Gonzalez To Serve As NCAA Tournament Analyst
3/15/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
NEW YORK, N.Y. Seton Hall Head Coach Bobby Gonzalez will be a studio analyst for the NCAA Tournament’s First and Second Round games via March Madness On Demand (MMOD), a new feature at CBS Sportsline.com.
Gonzalez joins CBS Sportsline’s Jason Horowitz and St. John’s Head Coach Norm Roberts in providing analysis of all games Thursday through Sunday for the tournament’s first two rounds.
CBS Sportsline’s MMOD is the online player that provides live streaming video from the first 56 games of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship as they are broadcast by CBS Sports and is offered completely free of charge.
NCAA March Madness on Demand is available at NCAAsports.com as well as via MMOD links on CBS SportsLine.com and CSTV.com. In 2006 MMOD was presented free of charge for the first time since its debut in 2003, producing tremendous traffic results with over 19 million video streams and five million visits, resulting in one of the largest live Internet events ever.
"March Madness on Demand maximizes the Network's NCAA bundled rights and the full range of assets of the CBS Corporation," said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports. "This new distribution of CBS Sports' game coverage, promoted by CSTV and available via CBS SportsLine.com and NCAAsports.com, has proven to build on the total NCAA championship experience for NCAA basketball fans everywhere."
To accommodate an even greater audience in 2007, CBS Sports Line has doubled the bandwidth capacity for MMOD. However, in order to effectively control a massive anticipated peak in demand during Thursday and Friday, March 15th and 16th, access to the MMOD video player will be carefully managed using a "virtual waiting room." If demand exceeds peak capacity as occurred multiple times in 2006 -- virtual lines will form.
"March Madness on Demand is one of the most successful initiatives that the NCAA and the CBS Corporation has implemented when you couple evolving technology and the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship," said Greg Shaheen, senior vice president for basketball and business strategies at the NCAA. “We continue to pursue new ways of growing the championship and our fan base. March Madness on Demand allows the NCAA and CBS to deliver the championship to a new technologically-savvy audience that previously may not have had the opportunity to view the championship."
