They're this close to televising Duke practices

After Stanford grabbed the #1 ranking in both college basketball polls, I told myself that I wasn't going to say peep about basketball within this blog. As holding the top ranking is a sure-fire way to lose, I figured it's best to remain quiet until Stanford's fifteen minutes are up.

I lied to myself. With the Cardinal on the dais, I must speak.

I just wanted to share a tidbit that Luke Winn pointed out in his online column for Sports Illustrated this week:

National TV appearances by projected No. 1 seeds (data for entire regular season)
Team	Total games	Games On National TV	% on National TV
Duke	29	26	89.7%
Stanford	27	6	22.2%
St. Joe's	27	5	18.5%
Miss. State	27	3	11.1%

A little TV time parity, please? The pat ESPN explanation of the East Coast Bias bogeyman is that West Coast games start too late for East Coast fans to appreciate their quality. However, what's to appreciate if they're not on TV at all?

What irks me most about Stanford's (or any good West Coast team's) absence from the national stage is that the late-night programming on ESPN, ESPN2, or Fox Sports is typically either a fishing show, motocross, or a rebroadcast of the ACC game that was televised in primetime.

We linger in obscurity so people in Rhode Island can see Hank land a bass at 1 am.