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Live and archived NCAA tournament games online In 2006, basketball fans have a lot more choices than they did in 1968. Watch all 63 NCAA tournament games at cbs.sportsline.com – in real time or after the fact – plus clips from classic games. The quality of the video isn’t perfect, but it’s free. And for $1.99 a game – or $19.99 for the whole tourney – you can download the games the day after they’re played from the iTunes Music Store. It’s hard to believe anyone would want to watch an entire basketball game on their iPod, but hey, in 1968 not many would have believed that millions of Americans would spend March filling out (and tearing up) their brackets for the office pool.
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“How March Became Madness” In 1968, before ESPN, high-definition TV and TiVo came into our living rooms, a young television exec named Eddie Einhorn tapped into the national psyche and started March Madness. That year, he put together the first national broadcast of a college basketball game, the championship between UCLA and Houston, which was played at the Astrodome. Einhorn’s book chronicles college hoops’ coming of age through interviews with 50 of the game’s most important figures, many of whom were involved in the 1968 national championship. The book comes with a DVD of the game. (Note the commercial for Winston cigarettes, that perennial supporter of college athletics.)
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yocohoops.com Think you’re a basketball junkie? You’ve got nothing on Yoni Cohen, who runs this college hoops blog. Called “easily the most complete national blog” by a Sports Illustrated columnist, yocohoops.com reflects the passion that Eddie Einhorn hoped to tap in 1968. The blog includes up-to-the-minute commentary on the games as they’re being played, analysis of this year’s tournament, and speculation about which coaches will be fired and rehired at the end of the season (which Cohen calls “April anarchy”). In a posting titled “Sixteen lessons from first- and second-round action,” Cohen sums up what many are thinking this time of year: “March Madness is the best event in sports.”
