Postscripts: ESPN’s Playing with Fire, and TNT is Surging

What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.

This week, TNT dives headfirst into the Big 12 basketball season, so let’s grade it out. Plus, the Big 12 football race continues.

Grading TNT’s First Week of Big 12 Basketball

TNT only gets one Big 12 football game a week (and I’m betting that changes next year), but the network dove headfirst into Big 12 men’s basketball this week. The network broadcast four games across the week, part of a 15-game package that represents the network’s first foray into Big 12 hoops.

TNT is one of five national networks that are working with Big 12 basketball this year. ESPN and Fox are the main partners. TNT, along with CBS and NBC/Peacock, is getting games through a sub-license with ESPN. But it’s their production.

How did TNT do in its first week? Let’s grade it out.

Production

TNT wasn’t going to struggle here. The network has been doing NBA games for decades. While there have been some growing pains with football, the TNT crew knows exactly what they’re doing for basketball. That vast experience was on display in the doubleheader on Monday that included Arizona facing Florida and BYU facing Villanova in Las Vegas.

TNT’s loss of the NBA after last season is the Big 12’s gain. The network has production assets it wasn’t using. This puts their people to work and brings to the Big 12 an A-level national production. They’re veterans at basketball, and it showed throughout each broadcast.

Grade: A

In-Game Announcing

Another advantage of the limited deal — and TNT’s desire to impress the league — is that it can afford to use its best announcers for most games. The Monday doubleheader, along with TCU’s Thursday game with Saint Francis, saw Brian Anderson and Grant Hill on the call. Anderson typically works into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Hill is part of CBS’s No. 1 crew in the tournament. TNT can leverage them because of its deal with CBS.

That brought some gravitas to all three games. Anderson is a quality play-by-play voice who understands game flow and knows when to bring his voice to big moments. Hill has improved in the past few years, no doubt in part by working alongside Bill Raftery. Having the pair on a random Thursday game in Fort Worth was, honestly, a treat. It gave a non-conference buy game some ‘A’ level broadcasting. Plus, TCU’s loss to New Orleans on Monday gave the contest a nice storyline.

Friday’s Arizona-Utah Tech game features Spero Dedes, who also works NCAA Tournament games, alongside Greg Anthony, a veteran analyst who played for UNLV in the 1990s. If they’re the ‘B’ team in this case, the Big 12 should be in great shape.

Grade: A

Studio Show

One must avoid comparing this studio show to the incredible ‘Inside the NBA,’ which was TNT’s staple for NBA coverage before it moved to ESPN (which, in part, helped facilitate TNT’s new partnership with the Big 12). Like the football studio show, TNT is leveraging talent more associated with the NBA and with no Big 12 ties. Adam Lefkoe remained the host, while Jalen Rose and Jamal Mashburn handled analysis. TNT snapped up former Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl when he retired. He brings the X’s and O’s the show needs.

It takes time to build chemistry on a studio show, and there were times the banter felt stilted. Getting Pearl in front of a monitor to break down action during the TCU game was a smart use of his skills. Mashburn and Rose are clearly learning the nuances of the college game as analysts. But, unlike March when Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith parachute in with little knowledge of what’s transpired to that point, I can see both picking up on storylines, halftime breakdowns, and Big 12 storylines quicker. The studio show made progress from Monday to Friday.

They should leave the post-game interviews to either the on-site reporters or to Lefkoe. I got nothing out of the trio’s interactions with Arizona’s Koa Peat and BYU’s A.J. Dybantsa, and it felt distracting from what was a big night for the Big 12.

Grade: B

Overall Grade: A-. It’s a first-class production. If TNT leverages the pairings of Anderson and Hill, along with Dedes and Anthony, all season, the Big 12 viewers should be served well. The studio show needs reps, but it has potential to be an above-average show by the new year.

Working Around YouTubeTV-ESPN Row

I’ve been writing a story each night about Big 12 basketball (taking the weekend off), but I thought I was out of luck with the Kansas-North Carolina game because of the ESPN-YouTube TV standoff.

Quick review: ESPN wants more money. YouTube TV doesn’t want to give it to them. Therefore, I can’t watch ABC and ESPN on YouTube TV. ESPN wants me to sign up for its new app. Everyone is trashing it. You can’t watch those games on ESPN+, which I have. Ok, you’re caught up.

I was getting on my iPad to watch Tech and Sam Houston on Friday when I went to the ESPN site and found Kansas and North Carolina on the home page. Normally, when I click on a game like that, it asks me to log in to my TV provider. This time, I went right to the game as it was picking up in the second half.

Perfect timing. Dan Shulman, fresh off his tremendous work calling the World Series for SportsNet, was on the call with Jay Bilas, and they were setting up the second half. Then the game started and … then I couldn’t understand anything. I thought my settings were off. Nope. I thought I was getting background audio from the app. Nope. It was just in Spanish.

Somehow, I got the ESPN Deportes feed. I’m not picky. I just want to watch the game.

ESPN and YouTube TV, you need to fix this. Our site owner, Pete Mundo, made a great point as to why.