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NCAA Sweet Sixteen: TV and Online Viewing Guide

March 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Now that the craziness of the first week is over, it’s Sweet Sixteen time — in my mind one of the best weekends of college hoops because A) the teams playing the best are the only ones left and B) the pressure increases exponentially with every game. Even if your bracket went to hell (and yes I am proud of calling the Duke exit) you can still have fun watching the games. Here’s our guide for TV and online coverage for Thursday and Friday:

(all times Eastern)
Thursday March 22
7:15 p.m. — Wisconsin vs. Syrcause, CBS
7:47 p.m. — Louisville vs. Michigan State, TBS
9:45 p.m. — Cincinnati vs. Ohio State, CBS
10:17 p.m. — Florida vs. Marquette, TBS

Friday March 23
7:15 p.m. — Baylor (the unforgiving upsetters of Colorado) vs. Xavier, CBS
7:47 p.m. — Ohio vs. North Carolina, TBS
9:45 p.m. — Indiana vs. Kentucky, CBS
10:17 p.m. — North Carolina State vs. Kansas, TBS

Remember: All games being broadcast live are also available live online at the respective network’s website. If you have a cable subscription, you can watch for free. If you want to follow on a mobile device you can download the March Madness app and pay $3.99 if you haven’t already.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, Turner Sports Tagged With: , ,

Fans Must Pay $3.99 to Watch NCAA Hoops via Mobile Devices

February 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and now there’s no such thing as free access to the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament for mobile devices. According to an extremely unclear press release and FAQ released today, it appears you will have to pay $3.99 for access to the games via the March Madness application, whether you are using it on a PC or on a mobile platform, including Apple iPhones and iPads as well as Android-based devices.

Since it’s early and we haven’t had coffee yet this post might have later corrections but for right now here’s how it apparently breaks down: If you want to watch the games for free you have to go to the broadcasters websites. According to the press release you won’t be charged for the Turner-broadcast games if you can validate that you have a cable TV plan that includes the Turner Networks TBS, TNT and truTV. We are guessing that most people with a standards sports cable package will be covered, but you might need to check your plan. And right now there is no info on how that validation will happen. CBS says it will show all its broadcast games on CBSSports.com for free.

But if you want to use a mobile device to watch games online via the March Madness application, which includes a lot of bracket info and other goodies, the free lunch is over. It’ll cost you a one-time fee of $3.99, after which you will get a logon to use over any other device or platform you want. Apparently there is some messiness involved with using Android devices, and I am sure this won’t be the last post we do on the subject since the press release and FAQ look like they were also written without coffee or at least a decent proofreader.

If you want to try to avoid the $3.99 fee there is apparently some promotion coming next week involving Coke Zero where they will grant some folks free access, probably for surrendering your email address and your first-born child. Our quick prediction is that this news will cause howls of pain from the general hoops-loving public, who will start to wonder about government inquiries into the NCAA and its business practices. Maybe it’s time for coffee. And a search through the couch cushions for $3.99.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, CBS Sports, iPad, iPhone, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

NCAA’s March Madness Connects With Facebook

February 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

I was reading an interesting piece in Mashable about a partnership between Facebook and the NCAA in regards to the March Madness tournament that featured a fan contest and so I hustled on over to participate.

I imagined glory in my picking ability; after all I was first in my pool last year. Well at least after the first day, overall I finished dead last which one fellow member told me was almost mathematically impossible, but these things happen.

Sadly when I got to the Facebook page the contest was closed, which was a pity. However it was not a contest to pick the winners of the tournament, although one of those might be in the offing. Rather the contest, called the Super 10, is a very cleaver twist on the tournament and really meant for a much more serious college hoops fan than myself.

The contest selected 10 hardcore fans and teaches them about the intricacies of the selection process and how the choices are made. It was more than just filling out a form or sending in your name, A 30-second video was required as well in which the entrant needed to explain why their in-depth understanding of the sport made them the perfect choice for the contest. After the entries are all in a fan vote would select the 10 winners.

Well sadly that is all said and done and now 10 people will be flown to Atlanta and given a 4 day/3 night stay with tickets to the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament and a tour of Turner studios as part of the prize.

What is interesting is that this is a very clever way for the NCAA to tout its tournament in a new way to fans using social media as the primary tool to attract them and to judge the winners. All this without getting into trouble by looking like they are promoting gambling, which they would never do.

As a first attempt to partner with social media it is a very strong one, and the only failing I can see is that it was not well enough known by some groups of fans. I talked to a number of huge hoops fans while watching the Super Bowl and most said that they would have liked to participate, although several expressed some concern about making the video.

According to the stats on the Facebook site roughly 217,000 liked the contest, but that is really just a drop in the bucket. There will probably be that many office pools in California alone once the tournament starts.

This is the first partnership between Facebook and the NCAA and it will surely not be the last. The power of social media is growing daily, from a source of protest to positioning products. With almost a billion users it is an easy tool for the NCAA to reach both its base but also to reach out to new markets.

Filed Under: Facebook, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Sugar Bowl not so Sweet?

December 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

Virginia Tech in for a loss again on bowl game ticket sales?
Virginia Tech is on the way to selling 57% of its allotment of tickets to the Sugar Bowl, where the Hokies will face the Michigan Wolverines on Jan 3. 2012. The team reports that it expects to sell roughly 10,000 of its 17,500 tickets.

The team blames the Tuesday night game time as well as the readily availability to tickets in the secondary market. No comment on the fact that the cheapest ticket is $125. The Big Lead reported that the school is asking fans to buy proxy tickets to donate to various charities and the military.

So why is this news? Well last year the team also went to a bowl game, and also did not sell out its allocation of tickets. However the kindly NCAA does not simply allow you to send back the unneeded excess tickets. That is because many of the bowl games that we are about to be inundated with not actually sell out and how will the director justify a half million salary if the bowl does not turn a profit.

Top Linux predictions for 2012.
I love the end of the year predictions. I do not track them to see if they are accurate on an annual basis but do like to look back on occasion to see when the hover car was supposed to be here. Still when made by informed people they often do give insight into trends, be they sports, social or otherwise.

The Linux Insider has posted its Top 5 Linux predictions for the upcoming year and if they are accurate, or even near misses, it looks as if a lot of activity will be moving from the desktop and into mobile, cloud and consumer platforms.

I think this spells good news for users, Linux users and others, since competition should help continue a flow of new and innovative products and technologies. One interesting prediction is that all of the mobile and cloud growth will harm its efforts n the desktop- as well as help it. Read the reviews to see what you believe.

ESPN to broadcast many NCAA championships in $500m deal
The NCAA has expanded its multi-decade deal with ESPN that calls for the sports network to broadcast a huge range of the NCAA’s championships through the 2023-24 school year. The deal will pay ESPN $500m per year and will see 600 hours of broadcasting.

The deal expands on the current relationship between the two as ESPN already broadcasts 17 championships. Added to the deal will be broadcasts of women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s fencing, Division I women’s lacrosse, Division I men’s and women’s outdoor track, and women’s bowling.

ESPN will also expand its broadcast coverage of the early rounds of the Division I FCS football, women’s volleyball, softball and baseball tournaments and will get international rights to the men’s basketball tournament.

Did its history with Windows hurt Microsoft’s mobile phone effort?
Windows baggage was a deterent that harmed the market’s perception of Microsoft’s Windows Phone, or at least that is the point of view of a piece by Jason Hiner in Tech Republic. He believes that it has harmed users perception of what is a quality device and so prevented Microsoft from being a dominate player in the space.

This comes at a time of mea culpa at Microsoft, admitting very poor sales, disappointment and the traditional rotating of top management. All that was missing was the “Airing of Grievances” to make the event complete.

He claims that people believe that the difficulty and frustration of using the Windows operating system such as malware, viruses and other issues will be present in the phones. Decide for yourself but if you started out using MS-DOS on old, very, very, slow PCs you know what a breath of fresh air Windows was. After they got the bugs out of course.

This and that
Was anybody amazed at how much grief was directed at Albert Pujols for leaving St. Louis for a much better contract elsewhere? Since when did sports writers spur higher offers?

Is it just my conspiracy theory of the week or did the NBA intentionally foul up the Chris Paul trades simply to intensify interest in the NBA, something that appeared to me to still be lagging due to the strike?

I wonder if there will be any fallout from the drug bust of (ex) Chicago Bear Sam Hurd? That is a lot of pot and coke to be selling on a weekly basis while still playing football. He must have had an impressive network in Chicago.

Startup investment analysis firm SigFig claims that investors with iPhones are 20% more likely than average to own Apple stock while owners of Android phones are 25% less likely than average to own Google stock.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, BCS, ESPN, iPhone, NBA, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com Tagged With: , , , , ,

Bleacher Report and Turner Sports Continue to Expand Sports Apps Space

December 1, 2011 by 3 Comments

Ever wanted to follow a Div III Field Hockey playoff or have streaming news from your favorite pro team? Well there is a couple more apps that will help you do just that as web sites and news organizations continue to expand their presence in the mobile sports space.

First up is Turner Sports which has developed a mobile app called NCAA Sports for the Apple iOS and Android platforms. Designed to cover a wide spectrum of sports that often do not get wide coverage the free app will include live streaming video of over 60 NCAA championship games.

It will provide live streaming video of championships for all NCAA sports including Division II football, Divisions II and III wrestling, Divisions I, II and III field hockey, Divisions II and III men’s and women’s soccer, and Divisions II and III women’s volleyball. The app will also include in-depth regular season coverage of football and basketball.

The program permits users to drop in and out of the live broadcasts and provides the ability to chat with friends using Facebook or to post comments via Twitter.

In addition Turner has added a new mobile website on its hosted NCAA.Com space that is designed for mobile browsers user with touch screen devices such as Tablets and smartphones. The mobile website will allow fans to get live scores, schedules, news, rankings and video recaps that have been tailored for display on the mobile devices.

In a press release Mark Johnson, vice-president of Turner Sports’ NCAA Digital group said about the development that “College sports content is underserved in the mobile space right now and we’re excited to offer fans mobile products that are 100% dedicated to college sports.”

Bleacher Report moves desktop offerings to mobile app

The second app coming down the road is from Bleacher Report called b/r Team Stream App and the free app is now available for both Android and Apple iOS devices. It will cover a number of sports including NFL, College Football, MLB, NBA, NHL Soccer, Tennis and Golf.

The app is in ways a news aggregation program, Bleacher Report searches the web for news on the team you have selected and streams them to your mobile device using the app. However it will also include tweets from athletes and sportswriters.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apps, bleacherreport, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, Soccer, Turner Sports, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

NCAA/Turner Alliance to expand its Football Presence

August 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The alliance between NCAA and Turner Sports will be showing increased activity this Fall

With the start of college football just days away the NCAA and its partner Turner Sports have stepped up with a range of programs for fans and followers of NCAA football including a 30 minute preview show every week.

The show will be hosted by Vince Cellini and SEC college analyst Dave Archer and will cover not only the Football Bowl Subdivision but also the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), Division II and Division III, which should make for a very busy 30 minutes.

The move is just one of many as the two partners start to move forward in a joint effort to expand the NCAA’s on-line and broadcast presence. Last year the NCAA singed a pair of deals with Turner Sports, one of which included CBS as well.

The first deal called for a 14-year television, Internet and wireless rights agreement with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting. It gave the two the rights to present the Division I Men’s Basketball Championship beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2024 for more than $10.8 billion. This includes all the games being broadcast live, over a combination of four networks-CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV.

Included in the deal are joint marketing effort between the NCAA , CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting. At the time this was labeled the start of a new partnership and so it was as a second deal was cut soon after.

The second deal was just between Turner and the NCAA and it called for Turner create and mange NCAA Digital and which also covers 14 years. No terms of this deal were made available. NCAA Digital will cover all 88 NCAA championships and is designed to heighten awareness and interest in them, including running NCAA.com, the primary web site for all of the championships.

Included in the Fall football push will a number of expected features including a live scoreboard, power rankings and game recaps. There will be live statistics from ongoing games and a Heisman Watch as well as the ability to call up video highlights and watch features produced for the site.

It will be interesting to see how this impacts ESPN who currently is the unchallenged king of on-line and broadcast sports. I expect that will raise the bar for much of the channels analyst, much as the Baseball Network seems to have done, in my opinion. However the 30 minute show has a tough hill to climb to surpass the very popular ESPN College Gameday program.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, ESPN, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: , , ,
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