March Madness - It's Insanity, Baby

Once again, we come to that part of March that is true Madness, the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The games are crazy, the passions run high, and there's one constant: CBS's lousy coverage.

"What what what?" you say. CBS has been doing this for 25 years now, they know what they're doing. I mean, how hard could it be to cover a basketball game? They have covered a million of them over the last 25 years. They must have learned something.

I do not take fault with any aspect of any individual game broadcast. The exclusion of Dick Vitale aside, CBS proves to be pretty competent at putting a game on TV. The Dick Vitale thing could be 2000 words in itself, but suffice to say, this is the voice of big time basketball to anyone who has cable. If there is a big game, Dickie V is the color. And having him there makes any game seem bigger. It's like having Lee Corso and Herbstreit come to your campus. They come and it's on. So, his exclusion from the Big Dance is weird business stuff that only causes the fans to lose. Viacom & Disney have to find a way to fix this. And maybe my bigger gripe gets to the core here.

CBS covers every game pretty well. Some better than others, depending on the broadcast team and the individual producers and directors. But the NCAA tournament is more than just one game. Or even the final four games. The early rounds involve a logistical problem that CBS & Viacom are poorly prepared to handle. Maybe I can use an example to prove what I'm talking about.

Last night, I'm watching LSU and Iona or Gonzaga and Xavier. I think mostly LSU & Iona. Iona looked pretty good and LSU was looking like a mess. At the same time, the Zags are getting everything they can handle from Xavier. And George Washington, one of the better stories (Pops Mensa Bonsu, the low seed, playing Wilmington in NC, etc) is getting thumped, and I do mean thumped, by UNC Wilmington. I know all this because it's covered on the top of my screen, in real time. For some reason, with all this going on, I'm watching LSU's first half.

In the middle of that, because I live in the Midwest, I get full coverage of Illinois-Air Farce. I'm not from here, so I could care less about the Illini (Hell, I rooted for UNC last year, against my entire in-laws better judgment). I could care even less about Air Farce, unless they make it close. So, I'm watching this junk, while, in the scores at the top, I see LSU peel away from Jeff Ruland's Iona Gaels (Ruland deserves his own post, but it should be written by a better basketball historian than I). I also see GW start to crawl back in. And I see the Zags close it up and then fall back, repeatedly. I did manage to see the very end of the GW game and the Gonzaga game, but likely only because Illinois was in half time and building a double digit lead.

I didn't get to see the 18 point comeback by GW. I didn't get to see the Gonzaga game until it was pretty much decided. And I didn't get to see how LSU finally distanced themselves from Iona, after being played pretty much even, on my TV, through the first half. Instead, I got to watch Air Force hang with Illinois for 8 minutes before eventually succumbing to Illinois superior talent and /or size at every position. This could only be marginally interesting to Illinois fans, who we could have satisfied by showing the second half if it was close. Or just show the second half in case it gets close, until something more interesting pops up.

I also missed the interesting part of the Marquette - Alabanambla game, the part where they come back from being down by 15 to take the lead. I got to watch Alabama build that 15 point lead and I got to watch them counter rally Marquette's rally. But the second half was probably pretty compelling TV. In defense of CBS here, I did get to see the Tennessee-Winthrop game, which was exciting throughout. You kept waiting for Tennessee put a couple of possessions together and it took until the very end of that game for it to happen. So I can't really hold this against them. If Marquette had rebounded a little in the first ten minutes, I might have seen that game in it's entirety.

My point is this. CBS's single outlet, regionally dominated coverage is inadequate to the task of covering the NCAA tournament. The NCAA needs to find a better solution, because a lot of the best action is being missed by the majority of the country, with no choice in what they get to see. CBS simply doesn't have the resources to cover it in its entirety. I propose two possible solutions. Executives at CBS aren't going to like either one.

1. A provider with more channel options could cover this event better. Think of Disney, with ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN U, etc. You put the main game, or the regional interest game on ABC, and switch to interesting games as they get interesting. You put whole games on your other channels. If you don't have cable, you still get the major games, and the end of the close games. If you do, you get the choice you are paying for. If you're CBS, you don't like this, because you have other channels, but they don't carry sports much. UPN, MTV & MTV2, Vh1, BET, CMT, Spike, etc are not exactly ESPN or Fox Sports Regional.
2. Split the rights. Let Disney, Universal, News Corp and Viacom each have a region and you rotate the Final Four through the networks over the years. Granted, if you don't like college basketball (read: are insane), you don't like this, and if you're CBS you don't like sharing it, but it's better for two groups, and they are the most important: 1 - the viewers and 2- the NCAA. By splitting it up, imagine the revenues in a competitive bidding process. The total of it all is probably more than CBS gets in a non-competitive bidding environment. I think you could increase licensing revenue by 25%.

I guess, at some point in time, the rights could come up and Fox or ABC could steal them away (Do they get Clark Kellogg as part of the package? CBS can keep both Gumbels). I don't see CBS getting outbid for this, but they lost football to Fox for a cycle, so why not? I don't think we will ever see solution #2, even though the most people are served the best by that.

Maybe this is all an argument to get the bracket package on digital cable or satellite. Maybe, but I think there are probably more elegant solutions. Certainly more elegant that just letting CBS have everything.