To our loyal readers, posts will crawl to a minimum now that I am studying for finals.  Enjoy the NBA playoffs.

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Duke won the national championship last night, but similar to the Baylor game, this one was not without a late-game, controversial offensive foul.  I have been looking for the video online but cannot find it.  Late in the game (I think there were a little over a minute left),  Gordon Hayward (who I am surprised he does not play for Duke since he is white and good) drove to the basket and was undercut by one of the Duke guys (Singler or Scheyer).  Hayward ended up making the shot for the and 1, but the refs ruled it was a charge…even though the defenders legs were still moving and even though he was directly under the basket.  Those two, if not three points (Hayward had not missed a free-throw all night) would have been the difference in the game.

While you cannot file this one under the TV ratings conspiracy theory, this may fall under the conspiracy theory involving the NCAA wanting BCS teams to win national championships.  However, that is even pretty far out there for me to buy into.  Maybe, as a life-long tar heels fan, I really did not want to see Duke win.  However, they had a great team and hats off to them and Coach K.

I stumbled upon this while looking for the Hayward charge video.  It is “One Shining Moment” sans Jennifer Hudson.  Someone who could not win American Idol should not be singing the best montage in sports.  Take it away Luther Vandross:

Call it a wild conspiracy theory, but I believe the charge called on Acey was a “David Stern”-like ploy to get ratings happy Duke into the Final Four.

“The selection committee knew the NCAA is in the process of deciding whether to opt out of the final three years (2011-13) of its 11-year, $6 billion contract with CBS. If the contract is put on the open market, it is smart (TV) business to attempt to maximize – big-time – the 2010 tourney’s ratings.”  NY Daily News (commenting on why Duke was given the easiest regional bracket).

Clearly Zoubek did not have position and Baylor was posed to take over before the “and 1″ was taken away.

You make the call:

I though that was a first down?

Even the most diehard sports fans do not realize the amount of people it takes to broadcast a sports game. On even the smallest shows, there are camera men in the stadium, audio technicians, tape machine/EVS operators for replays, video technicians, producers, directors, a technical director, an 18-wheeler filled with millions of dollars of equipment…and this just covers the bare minimum to put a game on the air. Something that goes above and beyond a normal show is the “yellow line” you see on TV.

In the TV production business, it is called the “1^st and 10” line. ESPN, Fox, CBS, and NBC outsource the duties of putting the line on TV to a company called Sportsvision. While it may seem like a simple task to paint a yellow line across the field, it is actually very complicated. Continue reading »