Dear CBS/Turner: This Is a Bad Selection Show Idea

CBS and Turner have been rolling out announcements this week about their NCAA Tournament coverage, and this nugget about the selection show is already getting a lot of negative feedback on social media:

The motive behind doing this on the selection show, which will air on TBS after years of airing on CBS, would seem to be that there is an extra commercial break between when the show starts and when we’ve seen all the regional brackets.

Under this format, we will learn the fate of the bubble teams — e.g. Alabama, Baylor, and Arizona State — right away, as opposed to learning whether they got in or not as the brackets are revealed and hope remains until the final region is concluded. This a) takes some of the inherent drama away, and b) makes us all have to wait 5-10 minutes longer before we have a clear picture of what the brackets look like so we can start penciling in our picks.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t armageddon or anything, but I feel like there was nothing wrong with the way the show has been every year except two years ago when they took forever to get us the brackets. Some good things don’t need tinkering with, and the NCAA Selection Show has traditionally been one of them.