Watchdog

Sumner Redstone is not an MMA fan, which is his prerogative. (Ed Goren of Fox apparently agrees with him.)

But did Mr. Redstone have to share with us in the above-linked article the news that he is "a lover?"

TMI!

Vin Scully and Charles Osgood received Lifetime Achievement Awards Tuesday night from Fordham's WFUV.

You may be aware of Mr. Scully's sports credentials. But Osgood has some too, it turns out.

"I was the PA announcer for the home games of the Fordham basketball team," he said in a comments relayed to me by organizers of the event, "and at halftime I would go upstairs and play the organ. I was both Bob Sheppard and Gladys Gooding."

I spoke to Scully and Ralph Branca at the event and plan to write about it in the newspaper in the coming days.

Unless I'm getting desperate around midnight to reach 52 posts, in which case I might post it all today.

Brett Favre is scheduled to be on the "Late Show with David Letterman" Thursday night.

Why am I telling you this now?

To get it out of my inbox.

The final numbers are in for "March Madness on Demand," and to the surprise of no one it was a huge, record-breaking hit.

Click below for the full news release because I'm too lazy to rewrite it in more digestible form.

Mario Chalmers was born in Anchorage about a year-and-a-half after I moved away.

My first assignment for the Anchorage Times was to stop in Las Vegas en route from East Northport to Anchorage to cover a high school tournament in December of 1982.

East High was the big Anchorage powerhouse at that time. Chalmers went to Bartlett High.

But I digress.

Two questions:

Why was competitive eating not a sport when I was in college, and how can I get Cablevision to carry CBS College Sports Network (formerly CSTV)?

Click below for a news release that explains all.

Smithtown's own Sam Ryan was on the scene in San Antonio for Monday night's NCAA title tilt, but where were her friends Greg, Clark and Seth?

Yeah, I know it's Thursday already and it's baseball/golf/hockey season. But since I got several questions about CBS's decision not to send its studio team to the Final Four and since I bothered CBS's p.r. people with e-mails on that subject before and during the big game, I figured I might as well share the explanation:

Short version: There is no reason to do so for the Saturday afternoon Final Four pregame show, as it mostly would occur with an empty arena as a backdrop. And there wasn't a good enough reason to go through the time, hassle (and, presumably, money) involved in schlepping to Texas Monday for the sake of 10 minutes before throwing the action to Jim Nantz and Billy Packer.

After watching Fox's NFL studio crew nearly turn into ice sculptures in Green Bay in January, I've decided on-site pregames are overrated and perhaps life-threatening.

As CBS's spokeswoman correctly noted as I pestered her Monday night, "Honestly, no one has asked and no one but a TV writer would care."

Ch. 2 recently endured a wave of layoffs and buyouts and such - the newspaper industry feels your pain - and also axed its "Sports Sunday" roundup show that had followed the late local news.

The last episode was seen March 30.

I'm pretty sure "Sports Extra" still is on Ch. 5, but now it's called "Sports Xtra."

And Mike Francesa's show on Ch. 4 gets solid ratings.

And ESPN, SNY and MSG probably do highlights shows, too.

So we'll live. But the moves at the station obviously are unfortunate for the people whose jobs were affected, or eliminated.

(That's Ducis Rodgers in the picture. He's still there, and does a nice job. I always forget to write about the guys and gals who do sports on the local broadcast stations, except when I write about how everyone forgets in the SportsCenter era about the guys and gals who do sports on the local broadcast stations, which I did about 14 months ago. I digress, I guess.)

Monday's NCAA Tournament championship game thriller attracted a respectable average of 12.1 percent of households, down slightly from last year's 12.2.

Overall, though, the tournament's 26 telecasts averaged 5.6 percent of homes, down from 6.1 last year and the second-lowest for the event to the 5.5 recorded in 2003, in the early stages of the Iraq War.

CBS's Billy Packer and Jim Nantz addressed Memphis' no-foul faux pas late in regulation only in passing Monday night.

In the studio, Clark Kellogg did a more thorough job analyzing it.

But the ESPN crew, led by Bob Knight himself, really went after Memphis and coach John Calipari on SportsCenter. It was good stuff, and they were right, of course.

Just wondering, though: Would they have reacted the same way if the same sins had been committed by a more popular member of the coaching fraternity, say, Coach K?

Thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . um, NO!

The band on David Letterman's show Monday night displayed a sense of humor and irony when it serenaded Jose Canseco with the old song "You Talk Too Much" as he walked onto the stage.

Once there, Canseco as always displayed a fascinating blend of "voice of reason" and "irresponsible, opportunistic wacko."

And so it goes.

(UPDATE: Here is Canseco hanging up on Ca-Boom this morning of you're interested.)

Good CBS: Analyst Clark Kellogg nailed the Final Four on Selection Sunday when he picked all four No. 1 seeds.

“We look to the Final Four now. I'm interested in seeing all number one seeds," he said that night. "I think UCLA is terrific, Final Four experience the last two years, Memphis, Elite Eight experience, Kansas terrific balance, North Carolina terrific balance and firepower. I think these four teams are the teams that separated themselves out.”

Bad CBS: If bolting to "60 Minutes" as quickly as possible is more important than providing a real post-game show after a thriller like Davidson-Kansas, maybe it's time to let someone else show the games. That way "60 Minutes" always can start on time!

Apologies in advance for probable lack of Monday posts. I have to do my newspaper job.

Happy Opening Day, everyone. And get well soon, Bobby Murcer and Bob Sheppard. You both will be missed at the Stadium.

I admit it. I'm not a huge Gus Johnson guy.

Only because I generally believe sports fans hear enough yelling from bosses, spouses/significant others and children that we don't need more of it during games.

But I'm clearly in the minority, at least among the youngish fans in Blog World.

Here is an entertaining interview with Gus from SI.com in which he discusses said popularity - which has reached (almost) Erin Andrews proportions - as well as his efforts to put a positive spin on the Knicks.

By the way, Gus is working the Davidson-Wisconsin tilt Friday night. If Davidson wins or makes it close . . . well, count on him to be excited.

One of my most loyal readers wrote recently to ask inquire about something he has noticed from watching way too many NCAA Tournament games:

That CBS mentions the cities in which games are being played, but never the arenas.

Hmm. Turns out it's on purpose. It says so at the end of this story in the Detroit News.

I assume this is related to the fact all corporate logos on the court are covered up during NCAA games.

CBS's "60 Minutes," which has radically increased the number of sports-related pieces it does over the past couple of years - especially following events such as NFL games or the NCAA Tournament - is at it again this weekend.

In the spotlight will be Bill James and his contributions to the Red Sox's statistical analysis in recent seasons.

The Sox are worried, though. Worried that the Evil Empire is going to try the same approach and beat James and the Bosox at their own game.

In the piece James is asked what player he most would want to see on his dream team.

Answer: “David Wright. Because he does everything I like and he’s very young.”

I wrote a brief, superficial column about Billy Packer last week.

Here is a much better, more thorough take on the announcer many love to hate for one month every year.

A reader wondered why CBS didn't simply go with a split screen Sunday afternoon so interested fans could see either of two interesting games: the ones involving Georgetown going down and Tennessee barely surviving.

It has been proven many times over that split screens don't work well as a viewer experience, so doing the entire games that way certainly was not going to happen.

But when three close games were in the final minute at the same time . . . Well, it might have been nice for a few seconds, but CBS got through it without anything nutty like simultaneous buzzer-beaters.

(In related news, "March Madness on Demand" continues to roll up huge, record-breaking numbers. So there are alternatives for people with proper computers and Internet connections.)

As expected, CBSSports.com's third edition of March Madness on Demand shattered previous records on the first day of the NCAAs.

The Internet version of the tournament attracted 1,751,956 unique visitors to its video player, a 122 percent increase over 2007, when the figure was 789,045.

The increase was driven in part by the one-click, no-registration access through various other Web sites, and the elimination of in-market blackouts.

The "Boss Button," a dummy spread sheet to fake out supervisors, was clicked 1,225,089 times Thursday.

Totals for Friday figured to be somewhat lower because many people were off from work for Good Friday.

I spoke to Sean McManus on a couple of occasions in preparing Friday's column, and he said some interesting stuff I didn't have room for in the newspaper.

Click below for the leftovers.

This is my last post for a few hours. Bob Knight is supposed to be calling me any minute. Seriously.

Enjoy the 2006 Steve Cunningham-Krzysztof Wlodarczyk bout on MSG Plus at noon.

In researching my Friday newspaper column on Sean McManus of CBS Sports/News, I spoke to both the powerful agent Sandy Montag and Armen Keteyian, a former CBS sports reporter and now CBS news reporter.

Each wound up on the cutting room floor, alas.

But there is no cutting room in the blogosphere.

Click below for their thoughts.

One of the social highlights of the New York sports media calendar is CBS's annual first-day-of-the-NCAAs party on West 57th Street, in which luminaries from every network show up to watch games and drink adult beverages . . . and I sit hunched over a laptop writing a column while people tap me on the shoulder to say hello.

Among those on hand Thursday were Les Moonves, Dr. Judy Kuriansky, Armen Keteyian, Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton.

I was not going to mention the fact I made a friendly wager with Carton on Stanford-Cornell, as WatchDog does not endorse gambling and wants to set a good example for young readers.

But Carton mentioned said wager twice this morning on a 50,000-watt, clear channel radio station, so I might as well acknowledge it.

He said the good news is I owe him lunch, but the bad news is he has to have lunch with me. He wondered whether I could just drop a sandwich off at the station.

That was exactly how Mrs. WatchDog suggested I settle the bet!

I'm thinking a ham and tongue combo with mustard would be appropriate.

I did not talk to CBS Sports president Sean McManus (Duke, Class of '77) after the Blue Devils' shockingly narrow victory this evening.

But I was around a number of other CBS types - including the really big boss, Les Moonves - during the frantic final minutes, and I am quite sure the network was mightily relieved by the final score.

Nothing against Belmont. In fact, CBS no doubt was thrilled with the thriller and thus grateful to the 15th seed.

But losing a brand name such as Duke in the first round would have been very bad for business in later rounds.

As Cornell's NCAA hopes sank slowly in the West - actually, sank quickly in the West - I found time to ignore the game and informally discuss with CBS types their decision to show Duke vs. Belmont in New York and many other places rather than Kansas State vs. USC.

This was controversial in some quarters because many hard-core hoops fans wanted to see Michael Beasley face O.J. Mayo.

CBS' thinking was that Duke is a powerful enough brand name, especially among casual fans who never have heard of Beasley and Mayo, to merit a wide showing, and that if the game got out of hand early there was ample time to switch over.

Well, as is often the case in the NCAAs as in life . . . you never know.

As I write this Belmont is hanging extremely tough with Duke late in the first half while Beasley and Mayo do not seem to be doing much in Omaha.

Of course that could change in the second half. But for now New York has the better game.

The insanely young Carter Blackburn did a nice job in his NCAA Tournament debut on CBS, calling a tight game between Marquette and Kentucky.

Blackburn is doing two games this afternoon to keep Dick Enberg from having to work a quadrupleheader.

Blackburn graduated from Syracuse in 2001, but he looks like he is going to graduate from high school in June.

Here is the YouTube clip I referenced in my Tuesday newspaper column about Billy Packer.

Note the clunky black phones sitting in front of Packer and Curt Gowdy as they discuss the UCLA victory toward the end of the clip. Remember clunky black phones? Sigh.

Click below for a bunch of stuff from Packer that I could not fit in the afore-linked column.

Here is my Friday newspaper column, which primarily focuses on the lack of a New York presence in the Big East and NCAA men's hoops tournaments but also flails about on other topics, including Bob Knight's first week as an ESPN analyst.

He's been pretty good so far. I assume he got a lecture about keeping his answers short, which he often does not do in news conferences, believe it or not.

The need to be succinct on live TV is a huge challenge for people who like to talk, and would be one of the biggest impediments to Brett Favre pursuing a TV career. Plus, pretty much everyone who has covered him in Wisconsin is convinced he has zero interest in doing so.

Anyway, hanging out with Knight for the next three weeks provides a neat bookend for Rece Davis' college football/basketball season.

It began at 3:30 a.m. Aug. 30, talking Rutgers football live with me on ESPN's 25-hour preview show. It will end in San Antonio talking Final Four hoops live with The General.

Like Knight, I once slammed down a phone theatrically. It was in the press box in Tampa on Jan. 28, 2001, after a copy editor altered my Super Bowl XXXV game story.

But I digress.

Starting in March, CSTV will be known as CBS College Sports.

I'm just passing the time here as Roger Clemens gets madder and madder.

My naivety and gullibility is so profound that I still have an open mind about all this.

(UPDATE: I understand about 40 CSTV staffers were laid off today as part of the process of bringing the network more directly under the CBS umbrella. I asked CBS about this. Here is its statement:

"With the staff actions completed today, the management team of CBS Sports has created a fully rebranded entity that includes the new CBS College Sports Network (formerly CSTV) and, with the full participation of CBS Interactive, a wide range of online activities that fit well with the successful CBSSports.com. We believe these changes at CBS College Sports will best position the new enterprise to fulfill its promise within the CBS Sports family of assets. Through the efforts of this proven team, and our ongoing commitment to the very highest standards of production, the CBS Sports businesses will continue to build on its success in all operations -- network television, cable, Internet and mobile programming.")

One of the best sports media inventions of the 21st century just got better.

CBS announced that every game in the main draw of the NCAA Tournament, from the first round through the finale, will be available through its March Madness On Demand Internet service.

No more blackouts of in-market games, which caused major confusion when local affiliates switched to more compelling games on TV. And no more pulling the plug in the last three rounds.

CBS is taking a small risk in its on-line service eating into its TV viewership, but realistically few fans are going to choose the computer over the TV - at least in this stage of the devices' technological development.

The main purpose of MMOD is to make it easier for people to goof off at work during the tournament. That now will be easier than ever.

(Special WatchDog bonus props to the first reader to identify what this picture has to do with anything.)

I'd have mentioned this in my Tuesday newspaper column if it weren't for the fact it is kind of full of Giants stuff, but . . .

I thought Dan Dierdorf could have done a better job on CBS Sunday of analyzing the pros and cons of Tony Dungy's decision to go for a touchdown rather than a field goal trailing by four points with two minutes and three timeouts left.

Greg Gumbel tried to prompt him, but not much came of it.

Dierdorf and Gumbel also failed fully to capture the profound, dramatic nuttiness of Billy Volek leading the Chargers to a victory over the Super Bowl champs.

Oh, well. On to Green Bay.

Condolences to Ian Eagle of CBS/YES and his family on the death this Thursday of his father, Jack, 81, a long-time comedian and actor who appeared in more than 50 commercials in his career.

The most famous: A 1977 Xerox ad in which he appears as a monk. It is considered a Super Bowl commercial classic.

The funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Sunday at Schwartz Brothers, 114-03 Queens Blvd., in Forest Hills.

I forgot to mention earlier in the day that CBS Sports is taking over the day-to-day operations of its corporate younger sibling, CSTV, which most of my readers do not get as part or their pay TV packages.

Good night.

Every holiday tradition had to start somewhere, so I have decided to begin a new one in the Best family, at 2 p.m. Christmas Day on CBS:

Rooting against Nick Saban!

WatchDog's favorite college football coach will be in action in the Chick-fil-A Bowl Alma Mater, a charity golf tournament taped in May.

It features coaches teamed with a celebrity alumni from their schools, to benefit scholarships to the colleges represented.

The field includes Steve Spurrier, Frank Beamer and the ubiquitous Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish.

I could look up how Saban did in the event, which I've been told had an exciting finish. But I'd rather be surprised.

There also are a couple of NBA games being played Tuesday, I believe.

I'm taking the rest of the day off from blogging.

Check back Tuesday for another holiday tradition WatchDog debuted on Thanksgiving: random YouTube fun!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morning, afternoon and night.

Viewers in New York understandably were frustrated Sunday when CBS left the Ravens-Dolphins game just before Miami’s winning score and first victory.

Morons in the control room? No.

The NFL’s TV rules required Ch. 2 to leave after the Ravens missed a potential game-winning field goal because it was 4:15 p.m. and Fox’s late game was starting.

Memo to NFL, CBS and Fox: Ditch this rule.

Sure, in some weeks the network with the doubleheader will lose first-quarter viewers, but relaxing the restrictions would be fan friendly, and in the long run the breaks would even out between networks.

I didn't get around to mentioning this in my newspaper column, but . . .

I was struck given the weird, fascinating strategic decisions Eric Mangini made late in Sunday's Jets game how little analysis of those decisions was offered by CBS' Randy Cross.

He is far from the only one.

I often have been struck since starting this job by how often even the best network analysts whiff on the kinds of clock and scoreboard management issues that keep beat reporters and sports talk radio hosts in business.

Remember that moronic first-down spike by the Redskins with almost an entire minute left in their first meeting with the Giants this season? Fox ignored the pros and cons of the strategy.

Etc.

OK. I'm done now. Thanks for your patience.

CBS has been trying to low key Sunday's Game of the Century. Well, at least compared to what pretty much every other network would have done to hype it.

The Tiffany Network still plans to do what it can to enhance what will be the most watched sports event of 2007 that is not an NFL playoff game.

The other day CBS sent an e-mail saying it would be the first network to use Sportvision’s FreezeCam in an NFL telecast.

Here is the explanation from the news release of what this gizmo does:

The FreezeCam System is a significant broadcast tool that enables CBS Sports to replay game action, then “freeze” the action while zooming in, out or around the frame, to show players setting up for a given play.

Multiple points of interest are chosen and tight shots of any player in a frame can be viewed during replays by zooming in directly on the objects in question: whether a foot stepped out of bounds, how an offensive player pulled a double move to get open, etc.

This provides analysts with a new application to breakdown a play, from every angle, and easily returns to the original frame of view, by “un-freezing” and continuing where the play left off.

(Update: Cornell losing 52-24 now. And no, they're not playing the Patriots.)

On "Late Show with David Letterman'' last night, Dave did a bit on how the Yankees are spending their offseasons.

It included a shot of a shirtless Alex Rodriguez getting sunscreen rubbed in by stage manager Biff Henderson.

Would A-Rod have been so public relations unsavvy that he would tape such a piece less than two days after the Yankees' were ousted?

No. It was taped during spring training and aired originally at that time, a show spokesperson said.

(Update: Yes, I know that's the late, great Larry "Bud'' Melman in the picture, not Biff. I was just honoring a TV legend since I was mentioning Letterman today.)

OK, I'm done here for today. I have a newspaper column to write and Suzyn Waldman comments to read.