By Philip Hersh

So many remaining questions, so few answers related to Dick Ebersol's unexpected Thursday resignation as boss of NBC sports, for which Ebersol told me the primary issue was salary.



I don't expect any answers from Comcast, clearly a tight-lipped corporate beast rather than the NBC sports operation the media and public came to know under Ebersol.



He reveled in his high profile, had a substantial ego and spoke from the gut about any subject -- blasting Conan O'Brien a few months ago and, in our conversation Thursday, dismissing as essentially nonsensical ESPN's idea to show the Olympics live in the middle of the night.



Why, the two corporate communications flaks whose names were on the NBC Universal press release announcing Ebersol's departure (with a note saying they were the contacts for more information) have yet to respond in any fashion to emails sent Thursday requesting comment on a question about Comcast's continued interest in bidding for the Olympics.



So it doesn't seem worth my time to ask them about this scenario:



Was Comcast, the new parent company of NBC, deliberately stalling its contract negotiations with Ebersol until after the International Olympic Committee auction June 6-7 for U.S. television rights beyond 2012?



And why would they do that?



Ebersol's reputation as a TV sports major domo was built on the Olympics, which he had produced 10 times since 1992. HIs knowledge about how to present an Olympics -- and his passion for doing it - are unsurpassed. For more than 25 years, Olympic TV in the United States and Ebersol were a single entity.



Comcast had named Ebersol chairman of the NBC Sports Group when its purchase of the network was completed earlier this year. But if NBC did not get the rights to future Olympics, Ebersol would not be as valuable to Comcast, especially at a salary price he told me was substantial.



``I had a whole new job with suddenly thousands of new employees working for me,'' Ebersol said. ``Money is not a problem going forward in my life but I sure wanted a certain amount.''



Ebersol said he thought he and Comcast had been close to a deal three weeks ago but ``suddenly it just started getting more complicated.'' Was that an indication that Comcast really doesn't care about getting Olympic rights -- despite its apparent assurances in phone calls to the IOC that it remains interested?



His departure so close to the negotiations clearly discomfited the IOC. Its U.S. rights negotiator, Richard Carrion, selecting his words judiciously, told the New York Times the IOC was ``not crazy about the timing.''



The IOC places a high premium on long-term relationships -- to wit, its recent disdain for the U.S. Olympic Committee (and, by extension, U.S. cities bidding to host the Olympics) because of what had been revolving-door leadership.



The IOC greatly valued its 30-year relationship with Ebersol, who initiated the idea of having a U.S. network buy rights for more than one Winter and one Summer Games at a time, giving the IOC a great amount of guaranteed income over a long period.



Ebersol took the IOC at its word when it threw out $2 million as the number it wanted for rights to 2010 and 2012, and he even got NBC's then owner, GE, to pony up another $200 million for an IOC global sponsorship. That $2.2 billion turned out to be $900 million more than the only other serious bid, from Fox.



Such largesse added something to an IOC allegiance to Ebersol that clearly could have worked in NBC's favor next month; now it could work against NBC unless it makes an offer as overly generous as its last, which seems unlikely given the network's reported $223 million loss on the 2010 Winter Games.



The other dimension to Ebersol's departure is how it might affect the style of NBC's coverage at the 2012 Summer Games -- especially if some key players on his production team, like Peter Diamond and Gary Zenkel, also leave before the London Olympics.



Ebersol developed a particular and oft-criticized style of presenting the Olympics as a blend of personalities and narrative rather than simple broadcasting of events. He chose that approach to lure more than hard-core sports fans and wound up having women as the biggest piece of the U.S. viewing audience.



One key to his philosophy was that most viewers, sports junkies included, were completely unfamiliar with most Olympic events and with the top U.S. athletes, let alone athletes from the rest of the world, so simply letting the cameras focus on the action would not build an audience.



He also held coverage of some events, sometimes for several hours, until the prime-time package that drew the largest numbers of viewers -- 30 million a day at the 2008 Summer Games.



``I would always say the way we have done the Olympics in prime time is the reason they have been successful,'' Ebersol emphasized Thursday.



Ebersol's Olympic broadcast philosophy came partly from his mentor, ABC Olympic guru Roone Arledge, who added personality profiles -- called ``Up Close and Personal,'' a term that became an English idiom -- to the coverage.

It also came from geopolitics.



When NBC did its first Summer Games -- and the only one without Ebersol -- from Seoul in 1988, the Olympics as Cold War, sporting division, still was in play as a theme. Emphasizing whether the U.S. would win more medals than those nasty Soviet and East German commies was a sure way to galvanize viewer interest.



In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated.



``There was no more `us against them,' which had been the premier staple of the appeal of the Olympics,'' Ebersol said. ``That's when I really embarked on the whole storytelling thing.



``For a while, I made a few mistakes, with too many profiles and stuff. Post Sydney (2000), I cut them down by 35 or 40 percent and substituted for that by having all the major announcers tutored in the months before each Games on the stories we wanted them to tell. We didn't give them a script, because I don't believe in scripting, but they all knew the basic points.



``If you don't make those athletes empathetic, you won't get the women who make up 60 percent of the audience or the others who don't follow Olympic sports at all outside the Olympics.''



Ironically, Ebersol wound up giving fans of the less popular Olympic sports more live and total coverage than ever because of the ability to put events on cable networks that have multiplied in the past two decades and to stream them on the Internet.



NBC proved ahead of its time when it offered viewers of the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games a similar option for more live coverage in premium subscription form: the Olympic Triplecast, an idea that got no traction then and cost NBC an estimated $100 million.



At the 2008 Olympics, NBC would stream 2,200 hours of 25 sports on nbcolympics.com and provide 225 hours of coverage on its over-the-air flagship network and six cable networks.



It's a shame Ebersol won't be producing the show in London. He once said 2012 would be his final Olympics as the hands-on force behind the scenes, but it seemed likely he would have continued through Rio in 2016 if NBC got the rights -- if, for no other reason, to have another shot at a Games in essentially the same time zone as the eastern United States.



Ebersol lived, breathed and literally dreamed the Olympics, eschewing high-priced hotel suites for humbler accommodations nearly next to his desk in the broadcast center. He told me Thursday this was probably the end of his days as a TV executive but he could see himself in a year or two wanting to produce -- although not for another network doing the Olympics.



As he looks back on his 10 Olympics, one moment stands out -- and it is characteristically one that he made happen: Olympic boxing champion and former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Centennial Summer Games in Atlanta.



The Atlanta 1996 organizers wanted the final torch-bearer to be the hometown boxing celebrity, former heavyweight champion and Olympic bronze medalist Evander Holyfield.



Ebersol saw the first Olympics in the U.S. South as an opportunity to show the world something of far greater symbolic power by focusing on the greatest global sports icon of the 20th Century, a man who had been vilified out of old racist habits and acrimony for his refusal to serve in the Vietnam era military as well as celebrated out of pure joy and amazement for his personality and achievements.



It would a sign of reconciliation, of a modern Atlanta, of a country trying to come to terms with its past.



``When Muhammad Ali came to the top of the ramp and Janet Evans lit the torch in his hand, that was the culmination of six months of talking them into choosing him,'' Ebersol said. ``To (Atlanta organizing committee chief executive) Billy Payne's eternal credit, since he was the one who had to make the decision, he listened.''



When Ali emerged at the Atlanta Olympic Stadium from the darkness, literal and figurative, there was a gasp from the crowd.



``It was one of the greatest things in my life,'' Ebersol said.



It was one of those rare moments that became larger than life, befitting both Ebersol's persona and his vision of the Olympics.

Photos: Above -- (l.to.r), Dick Ebersol and NBC commentators Bob Costas and Mary Carrillo at a press preview of 2004 Olympic coverage (frederick M. Brown / Getty Images); Below - Muhammad Ali lighting the 1996 Olympic cauldron as Janet Evans looks on. (Michael Probst / Associated Press)