Charles Barkley Tested on College Basketball Names to Tip Off March Madness

The first round of the 2022 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament tipped off Thursday afternoon. In addition to thrilling college basketball action, that means the return of TNT’s Inside the NBA crew to host pregame, halftime, and postgame March Madness studio coverage.

Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Kenny Smith have spent the past five months following the NBA, and it’s typically a crash course — especially for the analysts — in studying up to become familiar with the 64 teams competing for the national championship from here on out. (And Clark Kellogg is there to keep analysis and commentary in their proper lane.)

But the “Tournament Central” production is at least steering into the fact that Barkley doesn’t do much homework on college basketball, the teams, or players. That was apparent at halftime of the Michigan-Colorado State game with the crew playing a game that Johnson said they would “probably regret.” Barkley was given several college basketball player names in a round of “How Do You Pronounce That?”

Barkley was given Kansas’s Christian Braun as a warm-up before getting into some names that were a bit trickier to pronounce, like Saint Mary’s Tommy Kuhse and Tennessee’s Santiago Vescovi.

Astute viewers pointed out that UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez was misspelled as “Jamie,” but everyone was likely focused on the last name there.

Poking fun at Barkley’s lack of familiarity with college basketball is better than trying to make him awkwardly attempt analysis on something he clearly isn’t knowledgeable on at this point. (To be fair, Barkley seems to get better as the tournament progresses, as he watches the games and becomes familiar with who’s involved.)

But several fans pointed out on social media that viewers would be better served — though not necessarily better entertained — and it would be more fair to broadcasters who have covered college basketball all season if Barkley didn’t get such a prominent role on Turner and CBS’s NCAA Tournament coverage.

That’s certainly a valid point, but CBS and Turner have obviously placed a priority on entertainment and name recognition over diehard college basketball knowledge. For a majority of the audience that’s tuning in for college hoops the first time this year, it’s probably a good fit. And it’s all meant to be fun.

Ian Casselberry

Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.