Cbs Brings Its New Moves To Big Dance
Graduation, early departures and new recruits force college basketball coaches to overhaul their teams almost every year.
CBS has made its own changes, shuffling its roster heading into this month’s NCAA Tournament.
Gone are studio host Pat O’Brien and executive producer Rick Gentile. The major newcomers are executive producer Terry Ewert, who observed the coverage last year, studio host Greg Gumbel and analyst Dean Smith.
Also new to CBS this year are game announcers Jim Durham, Ian Eagle, Rolando Blackman and Jim Spanarkel.
Ewert plans a fresh approach - protecting areas of natural fan interest and eliminating the four-screen format that irritated many viewers.
“We are conscious of certain fan bases, and we don’t want to disrupt that,” said Ewert, who was hired by CBS just before the tournament last year. “One of the hot buttons last year was when we switched a Kansas audience out of a Kansas game to Cal-Princeton. We want to diminish that sort of thing.”
Gumbel returns to CBS this weekend after four years at NBC. Smith, college basketball’s most victorious coach, was with North Carolina during the last 23 tournaments.
“It is very difficult to be objective,” said Smith, who still watches film with the Tar Heels’ coaches and refers to the team as “we.”
“I remember in 1994 that I was bragging on Duke so much that Arkansas fans kept writing me letters,” said Smith, a guest analyst for CBS at that Final Four. “I probably went too far overboard.”
Gumbel has called play-by-play for five tournaments on CBS. But since leaving the network in 1994, he hasn’t done a college basketball game.
“It would be ridiculous to try to pretend that I know so much about the game. I haven’t followed it all year long,” he said. “My eyes have been on the Rockets and Jazz, not Duke and North Carolina.”
So Gumbel will lean heavily on studio veteran Clark Kellogg, now at CBS full time after spending the past five tournaments on loan from ESPN.
“My job is to prod Clark and Dean and push them along to get the best analysis out of them,” he said. “I don’t know if Dean will have something to say about everything. I’m sure Clark will.”
With Gumbel manning the studio all day Thursday and Friday, Jim Nantz will be free to call the first round with Billy Packer. While Gumbel sought studio advice from Nantz, he had some of his own for Nantz on the pitfalls of the first round.
“Covering four games in one day is one of the most unbelievable experiences I have had,” Gumbel said. “Out of eight teams, two or three you will barely have heard of and two will be without names on their back.”
But before the Big Dance can begin, the conference tournaments and selection show must finish. ESPN has wall-to-wall coverage of the ACC and Big East tournaments this weekend, as well as coverage of the first Big Ten tournament and championships in the WAC, Atlantic-10 and Big 12.
CBS will show the Conference USA final, the SEC final and a semifinal and the championship from the Big Ten tournament.
Championship week ends Sunday with the selection show on ESPN and CBS at 3:30 p.m. PST. But instead of showing all four brackets at the open of the show, CBS will show one at a time, making fans and teams wait to keep the audience from switching to ESPN.
One interesting question is whether Detroit and Illinois-Chicago will get at-large bids out of the Midwestern Collegiate Conference.
“Both of those teams beat Michigan State and have high RPIs, but their leagues are not distinguished,” Packer said. “Will the committee have the guts to take three teams from that league.”
Around the dial
Fox Sports Net will debut a movie series this weekend, starting with a 1-hour look at Roberto Clemente (Sunday, 9 p.m.) The documentary chronicles Clemente’s career, from his hypochondria and stubbornness to his graceful play and ideals. The highlight is clips from an interview Clemente gave a few months before his death on a charitable mission to Nicaragua in 1972… . ESPN will show the women’s selection show at 4:30 p.m. PST… . ESPN will televise its 1,000th NHL game on Sunday when the Penguins visit the Flyers. The game will feature a microphone on the referee… . NBC’s 10-year reign as America’s Olympic network begins Saturday with “The Olympic Show” on CNBC. The first show (Saturday, 4 p.m. PST), features Norway’s Johann Olav Koss and Australia’s Cathy Freeman… . ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” returns Monday night with a weeklong series of shows from Florida… . “Inside the NFL,” the longest-running show on cable, will return to HBO next year for its 22nd season. Len Dawson is expected to return for his 21st year on the highlights show and Nick Buoniconti should be back for his 20th year. Cris Collinsworth and Jerry Glanville are also expected to re-sign with the network… . ESPN’s “NFL Countdown” will expand next season to 2 hours… . Julio Cesar Chavez will fight Miguel Angel Gonzalez on Saturday night for the vacant WBC super lightweight championship. The fight is a pay-per-view event.