How to fix the NCAA Tournament schedule
Both Friday and Saturday night’s NCAA Tournament action ended well after midnight at East Coast sites, long after West Coast action wrapped up. Our resident bracketologist explains why and offers a solution
If you follow me on Twitter, you probably already know that I was a bit vociferous in my criticism of the structure of the Friday and Saturday TV schedules, particularly as the days wore on.
Friday
Friday, the second day of the Round of 64, featured action in Charlotte and Columbus in the Eastern time zone, Omaha in the Central, and Seattle in the Pacific. Logically, action would have tipped off in one, if not both, Eastern time sites ahead of the two more western ones. Instead, CBS/Turner's first scheduled tip of the day was Kansas-New Mexico State in Omaha bright and early at 11:10 a.m. Central. The second tip, the 12:30 p.m. Eastern/local start in Charlotte between Michigan State and Georgia, made sense, but the third game of the day was the true genesis of one of the oddest scheduling episodes in NCAA Tournament history. Instead of starting play in Columbus at 1:40 p.m. Eastern, Northern Iowa and Wyoming got things started at KeyArena in Seattle -- a 10:40 a.m. Pacific tip.
My first reaction, “Was the NCAA Tournament suddenly turning into morning-basketball-filled ESPN’s Tip-Off Marathon?”
But the reality became a bit more serious than that. The decision to start play at Nationwide Arena at 2:10 p.m. Eastern led to a bit of a crunch there. The length of the West Virginia-Buffalo game, which featured 49 fouls and ended at 4:40 p.m. Eastern, pushed the start of the Maryland- Valparaiso game to 5:12 p.m. Eastern. At an Eastern site, that's typically a time when the arena is empty, as the afternoon session is over and the evening session is still two hours away from starting.
While the Terps and Crusaders managed to avoid being whistled for a foul a minute (barely), their game still ended at 7:33 p.m. Eastern. Given the scheduling of the night session in Columbus, I think you can begin to see where there might be an issue.
PSA: Albany game scheduled to start at 7:27 p.m. It won't. If everything goes well, closer to 8 p.m., methinks.
— Ray Curren (@currenrr) March 20, 2015 At 8:18 p.m. Eastern, 49 minutes later than scheduled, Albany and Oklahoma tipped off the evening session in Columbus with fans still attempting to enter the building, since the arena had to be cleared between the first and second sessions.
Even though this game is moving, still 9:29 to go and they have to clear the building between sessions. Hope Albany fans are at head of line
— Ray Curren (@currenrr) March 20, 2015 Game clock says 22:00 and Nationwide staff working feverishly to clear place for next session. Not ideal, methinks.
— Ray Curren (@currenrr) March 20, 2015 That meant the final game of the day, Providence-Dayton, which was controversial enough already (something I'll get to shortly), started at 10:54 p.m. Eastern, a mere 15 minutes before Gonzaga-North Dakota State, the final game of the day in Seattle hit halftime.
The Bulldogs defeated the Bison in a that game ended at 12:17 a.m. Eastern Saturday, a perfectly acceptable 9:17 p.m. Friday Pacific, plenty of time to check out the Seattle nightlife with your fellow fans. But they were still playing in Columbus, in a game the Flyers won at 1:09 a.m. Eastern, 10:09 p.m. Pacific.
That’s a long day for the fans, but it’s an even longer one for the coaches, who still had media commitments and, in the case of the winning team, preparation for the next game, and the arena staff, who had to close the building.
Solution
There’s a pretty simple and obvious fix for this one. Don’t start quadruple-headers at Eastern sites in the middle of the afternoon. The Pacific time zone exists for a reason. In fact, not only was the current schedule setup designed to allow fans to watch the end of every NCAA game on television, it was also set up to allow for more appropriate tip times at Western sites. The old joke of a 12:30 Eastern/10:30 Mountain start in Boise or Albuquerque in front of a three-quarters empty building was supposed to be a thing of the past. Apparently not.
Plus, Western host sites are more used to the rapid turnarounds needed with the short gap between the day and night sessions, since TV has made that a requirement for those host sites since the beginning of the 64/65/68-team era.
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Saturday
Saturday’s scheduling conundrum is a bit trickier to solve.
With two games at four sites apiece on Saturday and Sunday, and the doubleheader at one site featured in exclusive windows on CBS, the options for flexibility are a bit more limited. You figured that the Louisville subregional, featuring No. 1 overall seed Kentucky, was going to be placed in those Saturday afternoon (Eastern time) spots, and it was. However, the presence of an appetizing Arizona-Ohio State matchup in Portland, and its subsequent assignment to CBS, led to issues later in the night.
Since CBS would air both that 5:15 p.m. Eastern/2:15 p.m. Pacific start and the Utah-Georgetown contest that followed, yet another Eastern site was going to be start late and end even later. That honor fell to Pittsburgh, where North Carolina State-Villanova tipped at 7:10 p.m. Eastern, a perfectly acceptable time for a single game. But this was a doubleheader, and the nightcap truly fulfilled that definition, as Notre Dame-Butler tipped at 10:04 p.m. Eastern, ending after overtime at almost 12:30 a.m. Eastern. The result: Another late night for the players, coaches, and arena workers, and little opportunity left for fans to celebrate or commiserate.
On Sunday, the final game of the Round of 32, Louisville vs. Northern Iowa, tipped off in Seattle at 9:48 p.m. Eastern/6:48 p.m. Pacific, restoring a little bit of order to the Madness.
Solution
There isn’t a good one, really, as CBS/Turner prefers to keep doubleheaders on the same channel, so each game can be seen in its entirety. In this case, maybe the Tiffany Network could have been a little less greedy and taken the Pittsburgh pod, allowing TBS to take the Portland one, even though it would have lost Arizona-Ohio State in the process.
Is this scheduling new?
Recency bias pays a little bit of a role in my reaction to Friday and Saturday nights, but a review of past NCAA Tournament TV schedules under the CBS/Turner contract, thankfully archived on Matt Sarzyniak’s College Sports on TV site, illustrate this season’s scheduling was not an isolated occurrence.
In 2011, the final subregional to start and end play on Round of 32 Saturday was not Denver or Tucson, but Washington, D.C., even though both Western sites were scheduled for Thursday and Saturday that season. In the first three seasons of the CBS/Turner contract, all Western sites were scheduled for those days, as the NCAA selected those sites when the old CBS contract was in effect. Under that structure, games had to end on Sunday evening in time for 60 Minutes to air relatively close to its traditional 7 p.m. Eastern start time. So, Western sites were skipped on Fridays and Sundays.
With games available for cable on Round of 32 Sunday in 2011, the two Central time zone sites -- Chicago and Tulsa -- wrapped up their action after the two Eastern ones, Charlotte and Cleveland.
One season later, the two Western sites -- Albuquerque and Portland -- again assigned to Thursday/Saturday, were the last two to begin play in the Round of 32 on Saturday. On Sunday, proceedings logically closed at the Central time zone sites, Nashville and Omaha, instead of the Eastern’s Columbus and Greensboro.
The 2013 Tournament was the final one with both Western sites on Thursday and Saturday, and logic generally prevailed in those TV timetables, at least on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, when the western-most sites closed things out. Sunday, however, featured a Creighton-Duke game in Philadelphia wrapping things up on TBS with a 9:30 p.m. ET scheduled tip, an hour later than the 8:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. Central tip in Austin between Miami and Illinois.
Last season saw a Saturday scenario similar to this season's, as the final game in Spokane between Michigan State and Harvard was scheduled for 8:30 p.m ET/5:30 p.m. Pacific, an hour before of a contest in Buffalo between Villanova and Connecticut.
Clearly, TV interests have trumped logic, the needs of the fans, and, most importantly, the NCAA’s professed interest in the interests of student-athletes.
The biggest bracketing issue of 2015
Turning to the bracket itself, of all of the complaints about this season’s version, one stands above all others, Dayton’s placement -- not only in the First Four that’s played in the Flyers’ home arena, but also in the Columbus subregional as an 11 seed. But was this something the Selection Committee could have avoided in its rush to build a bracket? (Hey there, Sunday conference championship games!)
Well, Dayton was never going to be excluded from the First Four simply because it serves as host. Last year’s Selection Committee chair Ron Wellman put that on the record in 2014 when the Flyers’ placement the “Last Four In” group was a possibility. But what about the Flyers’ placement?
Well, BYU had to be slotted into the Tuesday game, since it fed into a Thursday/Saturday subregional, but there was the added complication of feeding the Cougars into a Thursday/Saturday regional as well. This combination immediately handcuffed the Committee.
The easiest answer would have been to pair Dayton and BYU on Tuesday, but with the Flyers the only First Four team to play in a Sunday conference championship game, it made sense to put them in the Wednesday slot.
The real culprit here is the presence of a trio Big 12 No. 3 seeds. With that conference playing a double round-robin and the principles and procedures document suggesting the Sweet Sixteen as the earliest possible meeting between a pair of teams who have already met twice, 11th-seeded Texas was always likely to be placed in the lone pod without a Big 12 rival. That meant the Longhorns were sent to Notre Dame's pod in Pittsburgh. That eliminated one of the two Thursday-Saturday subregional and regional paths available for BYU. While Iowa State's Thursday/Saturday pod in Louisville was fine for BYU, it fed into a Friday/Sunday regional in Houston, a non-starter for the Cougars. With the Committee wanting to keep the Flyers in a Wednesday matchup, Louisville was not an option for them either.
Dayton’s regular season meeting with Ole Miss also limited the Committee’s options, since the principles and procedures document advises against scheduling regular season rematches in the First Four.
Solution
If had Dayton been seeded as an eight or nine, as most expected, the Flyers’ placement would probably not have raised so much controversy.
The possibility exists that the Selection Committee will revisit the composition of the First Four after this season’s controversy, but I have to wonder if they would go to the length of sending a conference champion ranked near the traditional last four at-large teams to Dayton.
An easy fix probably does not exist for such a bracketing issue, at least not one as simple as the one that exists for this weekend’s scheduling troubles.
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