Credit: CBS
By Drew Lerner on

CBS Sports and TNT college basketball analyst Bruce Pearl lived up (or down) to everyone’s expectations during Sunday evening’s Selection Show.

The former Auburn Tigers head coach, who resigned in September and left the job for his son, predictably advocated for the school’s inclusion in the field-of-68 after the school missed out on the tournament by two spots. Pearl cited Auburn’s strength of schedule and quality wins as reasons the Tigers should be in over a school like SMU, who was one of the last teams selected for the field.

“Auburn beat three champions this year. They beat Florida, they beat St. John’s, and they beat Arkansas. They played the toughest schedule in the country, don’t know if they were rewarded for it,” Pearl said. “It’s hard to get another couple of SEC teams in when the SEC already has ten.”

“Yeah, and I think the losses- we’ve not had a team one [game] over .500 overall make the field as an at-large,” Pearl’s colleague Clark Kellogg replied. “We’ve had a couple that were two over .500, and they had a similar strength of schedule. So I think it was just the accumulation of losses that negated some of the big big wins that Auburn had, because the first criteria is wins and losses, and I think that ultimately did Auburn in.”

“There’s no question, you either got to win your way in, or lose your way out,” Pearl continued. “For me I always say, ‘Okay, we’re going to put one in, who would you take out?’ For me, SMU with a 191 out-of-conference strength of schedule. I don’t know if they should’ve been rewarded. They only won five games away from home. And for me, it would’ve been either Oklahoma or Auburn taking that last spot.”

“Alright,” host Adam Zucker deadpanned. “Sorry you had to watch it all.”

Pearl has earned some understandable criticism over the comments.

On Sunday, it was first reported by AL.com that Pearl remains on Auburn’s payroll as a “Special Assistant to the Athletic Director,” having received $156,250 in payments from Auburn since resigning as the school’s head basketball coach. That would represent a pretty clear conflict of interest for Pearl, even beyond his son coaching the team. Some criticized CBS’s decision to give Pearl a platform to defend Auburn given his relation to the school.

About Drew Lerner

Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.

View all posts by Drew Lerner