Doug Gottlieb criticizes March Madness studio: ‘You can’t do Inside the NBA’

Before becoming the head coach of the University of Wisconsin Green Bay Phoenix, Doug Gottlieb had quite the media career.

Gottlieb’s assignments ran the gamut. He worked as a college basketball studio analyst, a game analyst, and hosted his own nationally syndicated general sports radio show. At one point or another, Gottlieb has worked for practically every major sports broadcaster in the United States.

So he’s certainly qualified to present a media critique if he wants from time to time. And when asked what he thought about the studio coverage for this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on CBS and TNT, he didn’t hold back.

“They’re trying to be Inside the NBA, but if you don’t have Ernie, you don’t have Shaq, you can’t do Inside the NBA. You just can’t.” – Former CBS college basketball analyst, Doug Gottlieb, on CBS’s March Madness studio show. pic.twitter.com/KiauTRdCrj

— Jason Whitlock (@WhitlockJason) March 26, 2026

“I do think I’m at liberty to comment on it because I worked at CBS, and I was on the studio show,” Gottlieb said on Fearless with Jason Whitlock. “The first thing is that, I think you gotta decide who you’re going to be as a studio show. It’s like they’re trying to be Inside the NBA. If you don’t have Ernie [Johnson] and you don’t have Shaq, you can’t do Inside the NBA. You just can’t. You’re trying to serve too many masters.”

There is certainly an element of Inside the NBA to the March Madness studio production, perhaps because mainstays Charles Barkley and Kenny “The Jet” Smith are part of the cast. But beyond that dynamic duo, the show has relied on plenty of gimmicks to get by. Oz the Mentalist made his second consecutive appearance, the crew has played its standard guess-the-logos game, one segment saw a bunch of donuts stacked on top of each other to display how exceptionally tall one player was. It’s not exactly a basketball junky’s dream.

Gottlieb had some opinions on the studio hosts, too.

“I thought Adam Zucker was really really good. And considering you’re trying to fill Greg Gumbel’s shoes, that’s very difficult to do. I think the idea of Nate Burleson is better than the execution of Nate Burleson. It’s one of those, ‘Hey, he’s not doing CBS Mornings and he’s hosted before.’ But there’s an art to that. The host is an art. And Rece Davis is an artist. Adam Zucker is an artist. Burleson’s just not. He’s just not. He just doesn’t know how to generate the conversation, not make it about himself.”

Then, in Whitlockian fashion, Gottlieb made a pivot to the show’s diversity.

“The NCAA wants it to be like a pamphlet you get for a school, ‘Oh hey, we got a black guy, we got a white guy, we got a mixed-race guy, we got a woman, we got everything.’ Like, you can’t do a show that way. Just do the best show possible, and the talent will come out.”

And in one fell swoop, Gottlieb’s credibility went straight into the toilet, despite making some cogent points about the rest of the show.