FOR ALL the scandal and false pretenses that are the Olympics, its Opening Ceremonies are still pretty darned neat.

In fact, given that all 441 ½ hours of NBC’s, CNBC’s and MSNBC’s coverage will be one half-day or more delayed tape, the Opening Ceremonies are the last Olympic event that U.S. audiences can expect to watch without already knowing the results. “I now declare the XXVII Olympiad opened … and closed!”

But that doesn’t mean that ratings-driven, everything-for-a- buck American TV can’t apply its usual standards to the Opening Ceremonies in order to diminish it as an attraction.

By the time that NBC, Friday, ran its tape of Australian Cathy Freeman lighting the Olympic cauldron, it was nearly midnight, Eastern Time. Therefore, the falsest pretense of all was that this ceremony was designed to be enjoyed by viewers with a strong sense of sport, love, dignity, family, respect and all other forms of altruistic values that are supposed to be commonly found around the house and at the Olympics.

By 11:45, a big part of America was either fighting sleep or fast asleep. NBC might have chosen to begin Friday’s tape-rolling an hour earlier and given everyone in this country, especially kids, a fair shot at the Opening Ceremonies, but then NBC would’ve chosen to apply one of those lofty Olympic ideals to its plan.

Instead, NBC chose to apply a commercial ideal – maximum coast-to-coast primetime exposure – to its coverage.

I don’t know, but if I have a multi-Olympic, multi-billion-dollar deal to present the Olympics, a recurring 16-day event, I especially want to capture the attention of younger audiences right from the start. To me, that’s smart long-range planning and smart commerce.

But when the biggest moment of the Opening Ceremonies is shown at 11:45 p.m. – and on tape – the message, right from the git-go, is: Git lost.

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PERHAPS the most pleasant scene shown from the Opening Ceremonies found Lindsay Davenport marching within the U.S. delegation, side by side with Venus Williams, both smiling while engaging the other in amiable conversation.

This unlikely scene – the two are supposed to dislike each other – was likely made possible by the absence, at that moment, of Richard Williams.

The most inappropriate, shock-genre commercial during Friday’s ceremonies was, of course, supplied by Nike. It showed a woman undressing down to her sports bra (a Nike one, no doubt), then out-running (in her Nikes, no doubt) the chainsaw-wielding killer in a Jason hockey mask who stalked her.

Given that the Opening Ceremonies were so filled with warmth and hope, the insertion of this visceral sell was like installing a slaughter house at a petting zoo. But Nike got our attention and that’s all that matters.

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THERE seems to be an unwritten rule in TV: As long as cable allows obscene language, be sure to use some.

On the latest installment of HBO’s “Real Sports,” correspondent Armen Keteyian interviews Redskins’ owner Daniel Snyder. It begins, thusly:

“Not to get off on the wrong foot, but a lot of people think you’re a p–k.” (Keteyian used a vulgar expression for penis.)

In Keteyian’s very next question/statement, he notes that Snyder has been accused of being many unpleasant things, including “vulgar.”

You like football stats? You think that in their unqualified form, like the way they’re presented on TV by well-paid experts, they’re important?

Saturday, Team A had 400 total yards from scrimmage. Team B had 235. Team A had 20 first downs, Team B had 14. Team A had possession of the ball for 32:05, Team B had it for 27.55.

And Team A, Purdue, lost to Team B, Notre Dame, 23-21.

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I DON’T understand TV people. On one hand, we like what ABC is doing near the top of its Monday Night NFL telecasts when it introduces the starting offenses and defenses through the use of live-on-tape closeups. A look at the players, helmetless, is a good way to personalize the game.

But then ABC obliterates the view with overly stylized, hip-hop graphics that slide over the pictures, cutting off half the players’ heads. In its effort to be both informative and young-male-demographic cool, ABC achieves neither. Why try to give us a look while simultaneously creating a fancy distraction?

Same goes for CBS’s NFL pre-game show. It’s trying hard to attract an audience by loading the show with pertinent info. Yet, it has facilitated a live, gawking, waving, hollering street audience as the show’s background, making for such a distraction that it’s difficult to focus on anything anyone says.

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AT SOME point, yesterday, after Jet Kevin Williams returned a first-quarter kickoff for a TD, CBS’ Dick Enberg/Dan Dierdorf team should’ve noted that the Bills’ longtime special teams coach, Bruce DeHaven, was fired after last season. Last season ended with that Titans’ razzle-dazzle TD kickoff return in a playoff game.

How low can we go? CBS’ Sportsline website provides betting lines attached to a graphic of a female cheerleader lying on her side, one leg raised in the air. The overhead caption reads, “Show Me the Spread!” Another come-on message flashes between her legs.

You can do a lot in a little time if you pay attention. Before breaking for inning-over commercials Thursday, Ch. 5’s Jays-Yanks telecast included a neat videotape vignette that showed first baseman and MVP candidate Carlos Delgado smiling and chatting with every Yankee who had reached first. Exclaimed Tim McCarver: “He talks to everybody!”

Those “fans” who bring their “Dennis Miller’s My Hero” signs to Monday night games so that ABC can show them on national TV, used to show up with “Dierdorf For President” banners. If Miller’s so hip, he’d demand that such vanity shots cease because they’re rooted, and for 40 years, not in sincerity, but in TV attention-grabbing.

Reds’ multi-million dollar infielder Pokey Reese recently complained to a Cincinnati newspaper about how the Bengals had the nerve to charge him and some friends $50 a piece for football tickets. “We went,” said Reese, “but it cost us.” Imagine that.

Boomer Esiason’s still taking his dismissal from ABC too hard and too public for his own good. Asked on WFAN, last week, about now working Monday Night Football radio with Howard David and Matt Millen, Esiason said that he’s with two guys “who appreciate me for who I am and what I’ve done.” Geez.

Saturday’s Yankee pre-game call-in radio show on WABC included John Sterling and Michael Kay identifying beer and the beer-muscled as why fans of visiting teams feel threatened when at Yankee Stadium. Hmmm. Sterling and Key are heard in a beer commercial in which they suggest that drinkers of this particular brand make their presence better known at Yankee Stadium.

Lookalikes: Bears’ head coach Dick Jauron and Chris Russo … Trinidad and Tobago has a team entered in the Olympics. Trinidad and Tobago. Hey, no fair!