THURSDAY night on ESPN, Air Force trailed Colorado St., 28-21, a minute and change left, fourth-and-12 from midfield. Crunch time, boys.

But just before the ball was snapped, attention was diverted by a graphic that informed us that Air Force is two-for-three on fourth down.

And once again a network made it clear that a football telecast was in the hands of those with little understanding of football, long the most TV-confused game of them all.

A football-savvy producer wouldn’t even allow such stats to enter his or her on-site data bank, let alone throw them on the screen before the game’s biggest play.

Fourth-and-going-for-it comes in such radically different forms – fourth-and-a-foot and fourth-and-long/desperate being the most commonly differing – that lumping them together for the public’s consideration and edification is inane.

Yet, it persists as the most ridiculous, habit-formed football graphic among scores of ridiculous graphics. Yep, taking the garbage out and scaling Mt. McKinley is the same trip.

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You can just about kiss Tim McCarver goodbye as a Yankee TV voice. No one’s talking, but the new Yankee YES Network’s deal with CBS’s flagship, WCBS Ch. 2, makes it virtually impossible for YES to pick up McCarver, Fox’s top baseball analyst.

Leo Hindery, YES Chairman and CEO, Friday confirmed to us that Ch. 2 will air roughly 20 games and that the announcers on YES Cablecasts and Ch. 2’s broadcasts will be the same.

Add it up and McCarver becomes, at best, a very long shot to remain a Yankee announcer.

Also from Hindery:

He’s “fully committed” to YES appearing as a 24/7 basic cable network, with clearance, by Opening Day, on all local cable systems.

No firm decisions have as yet been made on any Yankee announcers.

CBS Sports will provide YES with programming. Ch. 2 will keep all ad revenues from its Yankee telecasts while the productions and announcers will belong to YES. (An estimated 12 other Yankee telecasts will appear over-the-air via Fox’s regionalized Saturday telecasts.)

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The primary sponsor of MSNBC’s Website is SBG Global, a Costa Rican-based “Full service on-line gambling center” that the NCAA in March sued, contending illegal use of trademarks.

One must get through several “Bet Easy” SBG come-ons in order to reach “NBC’s Notre Dame Central” site. NBC is the longtime home of ND football, a deal that runs through 2005.

With NCAA engaged in a crusade against gambling on college sports – and with game-fixing scandals now regularly surfacing – we suggest that the NCAA take this issue up with NBC, contracted TV partner of NCAA member, Notre Dame.

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Good CBS: Although Navy figures to get beat handily, CBS will do it up big for this year’s Army-Navy, Dec. 1. Telecast will begin at 11 a.m. for an 11:45 kickoff, Dick Enberg and Dan Dierdorf assigned to the game.

Bad CBS: KDKA, CBS-owned Pittsburgh station, recently was discovered to be using a compression or “Time Machine” to delay transmission of NFL telecasts by 30 seconds or more in order to add local commercials.

The scandal came to light when Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dimitri Vassilaros was watching a Steeler game while listening to it on the radio. The radio was a play or more ahead.

CBS says that it was an isolated case, one that won’t happen again. Others in the industry, however, scoff at CBS’s response, claiming that it happens a lot, at KDKA and elsewhere. After all, why would a station buy a $90,000 machine for one shot to produce $6,000-to-$10,000 in extra – and ill-gotten – ad revenue?

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Fox NFL duo of Kenny Albert and Tim Green have called three straight OTs. They work today’s Giants-Cards . . . Cara Taback, great friend to this column’s readers through her cooperation and integrity as the head of MSG Network’s public relations office, has been moved up to MSG corporate. Eric Gelfand, who will continue as a VP of Garden sports events, moves in.

While his cohorts at FAN have fun with on-air personality Sid Rosenberg’s real or fictional gambling problem – several of his co-workers, off the air, claim that it’s profoundly real – he’s due in a Long Island Court, Nov. 21st, to respond to a suit filed by a fellow claiming that Rosenberg has not repaid a $15,000-$18,000 loan.