Don't Miss It!

As a BYU / Mountain West Conference fan in New York City, I have struggled during the past 6 years to consistently watch BYU in action thanks to the MWC television contracts and the mtn (and yes, it deserves to be written in lower-case letters because you can barely see it).  As an alternative, I have become best friends with Greg Wrubell (BYU Football and Basketball radio announcer) while scanning the ESPN.com Gamecast.  So you can imagine that when I have a chance to actually watch a BYU game because it's on national television, you know I'll be watching.

Now that BYU has ascended to a projected #1 seed in both the ESPN and SI.com tournament brackets, March Madness will become a must-watch TV event in our home as well as many of your homes as well.  As an aside, my two-year old turned to me earlier tonight as we were watching the SportsCenter anchors discuss the new projected NCAA tournament brackets and said, "Dada, I na watch BYU! I na watch BYU!".  I hear ya, girl.

For years, CBS has been the sole broadcast channel for the March Madness NCAA tournament.  However, it has still been frustrating at times because in 2007, for example, Syracuse was playing their first-round tournament game at the exact same time that BYU was playing Xavier, so our New York region broke away from the BYU game after only 10 minutes, and I was forced to watch the rest of BYU's close loss to the Musketeers on my 12 inch computer screen.  The internet feed, even in 2007, was pretty archaic and I ended up seeing the word "Buffering..." more than the actual score of the game.  However, just in time for BYU's projected deep run through this year's NCAA tournament, CBS has partnered with Turner Sports in a multi-billion dollar deal in order to give fans everywhere the opportunity to serve as their own TV Guide during March Madness because all of the tournament games will be available live in their entirety across four national networks: CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV (formerly CourtTV).

Jimmer is excited that no one will be forced
to miss his team's run through the tourney. 

In all, CBS will broadcast 26 games throughout the tournament, TBS will broadcast 16 games, truTV will televise 13 games, and TNT will broadcast 12 games.  With BYU projected to head to the West bracket, it is most likely that the first and second-round games will be on either TBS, TNT or truTV.  You can read more about the programming details here, but one thing is certain - you better make sure you get truTV because I, for one, know what it's like when it's possible that BYU may have to play on a channel with a name in lower-case letters!  I just checked - whew!  I have truTV, so sorry, Greg, I'm going to be able to actually watch the Cougars in the NCAA tournament this year, but I promise I'll listen to the post-game show...