CIS basketball coverage takes another step downwards with men’s Final 8, women’s semifinals and final moving to Eastlink, Shaw

In Canada, "March Madness" might relate to what's going on with the television broadcasts of Canadian university basketball. The American NCAA tournament will again prominently be broadcast on TSN and TSN2, but the CIS Final 8, which used to be televised by The Score and then went to TSN and TSN2, won't be found on any Canadian sports networks this year. Instead, as announced by CIS Tuesday, both the men's and the women's tournaments will be on regional community networks this year, with the men's Final 8 (March 9-11) carried live on Atlantic Canada's Eastlink network and the women's semifinals and finals (March 18-19) being shown on Western Canada's Shaw. Eastlink and Shaw will reportedly make their feeds available to community television stations outside their regions, so fans may be able to tune in outside those areas (or catch the SSN Canada webcast, or watch repeats on NBA TV Canada), but this still looks like a huge step down for CIS, and one that will further hurt the stature of an organization that's already taken several hits over the last few months.

Oddly enough, it will likely be easier for fans across the country to watch the Ontario finals in men's basketball than the national tournament. The Score is going to be broadcasting the Wilson Cup final live, and they'll also air one semifinal live and the other one tape-delayed. That's not perfect coverage, certainly, but it's not bad (especially for a regional tournament), and it looks a lot better than what CIS has come up with for the Final 8.

That's not meant as a slam on Eastlink and Shaw; both networks have been solid supporters of Canadian university sports, particularly by carrying extensive schedules of conference football games that national networks haven't picked up. Their networks are regional, though, and thus are a long ways from a great fit for a national event. Even if they're able to form partnerships with regional stations in every market, it's still not going to be easy for people to find Final 8 games. Moreover, with these games not being on a sports network, they're likely to get far less promotion in the lead-up and far less visibility on highlights shows and the like afterwards.Add it up, and it doesn't look like a particularly good picture for the state of Canadian university basketball.

In what's become a refrain for coverage of CIS events, this isn't really about the product. Canadian university basketball on the court has plenty of quality, and many observers who tune in to watch are often impressed. Just check out some of the highlights, such as Joel Friesen's ridiculous Canada West quarterfinal buzzer-beater. Canadian university hoops can be a terrific game, and while no one's going to confuse the Final 8 with the NCAA tournament, it's a solid event that's been able to do decently on sports networks like The Score and TSN in the past. It could be that the move to community television is because they wanted to combine the men's and women's tournaments in a single deal, but that seems like a disastrous marketing move; while many of us love the women's game and will be tuning in for that tournament as well, it's historically proven quite difficult to sell. If the Final 8 had been marketed on its own, one would hope that they would have been able to at least return to The Score if TSN wasn't interested.

Instead, this has wound up as another marketing hit for CIS, and those have become all too frequent of late. The Vanier Cup's 2011 pairing with the Grey Cup looked like a real highlight for the organization, and despite some off-field issues, the game itself was so spectacular that it was arguably Canadian football's top moment of the year. After that, though, CIS fired its marketing director without naming a replacement, and there's been little positive news since (but plenty of negative news, including wiping out football teams' seasons and rearranging entire tournaments over eligibility controversies). If things continue along these lines, it may get harder and harder to find televised Canadian university sports, and that's unfortunate for fans everywhere.