Bracket busted media notes
Expanding on the Daily News media column in today's paper about all the maddening stuff going on this March duriing the NCAA tournament, it only makes sense to start with a video game that somehow doesn't include John Madden himself:
=If Florida, North Carolina, Kansas, and Ohio State are the No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tourney, only two will make it to the Final Four if you are to believe the Electronic Arts "NCAA March Madness 07" videogame that played out the 65-team tournament for ESPN.com. To watch how the computer decided it, go to this ESPN.com link. And for the EA Sports videogame simulations, you can click onto this link. For the record, EA had USC losing to Arkansas by five in the first round, UCLA losing by seven in the second round to Gonzaga and Long Beach State losing by 10 to Tennessee in the first round. Oregon, however, went all the way to the Midwest final (Great Eight) before losing to Florida.
=ESPN.com also reports that more than 3.3 million brackets were entred into its "Men's Tournament Challenge" contest, about 300,000 more than did it last year. Some of the trends reported there: More picked Kansas, Ohio State, Florida and North Carolina to reach the final four than any other team; Ohio State was picked to defeat North Carolina more than 60 percent of the time, as was Florida picked to knock out Kansas; a little more than half of them picked Ohio State to beat Florida in the title game, and only 26% of the entrants picked Virginia Commonwealth to defeat Duke. The Men’s Tournament Challenge entrant with the most points wins $10,000.
=ESPN, which threw on old boxing matches and replays of some figure skating events during the 9 a.m.-to 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.-to-9 p.m. windows against the NCAA tournament, does have its "College GameDay" crew analyzing the day's activites between 2-and-3 p.m. and again from 9-to-10 p.m. as it blends into the day's "SportsCenter."
= Starting Saturday, all 63 games of the women's tournament will be on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU or ESPN Full Court fo the fifth year in a row. ESPN and ESPN2 have 48 first- and second-round games in 13 windows. ESPN Full Court has the out-of-market pay-per-view package.
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This just in:
= A late change in plans meant Jose Mota and Mark Gubicza didn't call the Angels' exhibition game against Colorado that was telecast on FSN Prime Ticket last Sunday, but two games this weekend will feature Mota and Gubicza working together. On the PT telecasts of the Angels' game against the Chicago White Sox (Saturday, delayed at 7 p.m.) and against the Chicago Cubs (Sunday, delayed at 5 p.m.), Mota and Gubicza will work three innings at a clip, with Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler working the other blocks of three innings, rotating in and out. The Dodgers, meanwhile, have rotated Triple-A broadcaster Russ Langer into their exhibition game broadcasts on MLB.com, while A Martinez has also done some work. Former Dodgers third baseman Bill Mueller, now retired and an assistant to GM Ned Coletti, will do a game on March 22.
= As part of a new deal between DirecTV and the Disney networks, the satellite cable system will add ESPN Deportes, the 24-hour Spanish-language sports network, to its Spanish-language service this month. ESPNNEWS' high definition channel will also be added.
= Le Anne Schreiber (pictured), a former New York Times sports editor and editor in chief at Womensport’s Magazine, has been picked to replace George Solomon as the new ESPN ombudsman for the next two years, starting in April. As the independent on-staff person who’s supposed to represent the viewers while critiquing the network’s coverage, she’ll continue writing once a month on ESPN.com.
= Tiger Woods is on TV. For real. NBC has the Arnold Palmer Invitational Saturday and Sunday (11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day) from near Woods' home in Orlando, Fla. NBC analyst Gary Koch, on how Woods may rebound from his PGA Tour steak ending recently at the WGC match play event: "Any time Tiger has anything negative happen, it always seems to motivate him. Nothing shakes Tiger's belief in himself."
= HBO is charging $44.95 for the pay-per-view telecast of Saturday's Marco Antonio Barrera-Juan Manuel Marquez WBC super featherweight championship bout from Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (6 p.m.) with Jim Lampley and Emmanuel Steward. HBO also has hired Bob Papa as the new broadcaster for its "After Dark" series starting March 24.
= Don Yaeger, one of Sports Illustrated's top investigative reporters, will team with former Duke lacrosse coach Mike Pressler to write about about the rush to judgment in the recent Blue Devils' team scandal called "It's Not About The Truth," scheduled to come out in June from Pocket Books Publishing. Yaeger recently co-wrote the book, "Turning The Tide" with Sam Cunningham and John Papadakis about the 1970 USC-Alabama game that helped integrate Southern football. Pressler was Duke's coach for 16 years before he was fired in wake of the scandal. He's now the head coach at Bryant University.
= Monica Armstrong, a 25-year-old communications/business major at Cal Poly Pomona who works as an intern at KCBS and KCAL, was named the annual winner of the $2,500 Michael Jund Sports Media Scholarship given by Kings, the Kings Care Foundation and Jung's family. The award, given for the eighth time, is to honor former Kings media relations assistant Michael Jund, who died from a heart condition at the age of 22 in May, 1998. Armstrong was given the award during Thursday's Kings-Chicago game at Staples Center.
= ESPN's hiring of Emmitt Smith as its new NFL studio analyst, effectively replacing Michael Irvin on “Sunday NFL Countdown” and “Monday Night Countdown,” raised an interesting observation: Did Smith’s recent victory on the ABC (and ESPN family member) “Dancing With The Stars” help him assimilate quicker into the field of TV sports analyst? A story on Forbes.com raises that question, with this response from David Carter, the director of the Sports Business Institute at USC: “Between Smith’s post-career notoriety that he’s enjoyed and his high likeability factor just makes him a very approachable not everyday guy, but something about him that’s part inspirational figure and part jock.” Kind of the anti-Irvin. For more “Dancing” crosspromotion, former NBA star Clyde Drexler, who’ll be on the series premiere Monday (8 p.m.) joins ABC’s Detroit-Phoenix telecast (12:30 p.m.) as a halftime guest with Dan Patrick.
= NBC signed a deal with Championship Off Road Racing (CORR) to do seven events this season, starting April 28. Bill Weber and Wally Dallenbach will be the broadcasters. The upcoming season has seven events, including two at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds (April 21-22 and Sept. 15-16) and one at the L.A. County Fairgrounds (May 19-20).
= The NFL Network announced it schedule of 30 games from NFL Europa starting Saturday, April 14 and leading to World Bowl XV on June 23. Look for some familiar names. The opening-day doubleheader includes Amsterdam (with quarterback Drew Olson (pictured) of the Baltimore Ravens) against defending champion Frankfurt. Former Campbell Hall product John David Washington, the son of actor Denzel Washington, will play running back for the Hamburg Sea Devils, allocated to that team by the St. Louis Rams. About 150 current NFL roster players are on NFL Europa rosters.
= SI.com and NBCSports.com partnered on a cross-promotional broadband video, breaking news and photography deal for their respective websites. The deal means SI.com will regularly point viewers toward NBCSports.com broadband segments featuring breaking news, short-form programming and post-game interviews as well as sports update segments on weekends. SI will also point its viewers to NBC's Rotoworld fantasy news and information from its player and team pages. NBCSports.com will produce SI writer broadband segments and point its viewers toward SI.com for writer analysis & commentary, SI's renowned photography and its popular Truth & Rumors daily feature.
=And finally, the St. Petersburg Times reports on the latest acquisition by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays: A blogger. Erik Kombol auctioned himself off on eBay to raise money for AIDS awareness after the death of his brother. His deal: He'll blog throughout the season about the team of the winning bidder's choice. Devil Rays president Matt Silverman, who said he lost an uncle to AIDS, took Kombol up on the deal with a winning bid of $535, plus an extra $1,000. Kombol, a stock broker, will do his work on armchairgm.com, devilraysuniverse.blogspot.com and other sites.