==More Q&A with CBS' Jim Nantz, who was at the East Rutherford, N.J., site to watch USC, North Carolina, Georgtown and Vanderbilt practice before tonight's games:
Q: What kind of vibe have you picked up on from the first two rounds of games, without a George Mason or any double-digit seed advancing?
A: This may not be the party line here, but to me the first two days were the most forgetable of any NCAA tournament in my 22 years. It was the worst first round I've ever been apart of. But then Saturday was one of the single greatest days -- eight games, three in overtime, any one of them could have gone either way. And then Sunday was another snoozer. So what we have now is a very odd set of matchups. Usually there's a game out there where you say, 'Oh, boy, that'll be one not to miss.' That's not to say any of these games left are bad, but nationally, there's not one of those games that would make you want to take the day off work. Now, and I'll go back to what may sound like the party line, we have the potential to have one of the great Final Fours of all time. How do you define great? If we have four No. 1 seeds, that's never happened. I don't expect it, but there are some wild possibliites down the road. So after three ugly days and one brilliant day, there's a payoff somewhere."

Q: Do you have imput into what games or regions you cover for this weekend? Was the East bracket more intriguing because of North Carolina and Georgetown meeting in the final?
A: Not really. The network usually puts me and Billy (Packer) on the Friday-Sunday site, with the idea that we'll do the last game on Sunday and we get to sum up the other three regionals. That's how it's happened almost every year. Some years we've fallen in love with a Thursday-Saturday site, like at Anaheim in 2003 when it was Kansas facing Arizona, and it also had Notre Dame and Duke in that bracket. But everytime we've not been in that late slot Sunday for the Elite Eight, we've regretted it because that generates the biggest following.

Q: We've seen you in the Circuit City ads, but any chance of you doing spots for Hooters?
A: I don't think that'd go over well with my wife. You know my daughter Caroline is in the second wave of commercials for Circuit City. We did those at a store out in Rancho Cucamonga. It was a lot of fun.

==The Hooters TV spots with Vitale acting like his idiotic self - “Hooters Is Awesome Baby!” — around the girls - “Aw, Dick!” one young misguided woman says — can still be seen on the internet if you miss ‘em that much:

==Meanwhile, in an interview with TVGuide.com, Vitale tries to justify his relationship with Hooters: “You know, my favorite thing about Hooters is very simple: People don’t realize (the chain’s) generosity. They’ve given over a half-million dollars to the V Foundation for cancer research. Jimmy Valvano was a good friend of mine, and their donations to his foundation have been very special to me.”

== With the Angels, USC and the Clippers fighting for live game time on KSPN-AM (710), the station has decided that tonight's USC-North Carolina game will air on 710, while the Clippers-Utah goes to sister station KDIS-AM (1110). If USC wins and has to play against Sunday, the Angels' exhibition agianst the Cubs will still probably get the 710 spot and USC would go to KLAA-AM (830) or KDIS-AM (1110) depending on tipoff time.

==Just hours before his team tips off against North Carolina, USC Coach Tim Floyd will be today's "Five Good Minutes" guest on Pardon the Interruption at 2:30 p.m. on ESPN.

==More Wooden than you can shake a trap zone at: FSN West airs a Chris Myers interview with Wooden at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, after the Lakers-Warriors telecast, for the latest edition of "CMI: The Chris Myers Interview," which starts its fourth season. Says Wooden on advice he’d give to players today: “Be themselves. Don’t try to emulate somebody else. Learn from others but don’t try to be better than somebody else. Just make every effort to do the best of which you’re capable, and be yourself. That’s what I feel like they should do, not be concerned about the media or the alumni or them making a comparison. Just be yourself.”

==Some think Gus Johnson’s over-enthusiastic calls of a college basketball game is refreshing during March Madness; if not Vitale-esque, at least it matches the energy on the court and always seemed to punctuate an upset in the making (such as Xavier’s game against Ohio State in round two). Others (like us) wonder if he’ll ever find a happy medium with his medication. Whatever the case, Johnson, who has been doing CBS games for 11 years while also the voice of the New York Knicks on radio, didn’t advance to the network’s broadcasting crew when it was pared down the Sweet 16. It’s Nantz, Dick Enberg, Verne Lundquist and James Brown – the latter of which is probably the reason no one will hear Non-Gloomy Gus scream “Last chance to dance!” during the Elite Eight. Let’s hear Nantz, Lundquist or Brown try that. Oh, my. It was New York Daily News media columnist Bob Raissman who wrote about Johnson last week: “(He’s) a victim of the network's star system. He is being shafted. Considering the way CBS Sports does business, this is not surprising. Often, talent it has developed and nurtured - like Johnson - cannot catch a break because the suits are too busy chasing another network's ‘star’ property."

== FSN Prime Ticket airs four CIF basketball state championship games Saturday from Sacramento. The two Division II games -- Archbishop Mitty vs. Brea Olinda (2 p.m.) in the girls game and Archbishop Mitty vs. Mater Dei (4 p.m.) in the boys contest -- are delayed from tonight. The two live Division I games -- Long Beach Poly girls vs. Berkeley at 6 p.m. and Fairfax boys vs. McClymonds at 8 p.m. -- use Jim Watson on play-by-play and Chris McGee as the sideline reporter. Caren Horstmeyer will do color on the girls' games and former Golden State Warriors and Stanford coach Mike Montgomery is the analyst on the boys' games.

==FSN's "Best Damn Sports Show Period" will use Tuesday's show (11 p.m.) to show off the latest "Best Damn Top 50" series on sports bloopers. Many haen't seen before (so say the producers). Check it out yourself on a trailer for the episode that's on the BDSSP myspace.com page, linked here.

==In addition to NBC's coverage of the PGA Tour's CA Championship at Doral in Miami, PGATOUR.com has exclusive coverage from the 16th hole so fans can watch players take their shot at the par-4 beautie. There'll be more than 20 hours of tournament coverage at that link through Sunday. Live radio coverage of the event via XM Satellite radio is also available at the site.

==Tonya Bergeson-Dana, the widow of IndyCar Series driver Paul Dana, does an interview with ESPN's Mark Schwarz that airs first on Saturday's 7 a.m. ESPN "SportsCenter," a year after her husband died in a pre-race practice run at the season opener in Homestead, Fla. Bergeson-Dana's interview is her first since the fatal accident, and she explains what the IRL has told her about what happened: “The IRL has been able to tell us, through examining some data, that Paul was going at speeds that were on par with the speeds that the other drivers were going through at that point. They were also able to tell us that he hit a piece of debris just before hitting Ed Carpenter’s car… If you hit a piece of debris, there’s nothing you can do, whether you’re a rookie or whether you’re the most experienced driver in the world.”

==The new MLB "Extra Innings" semi-exclusive deal with DirecTV starting next week continues to raise the hairs on the back of many necks. The subject was discussed in detail this week during the two-day 2007 IMG World Congress of Sports meeting in New York, hashing out why the MLB has been hammered by blogs and columnists for paying a reported $700 million over the next seven years for the package that has the league's out-of-market pay-per-view games, alienating fans who have been paying for it on either their cable system or on the Dish Network. Tim Brosnan, the MLB's executive vice president of business who was on a panel that included Dodgers vice chairman Jamie McCourt and ESPN general manager John Skipper, said that cable industry's decision to leak information about the package during negotiations was "a great load of sour grapes ... What you have here is a full plate of bidders who lost. ... We negotiated to deliver the most baseball coverage to the most fans." Dave Checketts, the new owner of the St. Louis Blues added: “If he had made a deal with the cable programmers, he would be getting the same amount of heat from people who live in rural areas and only use satellites. I think he made the right deal.” The Sports Business Journal, who is sponsoring the event, took a poll and concluded that 66 percent of the audience (mostly executives in the sports business and sports media journalists) agreed that MLB made the correct decision to go with DirecTV, Skipper said, “That’s not fair. You should have done a secret poll before and another after Tim spoke to see how many people he moved. I was moved.”

==Gotta admit, we really haven't watched "The George Michael Sports Machine" for about as many years as we've seen an episode of "Davey and Goliath." For one, ol' George came on too late on a Sunday night after the KNBC Channel 4 newscast had ended. We'd seen most of the day's highlights already on ESPN or, believe it or not, on the expanded local sportscasts that aired that night. Even adding Lindsay Czarniak toward the end wasn't going to cut it. The fact Michael is ending a 27-year run Sunday night doesn't bring as much sentimental mushiness, only a laugh or two about how it tried to look high-tech with this TV screen and a button that Michael would push when it was time to show a hlghlight. That was kitchy enough for many to stick with it all these years. We'll give him props for agreeing to end the show because he said he didn't want his contract with the local Washington D.C. affilate renewed at the expense of other staffers. Others who care to wax poetically about Michael's run on "Sports Machine" can read this piece in USA Today, or a Washington Post tome on him also leaving the local TV weekend anchor role.