Some hypothetical questions became reality when it came to evaluating television ratings for the 2006 Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships. For example, how would viewers feel about a Cinderella team making a deep journey into the men’s tournament, and would viewers tune into a Women’s Final Four that didn’t include some of the more traditional powers?

Judging from this year’s television ratings, the answers are “Just fine” and “Yes.” While neither tournament produced record ratings, NCAA broadcast partners CBS and ESPN were pleased with the outcome.

On the men’s side, George Mason’s improbable run to the Final Four through competition that included Michigan State, North Carolina and Connecticut showed a Cinderella team can capture the public’s attention.

George Mason’s 86-84 overtime win over top-seeded Connecticut on March 26 in the Washington, D.C., regional final particularly showed that viewers will embrace an underdog.

“That’s the game when the country really started waking up to George Mason,” said Mike Aresco, CBS vice president of programming. “The game had a 6.1 rating. At the end, we were approaching an 11.”

George Mason’s magic didn’t necessarily translate in Final Four ratings, though. The Patriots played in the first semifinal against eventual-champion Florida and the game drew a 9.0 rating, a full point down from the Illinois-Louisville semifinal in 2005. The reason for the lower rating wasn’t due to George Mason’s lack of name recognition, but more because of the final score being 73-58.

“The 9.0 rating tells you the power of George Mason in that broadcast window,” Aresco said. “Two years before, you had a down-to-the-wire Georgia Tech-Oklahoma State game that did an 8.3. Could you imagine if George Mason and Florida had been a down-to-the-wire second half? We would have easily been double digits with the rating. If George Mason had made the championship game, you would have seen an outpouring of viewer support.”

Overall, CBS’ ratings were down 9 percent for the entire tournament compared to 2005, but 2 percent higher than the 2004 tournament.

Aresco said many factors contribute to the raw numbers.

“Going into the tournament, we were skeptical that we could do as well as last year when we had the perfect storm of marquee teams playing incredible games,” he said. “The competitiveness of the games means a lot.”

Last year’s Final Four participants North Carolina, Louisville, Michigan State and Illinois all have large fan bases and traditionally draw significant viewership. They each participated in dramatic regional finals to advance to college basketball’s grandest stage, which aided in the larger rating.

This year, many of the marquee names were eliminated in the first weekend. Kentucky, North Carolina, Michigan State, Kansas and all six Big Ten representatives failed to advance to the second weekend.

But the tournament thrived on dramatic moments such as Northwestern State’s last-second 64-63 win over Iowa, UCLA’s stirring 73-71 comeback win against Gonzaga, Texas and West Virginia exchanging three-pointers in the last 10 seconds in the Longhorns’ 74-71 victory and Connecticut’s 98-92 win over Washington.

Ratings showed once again that viewers like tightly contested games.

“You’re going to see more tournaments like this down the road, because there is such a competitive landscape in college basketball,” Aresco said. “When you look at the mid-majors and all the smaller conferences that people don’t talk about, maybe it isn’t an accident that we’ve had very competitive games for the last two years. I think what happened in the Final Four this year as far as the lack of competitiveness of the games will be an aberration.”

Women’s ratings rise

In the women’s tournament, ESPN’s ratings increased for the championship game and the regional finals, the latter by 19 percent from 2005.

“The magic we had in our regional finals makes a strong statement on the growth of the game,” said Carol Stiff, ESPN’s senior director of programming and acquisitions. “The regional finals are on Monday and Tuesday, unopposed from the men, and having two overtime games was good stuff.”

Maryland defeated Utah, 75-65, in overtime in the Albuquerque regional final on March 27, and Duke eliminated Connecticut, 63-61, in overtime at the Bridegeport regional on March 28 in the third-highest rated and second-most-viewed regional final in the late Monday time slot.

ESPN showed all 63 games of the women’s tournament on its family of networks. The ratings for games broadcast on ESPN increased by 15 percent over 2005.

“We are extremely pleased with a double-digit ratings increase with all the competition out there,” Stiff said. “We were only slightly down on ESPN2 by 9 percent compared to last year. Those ratings are pretty strong. Most of our ESPN2 coverage is in the first and second rounds, which is up against a lot of men’s competition. We’re not worried at all. To be up double-digits on ESPN is a huge accomplishment.”

The ESPN2 ratings were spiked last year whenTennessee coach Pat Summitt broke Dean Smith’s all-time wins record in Division I basketball. The record-breaking victory came in a second-round game on a Tuesday night, which ran unopposed to any games in the men’s tourney. It remains the highest-rated basketball game in ESPN2 history.

Maryland’s 78-75 come-from-behind overtime victory over Duke in this year’s national championship game drew a 3.1 rating, a 19 percent increase over the previous year that featured Baylor and Michigan State.

The tournament was the most-viewed on ESPN, averaging about 1.3 million households, up 31 percent from 2005. ESPN’s average rating was a 1.5, a 15 percent increase from 2005 (1.3) and tied for the highest ever with 2004.

“It does bode well for the future,” Stiff said. “It’s great to see some new blood in the game. The Women’s Final Four is a marquee event for us. A lot of people tune in and they know it is a Sunday-Tuesday format.”

Another signature night ESPN and the stakeholders in Division I Women’s Basketball hope to make a staple is the Monday night selection show, which premiered this year.

Stiff believes viewers will become used to tuning in for the women’s pairings in the years to come.

“We’re extremely pleased with it,” Stiff said. “We feel it is going to be a great opportunity to have the women own the day, which they did. We were talking about it all the time from Sunday afternoon on. To have a full hour of not dropping segments like we did when the show was on Sunday helped.”