Has it been "March Mellow" this year? NCAA Hoops The Pale Preamble

[Qbins Missile Crisis]

April 3rd 2008 - The Pale Preamble

This week do you think the folks at CBS are saying to themselves, "$6-billion for this?"

Let's just say "March Madness" it wasn't, and all they can hope for is some Final Four "April Insanity" to make up for what's already come to pass.

With few compelling stories, and with the only Cinderella left out of the final weekend, this year's NCAA men's tournament has been the lowest-rated ever.

Once upon a time, like last year, it seemed as if tons of games were decided in the final few seconds. This year there was, what, one? On Sunday #10 seed Davidson came within a heartbeat of taking out #1 Kansas in the final game of the Elite Eight. That was about it. As for the rest, who can remember? Blowouts are only remembered by the blowouters and the blowoutees.

This year the rest of us have been forced to endure more games over at half time than ever before. A full 34 of the 60 games played in the tournament were decided by 12 or more points. That's up from 29 last year, 22 in 2006 and 20 in 2005. In three short years blowouts trending from less than 30% of the time to almost 60% is not "Madness", it's "Maddening".

And packed on top of all of this is that $6-billion gorilla CBS is trying to pay for. You may have noticed that commercial breaks have been upped to an all time high. How does CBS do it, considering they are only technically allowed to show so many commercial minutes in an hour? By stretching the games out with additional and extended TV timeouts, that's how. Regulation time games were routinely going over their allotted time slots by ½ an hour or more.

An additional 30-minutes of advertising time - That's a lot of bucks for them, and little bang of us.

How were we the viewers expected to remain on the edge of their seats when, right at the crucial moment, we were pulled away to watch the thrilling antics of the Geico Gecko, the latest from a Cialis interuptus couple, and seemingly infinite promos for upcoming CBS programming? (Which from the look of most of it, is also Must-Not-See-TV.)

Perhaps in previous years, when there were so many close games, that cash-grabbing gambit would have paid off. But not this year. Those packed-in ads were just adding insult to injury.

The result: overall ratings are down a full 11%.

The network is praying for some redemption with the Final Four match-ups. They have a good reason to be optimistic.

"As much as we like Cinderellas," CBS Sports President Sean McManus said, "from a pure ratings standpoint you're better having the four unquestioned best teams in the country with the traditions they have."

Four Number One seeds made it to the last weekend for the first time since the NCAA began seeding the men's tournament in 1979. The pre-amble was pretty much a snore so can these four super-powers save the tournament?

Well, they'd better, because they are pretty much the reason the 2008 Madness was so dampened. Of the 16 tourney games they've played so far, only three were decided by fewer than 10 points. Kick them out of the thing, and this would have been a barnburner!

But they are exactly where they belong. After all, the AP and coaches poll listed the preseason top four as North Carolina, UCLA, Memphis and Kansas.

Destined as they apparently are to be here, there is good reason to be optimistic because after dominating everyone they played all season long, (combined their record is 143-9), it would be illogical to believe this cream of the crop will be able to dominate one other.

At least that's what CBS is hoping.

Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch

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