The Mighty Magnetism of the Big Screen

Then there are the snack-food updates.

"This just in," Czaban reported a couple of weeks ago. "Hanover's, your pretzel people, [now] make a Buffalo wing-coated pretzel."

"Oh my God," a sidekick said in the background.

"Is it blue-cheesy, or just spicy buffalo?" asked another sidekick.

"Nope. Just spicy buffalo," Czaban said.

But for some guys, perhaps the most helpful service the Sports Reporters provide is tips on how to clear "the last great hurdle" of getting a humongous TV into the house: spousal approval. Point out that "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives" are available in high-def, Czaban advises.

Czaban would like to upgrade his TV but said he can't come up with a plausible reason.

"If I threw a golf club through it and said, 'Honey, someone threw a golf club through it,' she would know who did it," he said in an interview.

U.S. Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat and huge Chicago Bears fan, accidentally took a risky path to his spousal okay. He popped into a Circuit City with no plans of going high-def. But he got pulled into the rows of TVs and the rows of men watching them.

"It's a guy thing," Durbin said, trying to explain. "It's a man-love thing. Especially if your wife isn't around, you're sunk. Pretty soon you're forking over a grand."

Durbin returned from the store with a relatively modest high-def flat-panel. He didn't really know what to say to his wife. "Isn't this a great picture?" he offered. "Can I get you something from the kitchen?"

About two years ago, Jim Abdo, the developer who made a name for himself in Washington's Logan Circle area, got his opening while shopping for antiques with his wife at Gore Dean, a Georgetown store. They happened upon a 9 1/2 -foot-tall, 140-year-old French cabinet, the type of piece that typically starts at $10,000 at Gore Dean.

"Jim, this would be perfect for our family room," Abdo recalled his wife, Mai, saying.

Okay, he remembers thinking, I can make a TV happen. He asked a sales clerk for a tape measure. Later he went TV shopping, selecting a 61-inch high-def plasma. He and his wife ended up purchasing the cabinet, which hides the TV behind two doors.

The Abdos generally invite a small crowd over for the game. Last year, then-Mayor Anthony A. Williams and his wife, Diane, came. The Williamses plan to return today. The former mayor compares the image on Abdo's TV with the best seats in a stadium. "It's like you're sitting in one of those owner suites," he says.

One-oh-eight or 61-inch, plasma or LCD, surely nothing would compare to watching the Super Bowl live, as NBC 4 sportscaster George Michael and his "Redskins Report" partner, Sonny Jurgensen, get to do. Right?

Wrong. In the past, to avoid crowded stadium press boxes, they've watched TV inside a trailer in what's known as the Super Bowl "compound," Michael said. They've traditionally watched the game on a 14-inch TV bought for less than $250 and usually rely on rabbit ears, Michael said.

"You know," he remembered thinking, "I wonder if only people knew what kind of life we have watching the Super Bowl."

For years, Kingdon Gould III watched football. A successful developer and descendant of a 19th-century railroad baron, he certainly could afford any set he wanted. About 12 years ago, though, he grew weary of how much TV he was watching. "I never came out of the house on Sunday, and said, 'What a good day, watching football,' " Gould remembers.

So he stuffed the TV in his attic. He found he read more. A few years later, he decided to be done with TV completely.

His house in Howard County was being worked on, so a dumpster was outside. Gould carried the TV to a third-floor window and heaved it into the dumpster.

No one was around. "It was a private moment," Gould said.

He doesn't miss football. He has been reading "Peace Like a River," by Leif Enger, and work by Ted Kooser, the U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006.

Still, he did go watch TV at his father's house last weekend. Roger Federer was playing tennis.