Magic Johnson and Will Forte join the TBS crew to form a loaded desk as part of a Capital One spot during the Final Four. Credit: TBS; TNT Sports Credit: TBS; TNT Sports
By Demetri Ravanos on

Usually, I like to open my column with some kind of flowery sentence to set the mood before I drop my thesis. I have been staring at my laptop for thirty minutes trying to come up with something clever, and it dawns on me that there is no need for prose here. CBS and TNT Sports’ coverage of this NCAA Tournament has been absolutely terrible television, and I’m glad it’s almost over.

My relationship with college basketball is pretty simple. Tell me if Alabama is in the Sweet 16 and I’ll start watching then. I don’t get the appeal, especially when the NBA is on at the exact same time. 

I’m not qualified to talk about the action on the court. I am exactly who producers and executives have been trying to appeal to with the studio shows, though. Ratings for college basketball were up this year, but the ratings difference for the Tournament versus the regular season suggests most of the audience is like me. 

We just got here, so producers are dressing up the basketball talk with games and props, ostensibly to keep us engaged. Instead, even those of us who just got here are joining the hardcores in rolling our eyes and wishing they would get back to basketball. Who else could do just that than Oz the Mentalist?

I’m not saying all of the play-by-play teams have been flawless, but the coverage of the action on the court has been good. Well, maybe not the First Four games in Dayton, which featured Charles Barkley and Dick Vitale not paying attention to the game in front of them. 

The real problem has been the studio show. It’s a disjointed mess made up of a bunch of parts that don’t work together, and for the most part, barely work well on their own.

Nate Burleson seems to work on every show at CBS, so why should the NCAA Tournament be any different? He was called into duty in the first two weekends to anchor studio coverage on the network. That meant he was on the main desk with Clark Kellogg, Charles Barkley, and Kenny Smith. 

Burleson, God love him, just didn’t seem to connect with his co-stars or the audience. He wasn’t bad at the job. He was just a bad fit. If you’re on a set with Charles Barkley, you have to accept that Barkley sets the tone. Structure is just a suggestion. This isn’t CBS Mornings or The NFL Today, and it seemed like Burleson wasn’t ready for that.

Now, let’s be fair to Burleson and the other studio hosts, Ernie Johnson, Adams Lefkoe, and Zucker. The studio show has been both too busy and vastly under-produced. Producers leaned really hard into comedy, but just like I wrote last week about Netflix and Bert Kreischer, their plans never seemed to get past “this will be funny.”

Saturday’s shameless and seemingly endless Capital One bit was one of the biggest misfires seen on sports television in a long time. TBS crammed seven people on one desk in something that would make CNN’s Election Night in America coverage blush. One of them was Will Forte playing Dr. James Naismith to host what else but another game show. This stretched on for seven interminable minutes of pain between Final Four games. 

Before the Final Four debacle, the public seemed to agree that the tournament’s low point was Old Ball.

I don’t know anyone who found the decrepit animatronic even the least bit charming. There’s no evidence online that those people exist either. Renee Montgomery and Barkley looked on awkwardly as one punchline after another fell flat. 

CBS clearly had high hopes for the character, as evidenced by the fact that it was highlighted as one of ESPN’s celebrity brackets in its annual Tournament Challenge. High hopes and zero real plan usually end with a disappointing result. This was no exception.

It’s clear that the coverage of the NCAA Tournament needs a major retooling, and I hope it gets one before next year. It should be quick and easy work if Paramount Skydance completes its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery and all talent and crew are under the same roof. 

Before the retooling can begin though, the bosses have to identify what they got wrong. I see two symptoms of one very big problem.

First, the NCAA Tournament is not the Super Bowl. Is it a valuable TV event? Absolutely, but it’s an event stretched out over three weeks. It’s not a single day that forces the network to milk all that it can out of a limited time window. 

No one needs a halftime show. TNT made me genuinely feel bad for the Chainsmokers on Saturday night by putting the group in a no-win situation between the national semifinal games. The crowd in the arena couldn’t have cared less, and the people watching at home just wanted the second game to start at a reasonable time. 

It wasn’t Bad Bunny or Kendrick Lamar using an entire football field or Prince or Beyoncé performing their asses off. There was no buildup from the network or anticipation from the crowd. It was just confusion mixed with apathy. 

The Super Bowl gets a concert because it is America’s last monoculture – a single game to determine the champion of our most popular sport. It’s one of the few things we all experience together in the age of streaming. The Final Four is not that. For one, it’s three games, not one. Also, not that many people are invested in college basketball from the start of the season until the end.

The other thing the networks get wrong is the appeal of Inside the NBA. The show is absolutely the gold standard of shoulder programming. It’s one of the gems of sports television in the 21st century. It makes sense to strive to create something as iconic, but no one can do that without Chuck, Shaq, Kenny, and Ernie watching NBA basketball.

Let’s be real. None of those analysts seems to like basketball at all. Their insight and expertise are not why Inside the NBA is good. At its best, the show works because of their chemistry and the trust they have built up with their audience. Other shows should view it as a goal, not a guide. You cannot pick and choose pieces from Inside the NBA, drop them into other shows, and expect the same results.

Another silly attempt at a game show with Bruce Pearl, Barkley, Smith, and Burleson proved that CBS and TNT can’t just automatically create that special environment just because a couple Inside guys show up. It also proved just how shallow Barkley and Smith’s college basketball knowledge actually is in a disaster of a segment.

Both problems boil down to the same thing. CBS and TNT don’t seem to appreciate what the NCAA Tournament is as a TV product. The networks don’t even really know what it’s supposed to be anymore.

The 2026 NCAA Tournament was surrounded by a lot of unfunny, uninteresting noise. No one seemed to enjoy it. The networks have a whole year to figure this out and come back in 2027. Right now, let’s just appreciate that this particular turd has been flushed.

About Demetri Ravanos

Demetri Ravanos is a writer and broadcaster living in Raleigh, NC. He is also the host of This Team is Killing Us, a podcast about the Carolina Panthers.

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