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For the first time this year, basketball junkies and office pool warriors will be able to watch all of the 67 March Madness games live.
All you have to do is find them.
CBS and Turner will broadcast the games over four different networks: CBS, TNT, TBS and truTV, a cable channel usually devoted to crime shows.
To cover that many games, the networks are dragging in some commentators not usually associated with the college game — including Turner’s NBA analysts Charles Barkley and Kenny “The Jet” Smith.
Even they admit they are not up to date with the undergrads.
“I’m not going to watch 100 college basketball teams play, that’s bulls- -t,” Barkley said yesterday.
“I’ll probably watch 30 or 40 teams play and the rest I’m going to have to get my college coach friends [to help].”
Smith was similarly unperturbed by his lack of NCAA experience.
“My job is to come in, watch the game and analyze what I’m seeing right there,” Smith told The Post. “It doesn’t matter if the team couldn’t defend the pick-and-roll earlier in the season. All that matters is if they can defend it right then.”
Barkley and Smith will work from a studio in New York with three other co-anchors, Ernie Johnson (TNT) and Greg Gumble (CBS) and NCAA basketball analyst Greg Anthony.
Gumble, too, expressed his concerns about having to cover so many games with a crew that may know basketball — but had not been following the teams all year.
“I met Ernie [Johnson] last week down in Atlanta,” Gumble said. “We said, ‘How do you think this is going to go?’ And I think we were very honest when we said, ‘We don’t know.’ ”
Barkley, whose career as a player and a TV commentator has been full of controversy, says he will be changing his standards somewhat to cover his first NCAA tournament.
“I can’t criticize these kids in the same way I do a guy making $10 million a year in the NBA,” he said.
The player may get a break but not the colleges — or their basketball programs. He knows what he’s paid to do.
“Don’t hand me no check and tell me not to talk about graduation rates and corruption,” Barkley said.
“The $10.8 billion [that Turner and CBS paid to broadcast the tournament through 2025] is a lot of money,” Barkley said. “Where’s the 10.8 going, because it sure ain’t going to the players. We can’t just keep making money off these kids and not graduating them.”
This year, the tournament itself expands from 65 to 68 teams. And it will take its first toll on those office bracket pools.
“The first round actually starts on truTV Tuesday,” says David Levy of Turner TV.
“Which means most of you will have to fill out your brackets by 7 o’clock Tuesday — not 12 noon on Thursday.”