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NCAA News Archive - 2010

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Mar 12, 2010 8:49:26 AM

Imagine having to wait until the next morning's newspaper to find out who's playing in the Division I Men's Basketball Championship.

That was the case as recently as 1979 when Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans and Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores emerged from the field to face off in the most-watched final of all time.

Imagine cramming the announcement of the women's 64-team field into 24 minutes.

That happened as recently as 2004 when the Big 12 men's tournament final ran into the women's selection show window.

Neither scenario is fathomable these days as the college basketball population pauses from whatever it is doing for an hour on Sunday and Monday to hear who's going where, when and what the chances are of their favorite teams advancing to the ultimate stage.

The Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Selection Shows on CBS and ESPN (6 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Monday, respectively), are almost as compelling as the games themselves – and the people responsible for broadcasting the announcements treat them as such.

"The value?" asks CBS producer Steve Scheer. "It's like the Mastercard commercial: It's priceless. It's one hour talking college basketball and the tournament and nothing else. There's no negative to that.

"Think back to 1979 when Magic and Bird played for the national championship. How did we find out about the bracket that year? We waited until the Monday morning newspaper. That's how this tournament has grown. Now when the tournament starts, every fan has a bracket in his pocket. You can't put a dollar figure or a rating figure on the value of the show."

Scheer has seen the selection show evolve. He was there in the early 1990s when NCAA staff members would hand-deliver the bracket to Scheer in a hotel lobby, usually with little time to spare. "One year it was an hour; one year it was eight minutes," he said.

Now Scheer is just a phone call away. Once the bracket is complete, he is invited into the committee meeting room where he's briefed on the bracket by the NCAA's Greg Shaheen and entrusted with the information between then and the time it is aired to the masses.

And that's after Scheer and a camera person have made other visits to the meeting room (which once was taboo) to take live shots of the committee at work – not revealing deliberations but showing the environment in which these important decisions are made.

That access and openness has made producing the selection show much simpler, Scheer said, though there's nothing to stop others from trying to pry secrets out of him.

"I can't tell you how many coaches and assistant coaches and people connected with coaches have called me on Saturday and Sunday in the past – who are real good friends – even though they know I don't know anything and wouldn't tell them if I did," Scheer said.

He cited one case in particular when he was hounded by someone working with CSTV (before it was CBS College Sports) who had Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg with him on the set. He wanted to know if he could tell Greenberg that the Hokies were in.

"I said, ‘OK, I guarantee you he's in the tournament.' " Scheer said. "And the guy says, ‘Hey thanks,' and I said, ‘Now I didn't say which tournament – it's either the NCAA or the NIT. But he will be in a tournament."

To be sure, Scheer and the rest of the CBS crew don't know anything more than the average Joe before they get the bracket – and once that transfer of knowledge is secure, it's buttoned up.

"I'll always remember Greg telling me that leaking information would only hurt the network," Scheer said. "And he's right. Why test that trust?"

A night to themselves

The growth in popularity is just as evident on the women's side. Fans new to the women's game may take Selection Monday for granted, but it wasn't long ago that the women shared their most important announcement with the men.

The women's version of Selection Sunday on ESPN was squeezed into the hour between the men's conference finals and the men's selection show. That hour became less if the games ran long, which they did in 2004 and 2005, leaving just 46 and 24 minutes, respectively, to reveal the big news.

"That's no way to treat the franchise," said ESPN Senior Director of Programming Carol Stiff, who would work in conjunction with the women's basketball committee the next year to shift the show to Monday night.

The result is that the women "own the night," said Sue Donohoe, NCAA vice president for women's basketball. "We regard the show as setting the stage – and Monday allows us to turn the bright lights on the student-athletes, to look inside the game and tell some great stories. Yes, we announce the field, but we also tell the story of women's basketball," she said.

ESPN has added an hour-long debriefing on its sister network ESPNU. This year, the same talent that reveals the bracket on ESPN (Trey Wingo, Kara Lawson, Carolyn Peck, Doris Burke and Rebecca Lobo) will extend the conversation on ESPNU (8-9 p.m.).

Other enhancements for the shows:

• Moving the women's show to Monday has the ancillary benefit of allowing ESPN and CBS to coordinate so that teams from the same schools aren't shown in the same broadcast windows. While that's not a requirement, it's a nice benefit if the logistics allow.
• The shows recently have featured remote cameras in rooms where teams have gathered to hear their fate. That's reality TV for viewers, particularly if those teams are on the bubble. Scheer said, in fact, that more teams are calling the networks to offer themselves up for the promotional benefit, though he admitted that most of those aren't bubble teams. Scheer said it's tough, though, when CBS has a camera on a team it knows did not make the field. "But that's part of the intrigue," he said. "We keep showing them and get people to wondering…"
• Both shows leave time to ask questions of the respective committee chairs, and neither network holds any punches. "The questions we ask the chair are likely the same that the fans of college basketball are asking at home," said Eric Mann, a senior studio producer for CBS. Scheer noted those questions are likely the same ones that the committee has spent hours debating, too. "By the time the bracket is completed, we at CBS and certainly Greg Shaheen already know pretty much what people are going to ask," Scheer said, "and they have the answers to those questions already mapped out. Why did X not get in? Why did X get a No. 1 seed? Why is X traveling out West again? Ninety-nine percent of the questions I have on my list are already on Greg's list. And when the chair goes to speak with Clark Kellogg and Jim Nantz, usually the questions are right on."

Nothing like it

In many ways, the shows are built on adrenaline.

"Stress?" Mann asks. "You're always anxious to get the brackets. Sometimes they come in a little early and sometimes they are very late. There's a lot of stuff to be loaded once you get them. All the graphics have to be right, and there are tape elements involved; lining up different school remotes.

"Greg tries his best to keep us apprised of the committee's progress, but he can't predict the committee, either. The conference tournaments on Saturday and Sunday – especially if there is an upset – complicate matters, as well."

Surely there's no stress for the women's show, though, now that it's on Monday.

"That would be incorrect," said ESPN's Barry Sacks, the show's senior coordinating producer. "There is always stress. Until the bracket gets revealed and you see that your graphics are right and there's not a spelling mistake or a region wrong – it's one of the more stressful days of the year – regardless of what day of the week it is."

But it's worth it, as millions of viewers would agree.

"As to the popularity of the shows, when you think about it, the actual bracket is what makes it so special," Scheer said. "Because we all know where that bracket goes – in offices, on walls, on refrigerators. People are clamoring for the actual bracket.

"It's funny – when I get on the plane after the selection show ends (the last flight from Indianapolis to New York), I usually bring about 10 copies of the bracket. For me, I'm reviewing it to find out where I'm likely to be heading that week for the first and second rounds. People see me with the bracket and invariably ask if I have an extra one. The pilot asked me for one once. He got one fresh off the press."

To be sure, these games are serious business when it comes to revealing them. There's nothing quite like the blend of news and entertainment.

"We are definitely a news source, and Selection Monday is a news event," said Sacks of the women's show. "But we also are a television show and we need to be creative, entertaining and fun. We look at most every show we do in that way. News takes precedence, but let's do it in a creative and entertaining manner."

Ditto for CBS' Mann.

"It's part sport, because you want to know who's in the tournament; it's part news, because you're telling everyone who those teams are and where they are playing; and it's part entertainment, because it's a little like the Academy Awards as far as the suspense and intrigue," he said.

And it doesn't involve waiting for the morning paper anymore, either.

Click here for the men's bracket and here for the women's bracket.