NCAA tournament selection on CBS to show bracket 1st again

By RALPH D. RUSSO

NEW YORK (AP) — The NCAA Tournament selection show is returning to CBS and its traditional bracket-first format for revealing the field for March Madness.

The plan for Sunday is to drop the alphabetical reveal and get right to the bracket. The show will be one hour, hosted as usual by Greg Gumbel.

“We’re going back to basics,” Sean McManus, chairman of CBS Sports, said Tuesday. “We’re going to release the brackets as fast as we can.”

The plan is to release the brackets right at the top of the Selection Show ‘as quickly as we can,’ Sean McManus of CBS said. https://t.co/0NOw2VtEeX

— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) March 12, 2019

Last year, the Selection Sunday show aired on TBS for the first time since CBS and Turner became broadcast partners for the men’s basketball tournament in 2011. The presentation of the 68-team field was tweaked, first showing the teams that had earned automatic bids in alphabetical order, and then revealing the 36 at-large selections in alphabetical order. After the teams were announced, the matchups were revealed region-by-region and the bracket was filled in.

CBS Sports and Turners Sports held their annual media breakfast in midtown Manhattan, with McManus and Jeff Zucker, president of Warner Media News and Sports.

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