Plenty of ways to watch the Madness

While the elected officials around here ignored the issue, a guy up in New England was busy standing up for his constituents. Actually, he was busy wasting everyone's time, but he did it under the guise of standing up for his constituents, which is an oldie but a goody as far as political ploys go.

March is mad for a lot of reasons. It seems the NCAA tournament's primary function is to provide various reasons for people to complain. ESPN's sundry analysts spent the last week groaning about the selection committee, the expanded format, and especially the bubble teams they thought shouldn't have made the field. Of course, none of the bubble teams - those selected and those excluded - were ever going to win a national championship anyway, so I'm still not sure why it's a problem.

One of the oldest gripes about the tournament - the fact that only one game was on television at a time, and a faceless network director/producer decided what you watched - was addressed and remedied this year. CBS and Turner partnered to pay the NCAA $10.8 billion over 14 years for the rights to televise all the games in real time over four channels: CBS; TNT; TBS; and cable's Elba, truTV.

On Thursday, for the first time, every game was available to viewers. All you needed to do was flex your fingers and manipulate the remote while working a nice groove into your couch. You've finally been liberated from CBS's programming tyranny. Pretty great, right?

Not to some, and certainly not to the aforementioned congressman. U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D., Conn.) penned a letter to NCAA president Mark Emmert and CBS president Les Moonves complaining about the Connecticut-Bucknell game being on TNT instead of CBS in Connecticut - a move, Courtney said, that would make the first-round tilt inaccessible to 150,000 in the Constitution State. Apparently those 150,000 people are too lazy to get up and go somewhere that's outfitted with cable or the Internet, but we'll get to that.

Earlier in the week, CBS and Turner executives said flipping to a cable channel - or not having cable at all - isn't that big a deal, since all the games are available online for free. I hate to agree with the country-club crowd, but the TV suits are right.

If you're among the people who were upset that Temple wasn't on CBS3 on Thursday (or that Villanova won't appear on CBS3 on Friday), it might be time to update the technology in your home. The Victrola had a good run, but you can't rely on it to entertain you forever.

According to the Nielsen Co., 87 percent of Americans have TNT and TBS, while 80 percent even have truTV (though I'm guessing 98 percent didn't know they had the last one until this week). Nielsen also estimates that 66.3 percent of homes have both cable and broadband. That means the majority of basketball lovers had easy access to whichever game interested them - a nice change from the bad old days when the majority of us spent much of the tournament screaming at the television when the game we wanted to watch was switched out for a game we didn't care about at all.

At times on Thursday, navigating four channels at once was sensory overload, even for the television crew. Early on, Greg Gumbel was flummoxed just like the rest of us: "A Clemson update over on tru . . . uh, on CBS rather."

Still, choosing the wrong channel still beats not having any options at all. In the past, you might have missed Butler's buzzer beater against Old Dominion. Or Morehead State's shocking victory over Louisville as time ran out. Or, better still for Owls fans, Juan Fernandez's up-and-under circus jumper to push Temple past Penn State. This year, you got to watch all the drama - not just some of it - by pressing a few buttons. That's progress.

Alas, progress isn't for everyone. It's scary stuff for some nitpicking congressmen and old-school Americans. If you don't have cable or simply liked it better when the local station had the local teams, it's a pretty easy fix. Do what our old hoop-head forefathers once endured during that crazy, technology-stunted, long-ago decade known as "the '90s": Get up, go outside, and walk or drive to a bar showing the games - or, failing that, a friend's house.

Problem solved. Whining muted.

St. Joseph's didn't make the tournament, but Phil Martelli did. The coach will serve as a guest analyst in the Atlanta studio for the games on Saturday and Sunday. . . . When asked about the Temple-Penn State game before it tipped, Charles Barkley said: "Sometimes I take a nap in the afternoon. That would be the game." Wake up, Chuck. You missed a good one. . . . Former Comcast SportsNet 76ers reporter Jamie Maggio is serving as a sideline reporter for the expanded tournament coverage. When she isn't moonlighting for CBS/Turner, Maggio is a sports anchor for KCAL, the CBS affiliate in Los Angeles. . . . Marv Albert finally joins the madness on Friday. I saw him in New York last week. Between the hair and the powder makeup, he looked like Dave Chappelle playing Marv Albert.