NCAA on CBS: A Pictoral Comparison 18 Years Later

When you really think about it, 1991 doesn’t feel like it was all that long ago.  It’s been 18 years, but damn if doesn’t seem like just yesterday that we were wondering how in the world Terry Pendleton won the NL MVP, watching Bad News Brown on the Arsenio Hall show and speculating on how much bribe money it took for UNLV to lose to Duke in the Final Four. 

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t seem like yesterday. 

And never was that fact drilled home more so than when, after watching two weeks of the 2009 NCAA Tournament, ESPN Classic treated us to a few viewings of old school championship games including the 1991 matchup between KU and eventual champion Duke.  It’s safe to say some things have changed when it comes to sports on TV. 

To better illustrate the vast gap between watching a sporting event today and watching one when the words “High Definition” meant getting stoned and reading the dictionary, we provide you with a pictorial comparison outlining what has changed and what’s stayed the same…

Jay Bilas
He may look a little more mature, the hairline might have retreated a shade but, regardless of the decade, Jay Bilas will be on your TV and he will still know more about basketball than you.

The Scoreboard
Perhaps one of the most underrated developments in sports television over the past decade has been the move towards the all-time scoreboard.  We sometimes forget that in 1991, in order to keep up with the score throughout the game, you had to have a dry erase board at arms length and frankly I’m not even sure the hippy UPS commercial guy had even invented dry erase boards in 1991.  You could literally flip on a game and watch two teams exchange baskets for 10 minutes without any clue what the score was, how much time was left in the half or if you’re really not paying attention, who the hell is playing the game.  

 
Sweet Graphics
Rumor has it, the guy in charge of the 1991 CBS bar graphs could also rig up a badass pie chart in a pinch too.

The Crowd

Say what you will about the fashion in the early 90’s, but we’ll take an arena full of stone-washed jean-wearing, Jeremy Piven look-alike Jayhawk fans over the 30,000 empty seats we saw in Glendale, AZ over the weekend.  Seriously, NCAA, is it necessary to put these Elite 8 games in 75,000 seat football stadiums if only 18,000 people are going to show up?  It looks like a WNBA game broke out.

White Guy Hair
Truthfully, we might like Mizzou’s Matt Lawrence even more if he would have come out for Saturday’s game against UConn with Mark Randall’s classic mullet-negburns look.  Screw assists and points, that’s the kind of double-double we value.

Black Guy Hair
If you ask us, the high top fade can’t come back quickly enough.  Whether we’re talking about the regular Thomas Hill version, the giant Kid N’ Play version or the more intricate Big Daddy Kane version, all of them are far superior to Stanley Robinson’s corn-pony.

Of all the differences between CBS’ broadcast in 1991 and 2009, there’s one that may benefit the millions watching at home even more than the advanced technology—no longer having to deal with this…