Year-old basketball event coming to ESPN  John Ourand     Courtesy: Sports Business Journal

This summer, ESPN will carry The Basketball Tournament -- a single-elimination tournament of 96 teams that carries a $1 million winner-take-all prize and lists sports industry veterans Tony Ponturo, Andy Dolich and Len DeLuca among its advisers.

ESPN will carry the 1-year-old event's semifinals (Aug. 1) and finals (Aug. 2) from New York. ESPNU will carry many of the games from the rounds of eight and 16; and ESPN3 will stream all of the games from the round of 16.

The one-year revenue-sharing deal will see TBT sell the title sponsorship around the event; TBT and ESPN will combine to sell presenting and in-game sponsorships. ESPN holds options to keep the tournament in 2016.

"This property came in through some folks that we know very well over the years," said Burke Magnus, ESPN's senior vice president of programming acquisition.

ESPN got to know the event last year, when it streamed some of the tournament's games via its ESPN3 service. Magnus said ESPN executives were impressed by the level of play, which included ex-NBA players and ex-college players mixed in with regular Joes.

"From a storytelling perspective, when there's high stakes, there's bigger interest -- like the World Series of Poker," Magnus said. "It's a big money game with people that you've heard of. At the same time, there's this everyman appeal to it as well."

Last year's tournament was won by a group of Notre Dame alums. Cornell's 2010 team that made the Sweet 16 entered the tournament last year, as did a team with former first-round NBA pick Hakim Warrick.

"It was like a 'Field of Dreams' moment where all these different teams were reuniting," said TBT founder Jonathan Mugar. "It was really special to see." 

Confetti rains down on the winning Notre Dame alumni basketball team at the conclusion of the 2014 championship game. Photo: Matt Thoman.

This year's opening rounds begin July 10-12 at regional sites in Los Angeles and Atlanta, and play will continue July 17-19 in Chicago and Philadelphia. The round of 16 will take place in Chicago starting July 24, with the winners going on to New York. The tournament is still finalizing deals with gyms to house the various games.

The games will fit nicely with ESPN's schedule, filling its summer schedule with live programming, Magnus said.

"We get hundreds upon hundreds of pitches a year from things all over the spectrum in terms of their viability and their approach," Magnus said. "This stood out last year. We trusted the people that were involved in it and they delivered in the first year. There's a path to great growth here in terms of how it applies to potentially other sports. We're excited about it."

A splendid idea   Glenn Dickey

As sports columnist for 34 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, I always made a point of individual visits with a new coach or manager for Bay Area teams. So, when Bill Walsh was named football coach for Stanford in 1977, I arranged to have lunch with him after his news conference.  

Walsh had been running the offense for Paul Brown's Bengals and already had a reputation for being an offensive genius, but I had never met him. Shortly after we started talking I thought, "Wow, this guy is really ahead of the curve!" From that point until his death in 2005, I never stopped listening and learning.

Walsh always wanted smart players so he selected Guy Benjamin as his quarterback; previous coach Jack Christiansen had not used Benjamin because Guy made no secret of the fact that he thought Christiansen was not smart. Walsh also saved the career of James Lofton, whom Christiansen had benched because he competed in track rather than come out for spring football drills. Lofton was eventually voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and credited Walsh for saving his career.

In his two years there, Walsh got Stanford into two bowl games, and I pushed for him to be hired as the 49ers coach. He inhterited a team that had been ravaged by Joe Thomas, but in his third year the 49ers won the Super Bowl and started a dynasty.

Because of my early support, Walsh gave me extra access. After the regular news conference, we would go up to his office and talk. Often, he'd tell me something and say, "I don't want my name attached to this." So, I'd use it under my name and look smarter than I was.

Even after he stopped coaching, I learned from him. When we were working on a book about his career with Benjamin, he and Guy would talk about how Walsh's teams would work against more predictable defenses. That was especially true of the Dallas Cowboys because their head coach Tom Landry had a very rigid defensive scheme. The Cowboys beat the 49ers badly in Walsh's second year, before he had the players he needed, but when he got the right players in 1981, he never again lost to Landry's Cowboys. They beat the Cowboys twice in the 1981 season, the second time in the NFC Conference game.

Walsh retired from the 49ers in 1988, but he remained active in other roles, with the 49ers and with Stanford. We kept talking and I kept learning.

That lunch was one of the best ideas I ever had.  

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