NCAA can bite me

I guess the internet has to work harder in the big city :

 

I just took a look at the media packet for the tournament games in Providence, and there's no mention of an internet fee.
I hope I'm not in for some sort of a surprise Wednesday morning.

 

Bet you will be.

 

All right you whiny bastards...if your paper can't afford $10 a day for wireless access, your paper shouldn't be spending the money to cover the tournament.

And, if you really want to know about expense, I'll take you back 30 or so years when we needed a telephone line in the arena to file stories on our 25-pound montrosities know as Telerams.
The phone company charged $150 per line for the weekend if your paper wanted its own phone, rather than hope that one of the 3 NCAA provided lines might be available when you were filing on deadline. ... plus toll charges if you made a call to anything other than an 800 number, even a local call. And this was in the late 70s-early 80s.

Oh, and if you covered baseball playoffs and world series...$150 each phone line in each city you went to.

Funny how we bitch about newspapers "giving away" our precious content but expect everyone else to give us their services for free.

 

Big difference in 1970 and 1980, Starbucks, McDonalds, Buffalo Wild Wings, local municipalities, libraries, and arenas weren't letting people use phones for free. Everyone is letting people use wifi for free now.

 

If you are covering an NCAA Tournament, you're probably chained to the arena for most of the day. You aren't strolling around downtown drinking lattes and checking your watch for the time the strip club opens.

 

Fixed.

 

Hmmm. Unmitigated gall. The NCAA puts schools on probation because some non-athlete bought a student-athlete a slice of pizza, then has the audacity to charge $16 a day for internet.

 

Touchdown.

 

Yes. Little known fact. The NCAA basically breaks even on TV revenue, sponsorships, etc., and requires the wireless fees to make ends meet and to keep from laying off NCAA employees.

 

Sorry, people, just quit whining over $10 and every little thing about the evil NCAA and it's terribly run, terribly seeded [/crossthreading] tournament.