The Florida Gators recently won the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship for the third time in school history, attaining a 65-63 victory over the Houston Cougars. CBS Sports averaged 18.1 million viewers across the United States for this contest, which was up 22% year-over-year and is representative of the most-watched iteration of the event since 2019. Sean Pendergast and Seth Payne discussed the topic on the Thursday edition of their morning show on SportsRadio 610 in Houston through the context of comments made two weeks ago by ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith.
During an episode of First Take, Smith spoke about how the NCAA Tournament could “cease to exist” because of a dearth of upsets within the action. This past tournament ended up marking the first year in which four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four since 2008 and only the second time since the seeding began in 1979. While Smith feels that this could lead to the downfall of the annual event, Pendergast cited the viewership numbers as the basis for his dissent.
“Hey, down the road, who knows?,” Pendergast said. “Maybe he’s right, maybe there’s a shift in viewership habits or whatnot, but what I can gather from this particular tournament, the very tournament that led Stephen A. Smith and many others to say, ‘Aah, no Cinderellas. This is no longer interesting and thus it is going to die.’ The final game between the University of Houston and the University of Florida averaged 18.1 million viewers, peaked at over 21 million, and for some context, that is up 22% year-over-year.”
In response to this claim, Payne discussed how college basketball as it was when they grew up is different from the current product. Within the current marketplace, college athletes can enter the transfer portal and profit from their name, image and likeness, fundamentally changing the recruiting landscape and disrupting team continuity. Payne believes that Smith is wrong in that it will end up causing the cessation of the tournament itself.
“Basketball as we knew it was dead, but the tournament, so far at least based on this one year, might be the thing that actually salvages whatever remains of it and how we consume it and everything, and I try not to get too wrapped up in comparing different eras of basketball and everything.”
Even though the landscape is different, Payne still observes how there are memorable moments that viewers received from the proceedings in the past. Pendergast followed up by explaining how while it was exciting to see the Valparaiso Beacons advance to the Elite Eight, he does not need to watch the team get beat by 30 in the round. In fact, he underscored this premise as being one of the disconnects surrounding the situation with teams considered to go on ‘Cinderella’ voyages in the tournament.
“I think people want to see heavyweights like this – four No. 1 seeds in the Final Four,” Pendergast said. “If anything, that is the ultimate counterpoint to what Stephen A. is saying is like look, ‘This was the complete opposite of Cinderellas that we had in this particular Final Four, the exact opposite of what you could possibly have, the four best teams,’ and people were eating it up, 22% year-over-year. You want Cinderellas until you don’t want Cinderellas anymore.”
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