Seth Davis Kills the I-Man's Dreams of Bracket Glory

CBS Sports Analyst and NCAA whiz Seth Davis is an old friend of Imus’s, and the son of an even older friend, former Clinton White House Special Counsel Lanny Davis. After being on television for 14 hours straight yesterday to cover the kickoff of the 2011 NCAA basketball tournament, the younger Davis was exhausted today.
 
“Well, you weren’t trying to put out fuel rods at a nuclear reactor,” Imus pointed out. “So you can’t be complaining.”
 
Quick to acknowledge his wussy-ness, Davis told Imus he was in Atlanta, Georgia this morning, because CBS is sharing this year’s tournament coverage with TBS, TNT, and TruTV. Rather than combining to form one company, the erstwhile competitors are partnering to produce one single event, a setup Davis called “unprecedented.”
 
Imus, however, called it redundant. “We know all this, Seth,” he said, then admitted he was unable to recognize Davis on television yesterday because TNT used a different camera angle than Imus was used to.
 
Seizing an opportunity that might not come again, Davis said, “I didn’t realize you were so easily confused.”
 
The new arrangement for this year’s NCAA games is just the beginning of an arrangement that will carry CBS, TBS, and its affiliates into the next decade. “They’ve been figuring it out as they go along, and oftentimes waiting until the last possible second to make firm decisions, because they don’t always know what they’re dealing with,” he said, referring to the network executives.
 
So far, the response to the new system has been positive, a sentiment Imus seemed to share as he complimented the performance of pre-game and halftime show hosts Greg Gumbel, Ernie Johnson, and Greg Anthony, whom Davis deemed “phenomenal.”
 
“Phenomenal is way overstating his abilities,” Imus said. “He’s fine. He’s serviceable.”
 
Another new face to the NCAA broadcast is TBS’s Charles Barkley. “He’s really a very sweet guy,” Davis gushed. “He’s just a really good soul.”
 
Though there was some “hand-wringing,” presumably by people with way too much time on theirs, that Barkley’s NBA expertise would hinder his NCAA abilities, Davis insisted Barkley closely follows college basketball. And besides, “It doesn’t matter what Charles Barkley’s talking about,” he added. “Whether it’s politics, or movies, or anything—you want to hear what he has to say.”
 
One of the bigger surprises of yesterday’s tournament was third-seeded Kentucky coming thisclose to elimination at the hands of Princeton. “Their best three players are freshman,” Davis said of Kentucky. “You watch those guys during the year, and they make all this progress. And then they get into the tournament and they play like freshman again, because they’ve never been in a situation where if you lose, your season’s over.”
 
Interestingly, Imus has Kentucky in his Final Four. “It’s going to be hard for them to beat Ohio State,” Davis said, dashing Imus’s dreams of bracket glory. “But I’ve been known to be wrong once or twice.”
 
Translation: The I-Man’s going down.
 
-Julie Kanfer