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News / Clark County News

Talking Points: There is no other Opening Day

The Columbian
Published: March 30, 2014, 5:00pm

1

This is Opening Day for baseball. Not a week ago in Sydney, Australia, and not Sunday night in San Diego.

It’s TODAY.

It’s wrong for Major League Baseball to push down fans throats that Opening Day was played in a different hemisphere and now we will play the North American openers. And it’s wrong for a made-for-TV Opening Night, as ESPN has done for years.

Opening Day for baseball is special. There’s a parade in Cincinnati. Red, white and blue bunting is allowed to be displayed in parks.

Heck, Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith wants the federal government to make Opening Day of the baseball season a national holiday.

There’s just something special about baseball’s Opening Day.

Today is a holiday. Go ahead and celebrate.

2

The NCAA Final Four will not be on CBS this year, but TBS. Yes, the Final Four will be on cable for the first time.

And not the last time.

The blog Sports Media Watch writes that “Turner Sports and CBS agreed last year to split the Final Four both this year and next, a compromise that allowed CBS to keep this year’s National Championship Game.”

Was the interest just not there for network TV? Nope. It just got too expensive for CBS.

The network thought it was going to lose a lot of money and considered letting ESPN buying them out of the NCAA deal.

If Turner had not joined CBS in a joint bid for NCAA rights, CBS would have been unable to afford to carry the tournament, and ESPN almost certainly would be airing the Final Four.

(Click here to read more about this on sportsmediawatch.com)

Follow The Columbian sports on Twitter @col_sports.

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