Although the First Four concludes Wednesday night, with the two remaining play-in games for the NCAA Tournament providing some sports programming for a broadcast partner, the tournament truly kicks into gear Thursday.
While the entities that make the NCAA Tournament possible (broadcast sugar daddies CBS/Turner the NCAA itself) talk about the importance of the midweek games, even those working the games seem to know what matters and what does not. That was clear from the opening game of the First Four.
While North Carolina A&T and Liberty played Tuesday night for the right to meet tournament top seed Louisville, what became a dramatic game seemed like an afterthought with a business-as-usual, no-need-to-question effort. That was the approach because the game did not matter, and the most glaring example game in the final seconds of the game.
Although Liberty's John Caleb Sanders drove the length of the floor for a last-second layup that missed, the near foul on the play was never reviewed by the on-air team working on truTV. Sure, a replay would not change the call, but viewers usually expect that analysis in such a situation. It never came. (And, honestly, the viewers themselves might not have cared because they were probably sneaking more regular peaks at Robert Morris vs. Kentucky.) Still, what could could confirm a game as meaningless any more than one of its decisive moments not being examined as part of the broadcast?
Again, though, we're talking broadcast "partners" with CBS/Turner when it comes to the tournament and that partnership, with an accompanying soft-glove treatment, bleeds through to viewers all too often at tournament time.
It's most often displayed in the tangible deference to coaches. Play-by-play men, analysts and sideline reporters seem to practice familiarity-and-friendship approach as opposed to a practical-and-professional approach. So, when truTV reporter Craig Sager interviewed North Carolina A&T coach Cy Alexander after the victory, he addressed him as "Coach Cy" as opposed to "Coach Alexander."
It's a small thing, but it matters.
Throughout the tournament, the on-air types -- and much more often it's the folks on site rather than those in the studio -- practice a too chummy, familiar tone. At its core the games are games, and they should be fun, but the result is an all-in-this-together approach, as opposed to anything that seems like just generally balanced or open-ended coverage.
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