Big news: Every NCAA tourney game on TV!

You no longer have to beg, borrow or steal bandwidth and other people's laptops if you want to watch every single NCAA game! As part of the new TV deal, every single game will be on TV! This is because CBS is now joined by Turner Networks, and they plan to show every game live. ESPN would obviously have been a great candidate as well, since they have more channels and they specialize in college hoops, unlike the Turner Network which speacializes in the NBA and reruns ;-)

The deal runs from 2011 to 2014, and in addition to CBS, games will be shown on TBS, TNT, and TruTV (formerly CourtTV).

The shocker in this is that going forward (after 2016), yikes (!), the Final Four will be alternating between CBS and TBS. What the fuck is the right reaction here!

The games will continue to be available via online streaming as well!

ESPN tried to get the TV rights but unfortunately it did not win. Having the tourney on the ESPN family would have probably been better. Fans already know where to find ESPN, ESPN2, and many have access to either ESPU, ESPN Classic or ESPN News. Plus they could show games on ABC for a national TV audience. And if they needed more channels, they could put some games on the Disney Channel!

This means college hoops fans will need to make adjustments to their current cable, satellite and DVR plans if they want to watch everything. More on that as the details and scheduling becomes more clear!

Perhaps because of this deal, TBS/TNT may try to add some regular season or conference championship basketball games, so they can "warm up" before the actual tourney!

68 teams is a sensible expansion to the field

It's a good thing common sense still exists. It looks like the 96-team crazy-talk was shut off, and now the talk is a 68-team tournament. This is great news. Now one thing that they have to make sure is that the opening round should only include bubble teams. It's not fair to send all the smaller conference automatic bids to the opening round!

And I am not the only one who wants this! Dana O'Neill has a long writeup about this very topic at ESPN.com. And Dana makes a great point - it would get the TV networks higher ratings if they have bubble-teams in the opening round, instead of small low-major schools that the majority of sports fans are not familiar with.

Lunardi is super-excited, he won't have to have a 96-team field to bracketologize for half a year :-)

Vitale tried to comment on this, but the most interesting thing he said is that complaining he paid $25 for a haircut :)

One of the coaches that would have probably been covered by the 68 one too many times is Seth Greenberg of Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, Jim Boeheim wants more - I guess he wants to play Vermont every year :-)

Obvious Scheyer foul screwed up by zebras costs Butler their championship

Once again, the zebras hand the dirty dookies another win. In what was a 100% obvious Scheyer foul, the zebras took two points away from Butler and a free throw by Gordon Howard, and those three points the zebras stole from Butler were what they needed to win the championship!

Yet another stolen victory by the Ratzilla! Booooooo!

Nooooooooo! Coach Satanefski can't win it! all!!

Nooooooooooooo! Duke and Coach Satanefski cannot win the championship! Butler MUST win! And we all know the NCAA, the zebras, and CBS establishment are going to do everything in their power to get the Dookies the win ;-) And how can you beat them, they foul a million times per possession (that's their "tough defense") but it rarely gets called! Nooooooooooooooo!

Congratulations to the Butler Bulldogs once again!

This is a-we-some with capital A as Ricardo Vitali says on ESPN! Congratulations Butler Bulldogs for beating Izzo State and making it to the NCAA Tournament Championship Final! Mid-majors of the world unite and take-over! Yeeeeha!!!! :-)

Regardless of who wins game #2, we are 100% behind Butler winning the championship! This would be ultra-cool!!!