Written by Paul Kapustka
Posted Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 3:00 AM PT

 

March Madness: Is the Web Ready?

Forget Y2K, Forget the new Daylight Savings Time. If anything is going to crush the innerwebs, it will be March Madness, and all the well-educated desk-job jockeys who sign on to CBS starting Thursday to catch the NCAA men’s basketball tournament online.

Never mind CBS’s lame attempt to double the amount of tubes it will use to carry streaming video to the madness masses. I am going out on a limb here to predict an early ‘Net meltdown, with the attractive Stanford-Louisville tilt Thursday in the South sub-Regional in Lexington, Ky. Even though Stanford (over-rated!) is a virtual lock to lose, the 12:40 p.m. EST tip-off makes it a perfect Internet-watching game for West Coast types who have just sifted through overnight emails and are settling down at the cube (9:40 a.m. Calif. time) with their third cup of Peet’s. Add that to East Coasters watching Boston College taking on curmudgeon coach Bobby Knight and the Texas Tech Red Raiders at the same time, and you’ve got your perfect bandwidth storm. Game on!

The next real crush could come just a few hours later, when two cool matchups in the East regional — Washington State vs. Oral Roberts and Georgetown vs. Belmont — begin almost simultaneously, at 2:40 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. East Coast time. While both should be blowouts, they also offer intrigue (you may never see Oral Roberts or Belmont in the Big Dance ever again) and the possibility of ridiculous upsets, perfect corner-of-the-flat-panel fare.

(Need a good schedule? Here’s the best one I’ve found so far.)

Please spare us, however, the always-lame (and oh so predictable) stories about how the NCAA tournament can harm office productivity. Like the people you work with haven’t found YouTube by now to keep themselves from real work whenever possible.

If anything, the NCAA Tournament increases office productivity, since it forces people to actually talk to each other, instead of sending IMs across the cube-aisle. Granted, they are most likely comparing their bracket picks but you never know, they might seize the moment and spend a minute or two talking about how to close some end-of-quarter sales while they wait for the next score to post.

Sphere
Topic: Networks & Studios, Online Video
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. It’s 9:45 Central time and I just logged on to the March Madness on Demand page - I’m # 17,075 in line for “general admission”, but more importantly there are 14,595 “VIP’s” (and growing) in front of me. Way to go CBS Sportsline! You’ve found yet another way to promise and not deliver!

    Jeff on March 15th, 2007 at 7:43 am - Permalink

  2. It’s 9:28 Pacific time and I just logged in… 112,000 in line for GA, and … NOBODY in line for VIP. Looks like the “bouncers” got the velvet-rope line moving in time for Maryland-Davidson…

    Paul Kapustka on March 15th, 2007 at 9:29 am - Permalink

  3. i got to the front of the line, and the player opened, asked me to choose a video player, and there was nothing to choose. perfect guys, now i’m waiting in line again. wayyy to go CBS. this is ff2 and mac

    buster on March 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am - Permalink

  4. Puny humans.

    If you can’t get online to view the failure of your statistically unlikely bracket, use the RUWT? toolbar. I’m watching XML versions of all the games today and I’ll let you know if something happens you meat puppets will be interested in.

    http://areyouwatchingthis.com/widgets/mozilla

    -RUWTbot

    RUWTbot on March 15th, 2007 at 9:45 am - Permalink

  5. Holy pre-roll! Just got in, and had to watch not one… not two… but FIVE pre-roll ads before some hoops came on the screen. Bonus seems to be that Web viewers get the “live” feed which means we may hear announcers saying funny stuff during the breaks.

    Paul Kapustka on March 15th, 2007 at 9:53 am - Permalink

  6. working now. this is impossible to watch with FF2. i have flip4mac, but the video is so chopy and jumping all over the screen. LAME CBS

    buster on March 15th, 2007 at 10:13 am - Permalink

  7. Using IE it looks pretty good… just a little latency, and a few sound mixups (ads playing in the background of live game action). I’d have to say thumbs up at this point. And it looks like my Stanford-web-meltdown prediction was off since local games (which are on broadcast TV) are blocked from the online service.

    Paul Kapustka on March 15th, 2007 at 10:35 am - Permalink

  8. [...] sort of. The NCAA and CBS SportsLine announced back in February that they’d be offering all NCAA tournament games online again this year for free. (Woohoo!) [...]

    Zatz Not Funny!»Blog Archive » March Madness On-Demand? on March 15th, 2007 at 10:57 am - Permalink

  9. looks like Pageflakes just launched a big March Madness package…I guess since the CBS stuff isn’t working, I can always scout out videos n’ stuff here…
    http://www.pageflakes.com/Community/Help/Blog.aspx

    mixdisq on March 15th, 2007 at 8:17 pm - Permalink

  10. [...] display just in case your direct report wandered around the cube-farms, worried that you might be slacking? Riethmiller said CBS didn’t collect any stats this year on the dubious CYA-clicker, but [...]

    NewTeeVee » CBS: NCAA Hoops Online a Blowout Victory on March 26th, 2007 at 4:29 pm - Permalink

  11. I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding , but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong :)

    Daniel on August 11th, 2007 at 6:02 am - Permalink

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