I was watching the Mizzo and S. Illinois game on ESPN today and noticed that the NCAA logo on the floor was blurred out. Does anyone know why?
None of the other logos on the playing surface were masked out.
Just a WAG, but if it was one of the games that was scheduled to be on CBS, it may be because ESPN didn’t buy the broadcast rights from the NCAA but from CBS.
I was thinking that it might be contractual also, but ESPN has a contract with the NCAA to show the women’s tournament and they pretty much picked up the games as a goodwill gesture.
And ESPN’s website is festooned with NCAA logos. If anything was going to be blurred out, it would be an ad for a private company, but those aren’t allowed anyways.
I was watching one of the games from Indy tonight on CBS. The logo was just blurry. ESPN ran CBS’ feed, the only thing they added/modified was their logo in the upper right corner and their ticker on the bottom.
Interestingly enough, when the CBS ticker came up on the bottom, the ESPN ticker went away. Mind you, they didn’t flip around as much as they normally would have, but all in all it was a good decision by CBS, ESPN and the NCAA.
And, I just did a check on Yahoo! News, and while looking at photos from the tourney, the NCAA logo is EVERYWHERE. On the floor, the baskets, the scorer’s table. It just looked blurry on the floor.
I was watching some of the game from Boston today and because of the pattern on the Fleet Center floor, the NCAA logo appeared blurry.
I think that was the case in Indianapolis also.
In Orlando, the NCAA logo is blue on a white background so it stands out better.
I think against some backgrounds the blue of the letter just bleeds into the court when viewed on TV.
Is it possible that the logo was not actually on the floor, but just digitally added? I noticed that it seemed to get clearer when the players ran over it.