The NCAA basketball tournament has been a cultural and financial success for years, funding up to 96% of the NCAA's budget for the last few years and generating huge television ratings. However, there has always been several elements of controversy that have followed the tournament. The selection of teams has left some schools feeling cheated as they were not invited and left the two schools playing the first game in Dayton feeling a bit like stepchildren having to play a qualifying game.
Last year, the NCAA opted out of the last three seasons of its landmark 11-year, $6 billion deal with CBS and wound up with a new 14-year, $10.8 billion deal with CBS and Turner. The new deal resulted in games being broadcast on four networks: CBS and three Turner cable networks, TBS, TBT and TruTV. To provide additional product for the new agreement, the NCAA expanded the tournament to 68, with four first round games in Dayton, ahead of the round of 64. Two of those games involve the last four at-large bids with the other two involving the lowest seeded teams in the field, helping to somewhat remove the stigma of the First Four, as the games are now called.
There was some initial concern over the reception of the cablecasts but such concern proved to be unfounded. Fans of the tournament are thrilled that all games are available on TV for the first time and ratings for the first weekend across all networks are up between 14% over last year.
With so many upsets and double-digit seeds making it into the Sweet Sixteen, expect television ratings to continue to exceed expectations. I don't know about your bracket, but mine got blown up fairly early on. I should have gone to NCAA Basketball Predictions at BetUS and maybe I would still be alive in at least one of the pools I entered. Of course, I don't think even experts would have helped in the case of the Southwest Region's three double-digit seeds (Richmond, Florida State and VCU) making it past the weekend. In any event, good luck with your picks this weekend. For what it's worth, I like Butler and VCU's chances in their next games and I look for Marquette to give UNC all it can handle with potentially an upset there too.
