OPINION3 - Reflections on March Madness

Well, “March Madness” is over; there were some great games in the 2022 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.  I’m a true fan (fanatic?); this tournament is my favorite sports time of year.  I watch all the games on TV and religiously fill out my bracket as the tourney unfolds.

I was born and spent 12 years in Connecticut, lived in Louisville, Kentucky for 20 years, went to college at Purdue and Michigan, lived and raised a family in California over 30 years, and have spent the last 25 years in Tucson, Arizona.  I always have multiple teams to root for in the tournament. 

Pat and I have attended two PAC-12 tournaments in Las Vegas, and for my 70^th birthday, Pat took me to the Final Four in Indianapolis. 

 

 

These are my credentials for basketball TV-watching and the vast experience (aka age) that qualifies me to have some opinions on the tournament that I love. … And I have a few:

1.    Let’s start with scheduling.  If I lived on the East Coast, I’d have shouted my voice hoarse in protest 30 years ago.  How can they (NCAA and TV networks) routinely schedule games that start after 9:00 pm?  I can’t believe that this relatively more-populated section of the country lets them get away with it.  I can barely make it through games that start at 7:00 pm!

Next, as you hunker down to watch, you can never be sure what the actual starting time really is.  Sometimes, the games start “seven minutes after the hour;” other times it’s 15 minutes, or longer, after the published start time.  Is this called bait and switch?

They don’t schedule enough time between games.  Typically, the “first” game goes too long (see below), and the second game starts on a backup channel or app (if you’re lucky).  Some of those backup channels are pretty obscure and hard to find, to say nothing of the apps you don’t have yet.  This is a serious blow to proper snack preparation breaks.  Don’t advertise all that great food and make it impossible for me to get it.

Finally, the “new thing” in basketball TV is to program the game on several channels at the same time - each channel with its own “flavor.”  You get to choose between the usual straight up coverage and alternatives like the “chatty” option, where personalities comment in real time on the game and/or have guests that dilute the game action horribly.  At my age, I don’t need options; I have enough trouble focusing on one choice.

2.     Now let’s talk about how the broadcasts are organized.  I say “broadcasts,” because it’s a lot more than the game coverage, it’s the pregame show, the game, halftime, and post-game.  And have you noticed that all these segments are “panel shows,” often with different panelists?  There were so many games in the recent tournament that they had to scour the country for new experts to pontificate.  Why didn’t they call me? 

I noticed several multi-hour pregame shows this year, shows so long they salted-in stories to fill air time - about how star basketball players had to overcome great odds (like the rest of us) to succeed, or about the fifth cousin of other basketball players having once played basketball for Arkansas U. in the tournament 40 years ago.  I got a story about a cat that goes crazy when she sees a basketball; how about that for next year’s March Madness.

In the pregame show, experts tell us what we’re going to see.  Then the game announcing team tells us what we’re seeing, followed by the halftime team telling us what we just saw, and finally the post-game team confirming that we saw what we saw.  Do they think we all have Alzheimer’s? 

3.   And how about “sideline” interviews.  Every game, every network, does it the same way - such creativity.  Typically, the sideline reporter (one more person) handles the all-important interviews with the two coaches and star players.  Not only is the procedure “same old same old,” but the questions and answers are exactly the same.  At a break during the game, the sideline reporter asks the coach, “How can you get back in game?”  The coach ponders the question dramatically, and answers, “We’ve just got to play better.”  After the game, the reporter asks the star player how he was able to (fill in the blank), and the player always says, “My teammates trusted me and passed me the ball.”  This stuff is as enlightening as COVID mask rules. 

4.   Tournament games were much too long, some seemingly interminable - a supreme test of viewer loyalty and patience.  As we all know, team and TV timeouts during the tournament were more frequent and longer than during the regular season.  There were far too many timeouts in the final minute(s) of close games, stretching these games to excruciating levels.  Then there was extra time taken for instant (you’ve got to be kidding) replays (with 17 different camera angles), resetting the game clock to the nearest tenth of a second, and sneaky extra time for a coach to replace a player who fouled out.  The tournament games are threatening to turn into games only die-hards can sit through.  Baseball anyone?

There was an unplanned game stoppage in the tournament that I’m not complaining about.  During play, the basketball got caught at the top of the backboard structure, 11-12 feet above the floor.  Officials tried to poke the ball free with a broom, but no luck.  After a few minutes of general consternation, an acrobatic cheerleader stood on the shoulders of her cheer-mate, and reached up to release the ball, with dramatic play by play from the TV announcer, and thunderous applause from the crowd - a nice moment to remember.  God, I hope I can remember it!

5.    Repetitive TV commercials make the excessive timeouts worse.  Think about how many times over the period of the NCAA basketball tournament, that you saw the same commercial.  I still dream about NBA Dallas Mavericks center Boban Marjanovic trying to wipe off those water glass rings on a table in the State Farm Insurance commercial.  Or the “mayhem” guy in the Allstate Insurance commercial, whose street-side antics cause a distracted driver to crash into a garbage truck.  On the positive side, long timeouts and repetitive commercials provide opportunities to cut the grass (if I had any).

6.  The different networks can’t seem to solve the game-arena vs. TV-studio sound difference problem.  There were frequent times when I had to adjust the sound setting on my TV control during a game, or when I changed channels.  Apparently, there are no standards.  Are dialog captions on the TV screen the answer?  You’d need to be a speed reader to keep up with the action. 

7.    Finally, what are TV networks and the NCAA doing pushing gambling on basketball programs?  There are more and more TV programs dedicated to discussing betting odds for games (and TV alerts for programming), at the same time that there are strict prohibitions against athletes betting.  How can these programs encourage the public to bet on games, when getting hooked on betting is a well-known problem and a proven personal tragedy for many people?  I’ll bet you that the next step will be another panel show connected to the “broadcast” - personal stories of gambling winners and losers.

Color me a diehard and a fanatic; even with all my complaining, I can’t wait until next year’s tournament.

And, I invite the television execs to fly me out to help reprogram TV coverage for next year (room and board needs to be included).