Washington's Elite Love Their Super-Size TVs
By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 4, 2007
When Jon Felts e-mailed his Super Bowl party invitations, he made sure to highlight his chief selling point: the electronic specs of four high-definition TVs inside his Northern Virginia townhouse.
"THEATER ROOM: 92-inch Projector Screen broadcasting the game in FULL HD with 5.1 surround sound package," he wrote, then ticked off details for the 26-inch LCD in his kitchen, the 42-inch plasma in his bedroom and the 52-inch rear-projection in his living room -- all in high-def, all in surround sound.
"Never miss a minute when grabbing a drink, a smoke or a phone call," Felts, 26, beckoned. "Speakers in garage and driveway."
He expects about 30 people, including guests driving from Richmond and guys who've reserved sofas to sleep on.
For 41 years, men have gathered for the Super Bowl. Rituals evolved alongside them. The six-foot sub. Shots of booze after every score. Wagers of all stripes. Today those lucky enough will direct their worship to a high-def, enormous TV.
Washington Wizards point guard Gilbert Arenas said he invited the whole basketball team to watch the Super Bowl at his Great Falls home because the players wanted to be around his TVs. Arenas owns a 120-inch high-def projection screen, a second 100-plus-inch screen and six more TVs scattered about. All eight will be showing the game.
"His whole house is awesome," fellow guard DeShawn Stevenson said after Friday's practice.
High-definition elevates sports and becomes another excuse to watch them. On close-ups, golf nuts see not only the dimples of a ball, they see the shadows cast by the dimples. Football fans get beads of sweat, straining muscles. And oversize TVs amp it all up: Players slamming into one another across eight horizontal feet of living room. If there's one widely held fear among football purists, it's that the distractions of Super Bowl parties will obscure their view.
Shopping mall magnate Herb Miller owns a slightly smaller main screen than Arenas, 113 inches, but his is flanked by four 32-inchers. The system came about during Miller's renovation of his 28,000-square-foot Georgetown mansion, when he brought in Tim Rooney, an audio adviser to the stars. Inside Miller's library, Rooney's firm installed a 61-inch high-def plasma. With a tap on a touch-screen monitor, the TV sinks into a hidden opening in Miller's cherry bookshelves
Taking a visitor to a lower level, Miller passed a pool table and exercise room before arriving at the main media center. "This is Tim's pièce de résistance," Miller said.
To the left is the 113-incher and its flanking sets. Perfect, Miller said, for monitoring players on fantasy football teams. These five screens also can disappear. To the right, an alcove stores the home automation command center, a bank of black gadgetry roughly 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide, with little lights and a pullout computer keyboard. It looks like it could power a Rolling Stones concert.
All 11 TVs in the home have been video-calibrated. "We bring a guy down from Boston. He's the best," said Rooney, son of former Pennsylvania congressman Fred B. Rooney.
Consultant Rooney, who on a recent day sported a ponytail, Burberry tie and bright striped socks, holds many of Washington's audiovisual secrets. His firm, All Around Technology, has set up systems for some of Washington's most powerful people. He declined to identify them, lamenting how he could if his client base were in New York or Los Angeles. In Washington, "no one wants to admit they have a nice setup," Rooney said.
A barrage of calls to local heavyweights about screen size yielded a muted response. A White House spokesman declined to discuss the president's TV, citing policy against talking about the residence part of the building. A State Department spokeswoman wouldn't forward a query to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a well-known football fan. "We answer foreign policy questions here," she said. And a representative for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) didn't respond to questions posed by telephone and e-mail about Clinton's TV.
The Pentagon opened up. "We do have televisions down here," said Lt. Col. George Wright, deep inside the U.S. Army Operations Center. Specifically, five screens of up to roughly 60 inches, at least two of which are high-def capable.
About 30 staffers are expected to work today. Would they flip on the game? "It is not unusual on Sundays for at least one of the televisions to have professional football on," Wright said.
How big is the venue?
"Stand by, we're going to count some tiles," he said. Coming back a short time later, he reported: "About 34 by 42 feet."
Former House member Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, and his wife plan to go to the early part of a neighbor's Super Bowl party, then duck home to catch the game. A former Indiana high school and college basketball star, Hamilton is a strong Colts fan. His set is not over the top -- they have a 32-incher -- but it's high-def LCD, and Hamilton says the clarity of the picture, coupled with new overhead stadium cameras, puts you "right there in the huddle."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plans to watch the game on a 32-inch plasma. The Baltimore native will not root for the Indianapolis Colts, a spokesman said, because she has never forgotten the way Colts owner Robert Irsay moved the team from Baltimore in the dead of the night 23 years ago.
If there are spiritual leaders of TV sports viewing in Washington, they are Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin, heard weekdays on SportsTalk 980 AM. Czaban plans to watch the game on his 65-inch high-def television, away from Super Bowl parties that attract once-a-year football fans. "To me, it's unacceptable," he says. "It's too precious to be mingling with amateurs."
Czaban and Pollin keep their salivating fans abreast of technology updates.
"Last year at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas," Pollin said on the air last month, "Samsung unveiled a 102-inch plasma television screen. This year Sharp said, 'Not big enough!' . . . One! Oh! Eight!"
"Woo-hoo!" Czaban squalled.
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.
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