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NCAA Tournament Schedule Released: Every March Madness Game Is On TV In 2011

Feb 10, 2011, 6:51 PM UTC

The television schedule for the 2011 NCAA Tournament was released by CBS and Turner Sports on Thursday, and for the first time ever, every March Madness game will be televised. This is big news for college hoops fans.

For years, part of what makes March Madness so “maddening” has been trying to keep track of every game, and finding sports bars or satellite dishes to help watch your favorite team. Now, that’s all overwith. With the NCAA’s new television contract, every game will be televised across four networks: CBS, TNT, TBS, and TruTV.

Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch has the details for the first round:

The scheduled start times for these games on March 17 and 18 are as follows: noon (CBS), 12:30 p.m. (truTV), 1:30 p.m. (TBS) and 2 p.m. (TNT). The second set of games begin at 2:30 p.m. (CBS), 3 p.m. (truTV), 4 p.m. (TBS) and 4:30 p.m. (TNT).
Then we get to prime time. TBS opens the coverage with a 6:45 p.m. tip-off followed by games at 7 p.m. (CBS), 7:15 p.m. (TNT and truTV). The final games of the night begin at 9:15 p.m. (TBS), 9:30 p.m. (CBS), 9:45 p.m. (TNT), and 9:55 p.m. (truTV).

The regional semi-final games (the Sweet 16) will be split between TBS and CBS, and after that, every game will be nationally televised on CBS. The game-times from past years will all remain largely the same, so it's not as if the new TV deal has jeopardized tradition in any way.

It's so much better than that--this TV deal has made the tradition easier to follow than ever before, and somehow, college sports' holy grail just got a little bit better.

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