The myth that games always fit into 2-hour programming window

Why does ESPN think that a college basketball game fits into 2-hour programming window?

This belief by its programming people forces fans to miss the opening tip (and, in some case, much more) of way too many basketball games.

It's not always a basketball game that is the culprit.

In the 1984-85 season, there was a men's tennis match that preceded the Tar Heels' game at LSU and went five sets. Luckily I could listen to the Tar Heel Sports Network radio broadcast as the seemingly never-ending match dragged on. ESPN didn't join the Carolina game until four minutes into the second half.

That's the most drastic example of a frustrating dynamic that's repeated practically on a daily basis on ESPN's channels during the basketball season. Every time a UNC game is scheduled to tip off on an ESPN channel two hours after another game tips off on the same channel, I know that it's likely that I won't be able to see the entire game on TV.

A tennis match is much less predictable. With four TV timeouts per half, very few basketball games are completed in two hours, particularly when there is a close finish.

It doesn't have to be like that. I would invite ESPN to take a look at what the ACC Network did last weekend. It aired the Virginia Tech at Wake Forest game at noon Saturday, then the Boston College at Carolina game at 2:30. ESPN would have had the UNC game tip off at 2 p.m.

UNC and B.C. fans didn't have to worry about missing the beginning of their game. No such luck for Miami and Virginia fans. The 4 p.m. Notre Dame-Louisville game went into double overtime, so ESPNU didn't join the Miami-U.Va. game (which it scheduled to start at 6 p.m.) until 6:17 remained in the first half.

Why can't ESPN shift the beginning of such games to ESPN News? ESPN has alternate channels. Why can't ESPN shift the beginning of those games there?

I don't think that ESPN will ever consider a 2.5-hour window for college basketball games. Most games don't need that much time and that does leave a lot of time to fill in many cases.

But why not a 2-hour, 15-minute window? A 4.5-hour window for two games? It's not going to completely prevent one game for overflowing into another, but it's going to eliminate a lot of those cases.

There is the ESPN3 option for some fans, but who wants to watch the game on your computer? Unfortunately it isn't an option for me because I am a DirecTV customer who gets Internet service from Time Warner Cable. TWC only gives Internet customers access to ESPN3 when they also subscribe to cable and receive ESPN.

Carolina fans potentially faced the same situation Saturday when ESPN aired the Kentucky-Tennessee game at noon and then the UNC-Florida State game. Fortunately the UNC game didn't actually start until 2:10 p.m., so we only missed the first 41 seconds of the Tar Heels' game. Had Kentucky-Tennessee gone into overtime, who knows how much of the UNC game would have been missed?

After all these years of this maddening practice by ESPN, it's not likely that it will change its scheduling anytime soon. But a fan always can hope!