LOST PRAIRIE - The self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports did its best to capture the spirit of sports in Montana on Wednesday with a 12-minute, two-part "SportsCenter" segment from the Skydive Lost Prairie Boogie.

As part of this summer's 50 States in 50 Days promotional tour, the ESPN crew arrived at the Boogie on Tuesday to set up shop. Wednesday, anchor Kenny Mayne taped introductions, teasers and promos from the mobile set.

"It's a great idea," said Mayne during an interview Tuesday. "Sometimes we come up with certain stunts in the summer during the slow period when it's just baseball and football hasn't started yet. Almost every year they come up with something, and there are times when some of us are like 'this is a flaky promotion,' but this one here is very legitimate and I've never heard one complaint."

Mayne welcomed viewers to the Boogie with a quick rundown of the state's motto, nicknames, both official and unofficial, and a geography lesson on where Lost Prairie is, and why they were there.

"Hundreds of folks with far more nerves than most of us have gathered to jump out of airplanes," Mayne said during one of several takes, each with a slight variation.

"It's the Lost Prairie jump meet. Not so much a contest as a celebration of the sport, and that's what 50/50 is all about: Celebrating the uniqueness of each of our 50 states."

Chris Berman followed with a taped history lesson, plus features on Whitefish skydiver B.J. Worth and the town of Ismay, which for a time changed its name to Joe.

In between, Mayne let fly with some obscure (at least to non-Montanans) "Did You Know?" facts about the state and even more obscure (at least to non-skydivers) facts about skydiving.

In all, 35 technical and production staff, plus Mayne and reporter Shelley Smith, were on hand to put together the 12-minute broadcast.

"This is a small show," ESPN operations coordinator Fred Clow said. "Equipment-wise, you're not putting out a lot of gear.

For a pro football game or a college football game you put out close to 20 cameras. We've got three of them here, and we ran them all about 50 feet from the truck. That ain't bad."

Clow should know. He was in Missoula in the fall when ESPN2 broadcast the Division I-AA quarterfinal and semifinal football games from Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

"When I was at the University of Montana for football last fall, we pulled in with the truck, pulled in with the (satellite) uplink and they had power," he said. "When you come to a place like this you have to have a setup that's with you all the time, and that's why this generator truck is here with us.

"Where we go, we need quite a bit of power to power these mobile units and uplink trucks."

In all, ESPN hauled in the so-called mobile unit - the production truck where the director and producer put together the segment - the generator truck, a moving van-type truck with miscellaneous supplies, and the satellite uplink truck.

"I love coming here as opposed to your typical football game," said Clow, who has been with ESPN on and off since 1983. "This is a different animal.

"This is geared toward what do people do in the summer that they enjoy. That's something we're having a ball with."

For Mayne, he's happy enough to be out on the road, but there was little chance of him making his first jump. The closest he was willing to get was sending up one of his daughter's miniature plastic parachute men and have it dropped from 13,000 feet with the human jumpers.

After a prominent role on "SportsCenter" in the mid-'90s, pairing with Dan Patrick as Keith Olbermann's replacement, Mayne has taken on less-visible assignments in recent years as the network continues to skew ever younger.

That's fine by Mayne, who has been able to cover one of his passions, horse racing.

"I grew up in Seattle and we had a great old track called Longacres," he said. "Boeing bought the track from the owners and destroyed it - they gave it four years, give them credit for that I guess, but they were saying if somebody else wants to build a track, you've got a little buffer now, we'll keep racing alive. It took longer, and there was a dark period of three or four years.

"It was beautiful. I remember going to that place like other kids talk about going to Yankee Stadium or Fenway with their uncle.

"So I kept telling (ESPN) I wanted to do horse racing. They let me do a little bit here and there, show up at an event once a year. Then it just happened, it got worked out where I became the host of the spring series and the summer series. I do like 15 (races).

"I love it. It's one of those niche things, but those that are into it are really into it. With horse racing we try to get more fans by doing the shows as well as we can but if other people don't get it, that's their concern," he said.

"I don't like hockey or lacrosse or 12 other sports. Nothing against hockey, but you can only love so many things. By far my favorites are football and horse racing."

The decrease in airtime has been more than made up for with the increase in family time. Even though when Mayne, a former UNLV quarterback who was once recruited by Montana Tech, does work he is often out on the road, he figures he is at home more.

"If I were working daily 'SportsCenters,' I'd be gone five days a week, 10 hours a day, come home at some godforsaken hour, wake up late, not really see (my family). Now when I'm off, I'm off," he said.

Montana was the first of five states for Mayne in the tour. The production team that was here has already been to Iowa and North Dakota, and is off to Michigan next.

The 38th annual Skydive Lost Prairie Boogie continues through Aug. 1.