March Madness Musings and More

As usual, it was another intriguing opening to March Madness on CBS, with not quite as many mega-upsets in the cutdown from 64 to this week's round of 16. Still, it was almost always must-watch television, one of our favorite curl-up-on-the-couch weekends of the year. And so, a few observations from the semi-prone position:

• Don't you just love much of the rich language of hoops -- the bunnies and bottom-of-the-net buckets, the snap of the twine, monster dunks and points in the paint?

And yet, announcers constantly referring to all those tall trees as "bigs" somehow seems dehumanizing of the larger men on campus. Why not just tell us their names? I'm also getting tired of hearing "Numbers!!!!" any time a team in transition looks to have a man or two advantage on the fast break. Hey, it's television. We can see it's three on one or four on two. Keep those "Numbers!!!!" to yourself.

• It's still comfortably re-assuring to hear veteran play-by-play man Dick Enberg do a west coast college basketball game. His "oh my" enthusiasm during Stanford's overtime victory over Marquette -- arguably the best game over the first four tournament days -- was exactly what you look for from a big-time broadcaster, aided nicely by thoughtfully perceptive analyst Jay Bilas.
• Bill Raftery's voice was shot when I heard him in the first round, though he still manages to rasp out "a kiiiissssss off the glass" any chance he gets, even if you can barely hear him say it.
• I still get goose bumps every time I see a replay of Jim Valvano's frantically mad dash on to the court after his 1983 N.C. State team won the Final Four on a last second put-back by Lorenzo Charles. Same for watching an oft-repeated commercial (aren't they all) that includes footage of then mostly obscure North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan draining that clutch 18-footer from the left side for the winning points against Georgetown in the 1982 title game.
• The CBS studio team of Greg Gumbel, Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis always gets precisely to the point. No inane ad nauseum blabbering or "look-at-me" posing like so many of their ESPN colleagues. They pick a key moment, offer a pithy sound bite of often prescient analysis and move on.
• After all these years, you'd think CBS would do a little better job switching far sooner from blowouts to close games. I was in Ft. Lauderdale watching North Carolina's rout of Mount St. Mary's, a game that saw the Tar Heels go up by 30 early in the second half. Several other games on at the same time were much closer, but the network waited far too long to switch away. I know the South Florida area is considered ACC territory now that the Miami Hurricanes are in the conference, but this was ridiculous.
• Billy Packer remains spot-on with his savvy game analysis in what has to be the anniversary of his 100th season doing college basketball on CBS. As long as he stays with the hoops and keeps away from his soapbox on all things off the court, we're all the better for it. Neither he nor Dick Vitale seem to be appearing as product pitchmen in quite as many commercials as in years past, definitely a positive development.
• That endless stream of commercials just keeps coming. In games I watched, I can't recall a single stoppage of play for a timeout or an injury when CBS didn't go right into its full Madison Avenue mode. There are times when they string four or five 30 second spots together, with a few promos for CBS programming. I wasn't doing an official count, but I'd guess there are at least 20 commercials aired between the end of the first half and the start of the second in every game.

If I'm a fan in the stands, I'm not happy with all the dead time until play resumes, and there are far too many official TV timeouts, all designed to get even more advertising inventory, at $1.4 million per 30-second spot, on the air.

Sitting at home can be equally March maddening, particularly after viewing the same spot for what seems like the sixth time in the last 22 minutes. It's particularly annoying at the end of close games, when you'd like to see the cameras stay focused on the teams in the huddle, the lively pep bands and the frenzy/tension in the stands. Staying with the game also would give the broadcasters a little time to talk about each team's strategy when they return to the court.