Charles Barkley picks two March Madness favorites as Final Four hits cable – Sporting News
NEW YORK — Charles Barkley expects the most competitive NCAA Tournament in years. That won’t keep him from a prediction, of course. Barkley’s two favorites to cut down the nets in Houston are North Carolina and Kansas.
“This is the most wide-open the tournament ever been,” Barkley told Sporting News during a one-on-one interview at a breakfast this week previewing Turner and CBS Sports’ coverage of the 2016 NCAA men’s basketball tournament. “We don’t have dominant freshmen, where a team has three or four great freshmen like we’ve had the last X amount of years.
MORE: The best teams that didn’t win March Madness
“I like (North Carolina’s) big guys a lot. Their guards are streaky. Roy (Williams) is a hell of a coach. There’s probably going to be two favorites: Kansas and North Carolina.”
But the Basketball Hall of Famer, who shifts from NBA to NCAA for Turner’s coverage of the tournament, said he wouldn’t be shocked if Michigan State, Oklahoma or Villanova ended up winning it all.
That might even be an undersell. CBS broadcaster Greg Gumbel estimates there are eight to 16 teams that can win the tournament, based on conversations with college basketball insiders.
“There are no great teams,” Gumbel said, “but there are a lot of really good teams. Either way you look at it, if you like parity, then you’re going to like the tournament. Because it’s probably the least predictable tournament we’ve had in a long time.”
MORE: 10 best programs without a Final Four since 1985
How we keep up with those twists is changing, though. Turner and CBS have worked together to air all 67 games across four TV networks (CBS, TBS, TNT and TruTV) and NCAA March Madness Live for six years now. But for the first time, a cable channel will carry the title game, with TBS airing it Monday, April 4. The team-specific “Team Stream by Bleacher Report” broadcasts will be available on TNT and TruTV.
While the semifinals and championship game will be on TBS, the CBS lead announcing team of Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery, Grant Hill and Tracy Wolfson will call those games.
Even a decade ago, it would have been unthinkable for a big event like the NCAA men’s basketball championship game to air on cable. But the difference between broadcast and cable TV is “almost non-existent” nowadays, Turner president David Levy said. He doesn’t expect a falloff in TV ratings — though the standards are high. CBS drew 28.3 million viewers to last year’s Duke-Wisconsin championship game, more than the 26.2 million that cable network ESPN drew for the college football title game in January.
MORE: 16 March Cinderella star players we’ll never forget
Still, Turner is proud to host the first NCAA men’s basketball championship game on cable TV, once the backwater of big-time TV sports. From an advertising standpoint, the tournament is virtually sold out, with ad dollars up 10 percent vs. last year.
“There’s a very big bounce in our company’s step,” Levy said.
Fans now watch games on so many different platforms, including mobile phones, that CBS broadcaster Ian Eagle thinks it’s a moot point.
“People find it; it’s a different age now,” he said. “If you asked me that five years ago, I would have said yes. In 2016 it’s not that big a deal.”
MORE: Sporting News’ college basketball All-Americans
Gumbel agrees that today’s viewers don’t make much of a distinction between broadcast and cable.
“Do you know anyone who doesn’t have cable? I don’t,” the veteran broadcaster said. “It’s a natural evolution. (Turner) has certainly earned the right — and paid for the right — to do it. They do a great job.”
That only will be helped by what is shaping up to be an intriguing tournament. While last year produced a Final Four including three No. 1 seeds (along with No. 7 seed and perennial overachiever Michigan State), the ambiguity of this college basketball season seems to lean toward upset possibilities.
No one is writing off the powers, though.
“Michigan State? Very impressive,” Eagle said. “Indiana? That’s a team people need to start paying attention to. The way they’ve improved throughout the season, their chemistry is off the charts.”
MORE: 2016 NBA Draft prospect rankings: Simmons at 2?
Then there’s Big Blue Nation, which watched its team enter last season’s Final Four undefeated, only to lose to Wisconsin.
“People have fallen asleep on Kentucky,” Eagle said. “But they’re ridiculously talented. And they’ve gone a little under the radar. To me, that might mean they surprise some people this year.”
