CBS Sports held its annual NCAA Tournament media day yesterday, in which the network’s management and on-air talent sit in a large conference room with reporters and discuss the coverage of the event and weigh in with some opinions. Then things break up for one-on-one interviews.
The event is a lot of fun for anyone who loves college basketball, though it has changed in the past two years. One had to do with the passing of Al McGuire, whose stories were a tremendous source of laughter, and the other the absence of Billy Packer, whose penchant for being outspoken usually dominated the discussion.
Yesterday’s group meeting was the shortest I can remember. I shot a video with Jim Nantz that I posted yesterday and spoke with him and Clark Kellogg for a column I am writing on Nantz that is currently scheduled to run in the paper on Sunday. This is the second time in three years he will be calling the Super Bowl, NCAA Tournament and The Masters; no one has ever been the voice of all three.
Nantz has not worked a college basketball game since last year’s national championship, which will be the overriding theme of the column.
Here are some other notes from yesterday’s event that might be of interest to fans of the sport:
— Though CBS is in the middle of a contract to carry the tournament through 2013, the NCAA has the right to opt out by July 31. There is speculation that if the NCAA decides to do that, ESPN will make a strong run to gain the broadcasting rights.
“Our plan is to carry the NCAA Tournament on CBS as long as we can,” said Sean McManus, the president of CBS Sports and CBS News. “Our focus is on this year’s tournament and not next year’s. I think we have a history at CBS of keeping events we like.”
— President Barack Obama appeared on a telecast with Verne Lundquist and Kellogg earlier this season. “If he would like to complete his brackets on CBS we’d love to have it,” McManus said. “We’d like to have him involved, up to and including Jim Nantz’s role.”
— Studio analyst and former UNLV star Greg Anthony said he expects the early rounds of conference tournaments to have a greater impact than usual on team’s chances for NCAA Tournament berths.
“I don’t think there’s been a Friday with quarterfinal round games in the big six conferences where so much is at stake,” Anthony said. “Every league could see some bubbles bursting on Friday.”
While this will be Nantz’s 25th Final Four — the first five as studio host, the last 20 as the lead play-by-play voice — this will be the 50th tournament for the venerable announcer Dick Enberg, who worked the 1961 final as a college graduate. Long-time fans will remember when Enberg, Packer and McGuire worked together as the lead team for NBC.
“It’s amazing seeing the growth of this championship from being a game of the week,” Enberg said. “Al would always look at things from a dollar standpoint, and I remember him saying, ‘Dickie, this sport is going to be big, big big.’ “
