend, and the boyfriend's dog. While the calls came one month after her alleged encounter with Albert, they don't exactly help her credibility if the sexual-assault charge comes down to he said-she said.

Albert has certainly said a lot since broadcasting his first Knicks game in 1963, when he was just 20 years old. Once strictly a New York sportscaster, Albert became an acquired taste for the nation in the 1980s after NBC placed him front and center for N.F.L., N.B.A. and Olympics telecasts. Over the years, he has been David Letterman's most frequent guest, usually presenting the Albert Achievement Awards. The title of his 1993 autobiography describes his career fairly well: I'd Love to but I Have a Game: Twenty-Seven Years Without a Life.

That life is much more complicated now. The charges against Albert would be shocking enough if they didn't seem so out of character. Bad hair, maybe. But bad behavior is not what friends and colleagues have come to expect from Albert. "I'm in total shock," says Michael Weisman, who as executive producer of NBC Sports gave Albert the national spotlight. "On both a professional and personal level, he was a joy to be around. What they're saying about him just doesn't click." Equally disbelieving are New York fans who grew up listening to "Yesss!" and "Kick save--and a beauty." Says Frank Commrade, a truck driver for a carting company and die-hard Rangers and Knicks fan from Larchmont, N.Y.: "First the Knicks self-destruct, and now this. Say it ain't so, Marv."

Gifford, too, has a reputation as a gentleman. He is so devoted to third wife Kathie Lee and their two children (Cody, 7, and Cassidy, 3) that he regularly charters a plane after Monday-night games so that he can be in their Greenwich, Conn., home when they wake up Tuesday mornings. According to a story in Johnson's own words in this week's Globe, it was on a commercial flight in October 1993 that she and Gifford began a flirtatious relationship that continued over the phone. "Some people would call our talks phone sex," she writes. "But that cheapens what we had." As luck would have it, Johnson lives in the heart of Florida's "Tabloid Valley," between Globe headquarters in Boca Raton and National Enquirer offices in Lantana. After finding out about the flirtation, the Globe established its own relationship with Johnson, a 46-year-old former flight attendant, allegedly paying her $75,000; that's $50,000 more than Sherry Rowlands received from the Star for revealing her relationship with Dick Morris. The Regency suite, in which Johnson arranged to meet Gifford on April 30, had a hidden camera and tape recorder, the better to catch Frank in the act. And they did, although it took two separate encounters--the second, a day later, right after Frank lunched with wife Kathie Lee at the exclusive Le Cirque restaurant. The circus indeed!

The initial story revealing Gifford's infidelity, in the May 20 issue of the Globe, is what editorial director Dan Schwartz calls the "conservative version." But when Kathie Lee lashed out at the tabloid, predicting it would soon publish a story about the alien baby she and her television co-host Regis Philbin would be having, the Globe shifted into a lower gear, publishing pictures of Gifford and Johnson groping each other, along with the steamy dialogue between the two. In the latest issue, Johnson begs Kathie Lee to forgive Frank.

While Globe editor Tony Frost maintains his sheet did nothing wrong--"We will never turn our backs on the truth or our readers"--people at the rival Enquirer are shocked, shocked. "Without the Globe basically pimping this woman," says Steve Coz, editor of the Enquirer, "Frank Gifford would not have been in that hotel room. This is the most heinous act that I've ever seen in journalism. When you set out to entrap Frank Gifford, you are basically setting out to destroy his marriage." Without engaging in a debate about the Globe's ethics or Gifford's morals, one has to feel a certain sympathy for him. He is having a rather rough spring, with both the Globe's sting operation and the news that his daughter Victoria, from his first marriage, is divorcing Michael Kennedy because Kennedy cheated on her with the family baby-sitter. Gifford surely doesn't deserve to be the subject of so many monologue jokes by Jay Leno and Letterman. Frank has to answer to Kathie Lee. Albert, on the other hand, has to answer to the Arlington authorities this week, when he is arraigned on the charges. One of the attorneys defending him will be John Q. Kelly, proving once again that this is a small world. Not only was Kelly the counsel to the Brown family during the civil suit against Albert's former nbc colleague O.J. Simpson, but Kelly is also the brother-in-law of John Andariese, Albert's Knicks broadcast partner. Ironically, the sportscaster scandals were revealed just as the two men were being honored for their careers. Gifford received a lifetime achievement award at the Sports Emmy Awards, and Albert will be given a similar honor at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., later this week. So, there you have it, sports fans: lifetime achievement awards tarnished by the day's headlines.

--With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Arlington and Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by JOHN F. DICKERSON/ARLINGTON AND ANDREA SACHS/NEW YORK