This Thursday, CBS began streaming live telecasts of March Madness (the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship tournament for those of you who didn’t fill out brackets) free of charge on the Web. Aside from easy-access hoops for those of us who can’t wrangle the remote away from a roommate who just got his or her hands on the latest season of 24 on DVD, the streaming tournament is going to put professional sports deals with television networks out to pasture.
As a rabid hometown sports fan (I’m from Philadelphia), I need my fix of Philly-based teams no matter the sport. Yet when networks blackout home games because of low ticket sales or my aforementioned roommate forgets to pay the cable bill, I’m forced to follow statistics on online scoreboards that update in real-time. With March Madness in full swing, CBS’s streamed telecasts are to a college basketball fan what a Ferrari is to a 16-year-old kid with a new driver’s license: high-octane freedom. Not only can I argue with friends over which player made a better basket, I can watch the game on my laptop while I’m stuck in an office meeting about teamwork. Yeah, it’s that good.
With CBS’s new leap to streaming live games, I finally might be able to get more bang for my buck for that monthly broadband bill. And if other networks follow suit for other sports? Well, let’s just say "Fly, Eagles, Fly" might just slip onto the cover of my latest TPS report.
Zack Barangan @ Tue, 03/21/2006 - 12:58pm
As the internet continues to grow (from an infant to a toddler as Mr. Smith would say) sports seem to flourish. The round-the-clock fast moving world of sports and the instantaneous satisfaction that the internet brings seem to go hand-in-hand. And as one of the resident sports fiends, I say amen to that.
But here's hoping that T.O. doesn't get his hands on this blogging technology. Can you imagine the emoticons he'd use?