NCAA can bite me

[pride of pleasantville]

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

Temple was screwed, man. Screwed.

Don't forget BYU, ranked 14th in the country and they get a 7 seed.

 

[Ace]

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

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.

I think the point is simply that offering dependable wifi service costs money. If someone chooses to offer it for free because they feel it helps them make money in some other way, that's their right. However, I also don't blame them for charging a nominal fee.

That said, I'd expect that the wifi you pay for ought to be fast and reliable. If you're paying and still getting the same crappy service a lot of free providers give you, then you have a right to *****.

The NCAA is going to have to have wifi service for its own needs. Not like it is ordering it for the scribes.

Often, you might work at an arena all year using the wifi there and suddenly at tournament time they want to charge you $9.50 or whatever a day.

That's what pisses people off.

 

[Bob Cook]

From the e-mail I got, it looks like they won't be charging for wireless at the women's tournament.

Correct. I was just reading through the same thing. It was $16 a day in Norfolk the last time I covered a regional, and when I covered one in Chicago, it was $30 a day.

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

It's union Internet.

 

[playthrough]

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

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.

I think the point is simply that offering dependable wifi service costs money. If someone chooses to offer it for free because they feel it helps them make money in some other way, that's their right. However, I also don't blame them for charging a nominal fee.

That said, I'd expect that the wifi you pay for ought to be fast and reliable. If you're paying and still getting the same crappy service a lot of free providers give you, then you have a right to *****.

The NCAA is going to have to have wifi service for its own needs. Not like it is ordering it for the scribes.

Often, you might work at an arena all year using the wifi there and suddenly at tournament time they want to charge you $9.50 or whatever a day.

That's what pisses people off.

Bingo. Had used wifi at an NFL stadium many times for free, then I'm there for the NCAAs and have to pony up. Two organizations that I'm pretty confident can get by without writers' sawbucks, yet only one doesn't feel the need to penny-pinch.

 

[BigRed]

Here's a question...why not find alternate sources of internet? I'm sure in this modern age that downtown arena locations have WiFi that might even be free or at least cheaper.

I agree that you are chained to the arena when you're working. And any cheaper/free sources in-arena are shut down by the NCAA for the tournament.
Example: I covered the ACC Tournament at the St. Pete Times Forum in 2007 - the wireless was free.
I covered the NCAA Tournament there a year later - wireless was $16.50 a day.
That's why I'm bringing my CrackBerry and USB cord with me when I shuffle off to my regional destination tomorrow.

 

[clutchcargo]

And if you're covering UNT and are more than 2 years out of college, you ought to consider a career change.

wtf

Yeah, exactly. I reckon either DMN and/or FWST is probably following UNT, and where do you get off implying that one of those writers is a career failure???? You can do a whole heckuva lot worse than be a DMN or FWST staffer.

grow a brain, pal!

 

[clutchcargo]

Just got an e-mail confirming acceptance of credentials for the women's sub-regional in Cincinnati and it said wireless was free. The men's tourney might be another story for all I know, though.

NCAA women's wireless for free??? You can hold out for better than that. Twist their arm and they'll pay you $25 a game to cover their tournament. lol

 

[clutchcargo]

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

Back when I was covering the NCAAs in 1980s, we got pony express for free and access to one telegraph in the arena for $150 a day. Fee was reduced to $125 if we knew Morse code and could send story ourselves.

 

[Fredrick]

Universities don't charge a cent during the regular season, nor do NBA teams. But in the NCAAs ... wham, pay up, newspapers.

 

[Twoback]

Free at every school on the planet.
Free at the conference tournaments.
$16.50 if the NCAA failed to send you an e-mail reminding you about the discount for pre-registering.
Which they did.

 

[PeterGibbons]

$9.50 a day is cheap, word is they are charging photogs $350 for internet usage. Not sure how that works out for the same connection, but whatever

 

[Football_Bat]

Deep in the bowels of the arena and Verizon Wireless works just fine, thank you very much.

Did I remember to tell the NCAA to bite me?

 

[BigRed]

Free at every school on the planet.
Free at the conference tournaments.
$16.50 if the NCAA failed to send you an e-mail reminding you about the discount for pre-registering.
Which they did.

Yes, I just found this out the hard way. Tried using my Sprint CrackBerry to connect, and it did - but it was slooooooow.
So I caved. $16.50 a day. Woo-hoo.

 

[Twoback]

Oh, and did I mention that for our $16.50 in NO the wireless knocks you off, on average, about every 17 minutes.
And is too slow to support March Madness on Demand?
Great stuff.

 

[BigRed]

Oh, and did I mention that for our $16.50 in NO the wireless knocks you off, on average, about every 17 minutes.
And is too slow to support March Madness on Demand?
Great stuff.

At least it's working there. Here in Buffalo, it's not working at all courtside.
**** you, NCAA.

 

[Cosmo]

It took three hours for them to get the wireless in Louisville at the women's tourney working. But we're up.

 

[Cosmo]

Interesting. The WaPost's Kathy Orton reports that per NCAA rules, they're not allowed to show men's games on TV at women's tournament sites. I'm at a women's site, and the games have been on TV in the press room all day.

 

[Batman]

Interesting. The WaPost's Kathy Orton reports that per NCAA rules, they're not allowed to show men's games on TV at women's tournament sites. I'm at a women's site, and the games have been on TV in the press room all day.

Sexist pigs.

 

[Batman]

Deep in the bowels of the arena and Verizon Wireless works just fine, thank you very much.

Did I remember to tell the NCAA to bite me?

I have this image in my head of F-Bat and a dozen other writers together in a janitor's closet somewhere in a subbasement of the arena, huddled together around a couple of wireless cards like crack addicts in need of a fix. One guy mans the door and keeps an eye out for the NCAA fuzz while the rest of them send their stories and get a quick update on scores.

 

[Ace]

Deep in the bowels of the arena and Verizon Wireless works just fine, thank you very much.

Did I remember to tell the NCAA to bite me?

I have this image in my head of F-Bat and a dozen other writers together in a janitor's closet somewhere in a subbasement of the arena, huddled together around a couple of wireless cards like crack addicts in need of a fix. One guy mans the door and keeps an eye out for the NCAA fuzz while the rest of them send their stories and get a quick update on scores.