Really obscure

While I can't claim to be the greatest expert on golden oldie game shows, I like to think that I've at least heard of most of 'em.

So today I got a mild surprise when I ran across a reference on one of the oldies boards to Grandstand, a super-obscure sports trivia show from 1988-89. I had absolutely no clue about this long-buried effort. But wouldn't you know, there's a big swath of the show's episodes on YouTube. The bottomless video site never forgets anything.

I watched one of the episodes and, somewhat surprisingly, the show wasn't all that bad. Three jocks - Franco Harris, Jay Johnstone and Bryan Trottier on the ep I saw - teamed with civvie partners in an acutely detailed test of sports minutia. (Odd note: Jay Johnstone also showed up in The Naked Gun, one of my all-time favorite comedy flicks.)

The pace was brisk enough, and host Curt Chaplin did a decent job of keeping the format in gear. Chaplin later turned up as the court reporter on People's Court, though even his own IMDb page omits the obliterated Grandstand. A model named Deborah Johnson provided some eye candy. Her best moment on the episode was when she modeled a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap. Ancient history, folks.

Grandstand doesn't even have a Wikipedia article, though U.S. Game Shows Wiki provides a reasonably detailed entry. The show itself could be a trivia question nowadays, except nobody would guess it. Sports have always been tricky for game shows, because the genre's usual old-skewing, female-skewing audience doesn't tend to be all that interested in the subject.

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: