The national rating for Monday night’s NCAA men’s tournament championship game between Michigan State and Florida was 14.1, the worst since CBS began telecasting the event in 1982.
It represents a drop of 18 percent from last year’s title-game rating of 17.2, the previous low.
The tournament as a whole finished with an average rating of 6.4, down 6 percent from 1999’s 6.8, also the previous low mark.
It wasn’t good news for CBS, which agreed in November to retain the rights for the three-week tournament by paying $6 billion for an 11-year contract, which takes effect in 2003.
Michigan State’s 89-76 victory over Florida drew a 23 share–representing the percentage of in-use television sets tuned to a particular show–down from the 27 garnered by Connecticut’s upset of Duke a year ago.
“It isn’t what we hoped for,” CBS spokeswoman Leslie Ann Wade said, “but it is certainly what we expected when the second half wasn’t very competitive and we had two teams of very regional interest.”
Ratings were also off this year for the women’s NCAA tourney on ESPN. Connecticut’s 71-52 drubbing of Tennessee in the title game showed a 19 percent decline from last year’s final.
– T.J. Lux, Northern Illinois’ Academic All-American center, is one of 64 players participating in the pre-draft Portsmouth (Va.) Invitational Tournament Wednesday through Saturday.
