Basketball Junkies Will Soon Get Their Ncaa Fix

That viewers’ lament that there are channels galore “but nothing’s on” is about to be stood on its ear … for college basketball fans, at least.

Soon there will be only one channel, but 63 games on. That’s March Madness on CBS. Beginning with the “Selection Show” at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, in which the NCAA basketball selection committee determines seeds and places 64 teams into regional tournaments, CBS will become the official network for all the games paring the field down to a Final Four and then a champion.

Despite telecasts ranging from 20 hours during first-round play to complete Final Four coverage, CBS won’t be able to bring every viewer every game.

Regionalized coverage will try to balance two concepts - assuring “areas of natural interest” that they will get to see their favorite teams’ games uninterrupted, while switching other viewers “to close games if they are watching blowout games,” CBS studio host Pat O’Brien said.

O’Brien, George Raveling and Quinn Buckner will do studio reports. Particularly during halftimes, when audiences are switched from one venue to another among games with staggered starting times, the trio will be sort of CBS air-traffic controllers.

“We’re the network of record for the tourney. Our integrity is at stake. But it’s also a lot of fun,” O’Brien said.

Sunday’s selection show, which by contract gives CBS exclusive first announcement rights as the selection committee picks the 64-team field, is like “election night,” O’Brien said.

He and Mike Aresco, CBS Sports vice president of programming, said this event is unique in magnitude, involving staffers from the mail room to ad sales to affiliate relations to on-air teams.

“It’s probably the most complex programming we do,” said Aresco, previously at ESPN, which telecast the tourneys before CBS won the bid six years ago.

Holtz ready for CBS chores

For a guy who describes himself as “small, wears glasses and has a lisp”- but probably doesn’t put any of that on his resume - Lou Holtz doesn’t seem to be the ideal candidate to coach football or to analyze it on TV.

But after many years as a head football coach, the last 11 at Notre Dame, Holtz is embarking on a career as a football analyst with CBS, where his three-year contract was announced Thursday.

He will work alongside analyst Craig James on “College Football Today.” Jim Nantz is likely to be the studio host, replacing O’Brien, who is beginning Olympics-related tasks preparing for CBS’ coverage of the Nagano Games.

Holtz said he also expects to “be a commentator on a game or two” this college football season, and “who knows where else that will lead?”

While he considers this a “long-term” commitment to broadcasting, Holtz said, “I can’t honestly say I won’t coach again.”

He quickly added, “My wife doesn’t want me to go back into coaching.”

He said that despite considerable speculation, he never talked with Minnesota Vikings officials about becoming their coach.

Holtz said he won’t seek to be controversial or “go out of my way to look to hammer,” but he won’t hesitate to criticize, even Notre Dame, if warranted.

Did the right thing

Filmmaker Spike Lee kept a promised appointment Jan. 19 with Curt Flood and his wife, Judy. She had helped her husband type into a computer his story of challenging baseball’s century-old reserve clause at the expense of his career as a player.

With Judy Flood relaying her husband’s wishes, as throat cancer prevented him from speaking, Lee gathered material. It is now a segment on HBO’s “Real Sports” to be shown on Monday.