CBS brings madness in March to basketball fans

The NCAA basketball tournament is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sporting events of the year.

Even the selection show brings much anticipation from the teams on the bubble, joy to the teams who get a high seed, and disappointment to the teams who thought they deserved to get in but didn't.

These college players are a pleasure to watch. They make last second shots, hit crucial free throws, and also make bad decisions and commit foolish fouls.

But no matter what happens, these kids entertain the college basketball fans more in two days than they do all season long.

I realize that fitting 32 games in a 48 hour period takes a lot of time and preparation on CBS' part.

Getting the camera crews and deciding who announces what games can make any network go crazy.

After this weekend is over, CBS will have an easier time of handling eight games and probably do a pretty good job. But this past weekend, CBS drove me mad.

As an avid fan of college hoops, there are obviously games that I prefer to watch over others.

Of course, teams in your regional area are the games that CBS shows to the viewers in that region. I can accept that.

So as I sit down to watch games and maybe not really like the game I am watching, I still start to get into it.

You start to root for certain players and teams, get in the flow of the game, and begin to care about who wins and loses.

Then CBS comes in, turns off your game, and takes you to another game for several minutes or more.

Sure, if the game is down to its last minute or so and the score is within two points, I understand.

However, if there is eight minutes left and the score is close, who cares when you know CBS is going back to your game in a couple of minutes.

Watching the first couple of rounds in the NCAA tournament on CBS is kind of like watching TV with your wife who has control of the remote.

You start to watch one show, then get switched to the weather channel, then go back to Friends, then back to the weather, etc.

Please CBS, unless the game is almost over and still undecided who the winner is, leave on the game you started with. Or, if you switch to another game because of a blow out, keep it on that game.

Quit going back from game to game.

In fact, because it is so difficult to balance all of these games at once, why doesn't CBS sell the first round games to ESPN or Fox Sports?

That way, we would have an option of seeing whatever game we wanted.

I know, a satellite dish would solve all my problems, but that is not the point. ESPN handles the tournament better than any network could.

They have ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN news, and ESPN Classic where most of the games could be shown. Fox Sports has the many regional stations that could handle every game too.

One other option would be to have the first two rounds on two separate weekends, but this would take away from the uniqueness of the tourney.

In a perfect world, ESPN would have the NCAA Basketball tournament contract. Their analysts are second to none.

Listening to Digger Phelps and Dick Vitale is the most entertaining thing of the tournament, after the games of course.

CBS should just stop trying to show us every game on the first Thursday and Friday of the tournament and keep showing the game they chose for a particular region.

If a switch is necessary because of a blow out, do it at about the halfway point of the second half and keep it at that game.

Switching games makes it hard to get into the second game and forget about the game you were watching.

The commercials at the end of the game during the timeouts can be annoying also, but that is a whole other story.