In-Depth

Just the fax ma'am

Even as the Selection Show matured into the age of email, the NCAA still preferred to ship the brackets to CBS via fax. Email was too easy to forward. A fax on a single sheet of paper was safer to control potential leaks.

For most of the years of the show, CBS’s on-site producer was Steve Scheer. His job was to take the handoff from

While at CBS, Steve Scheer snapped this photo to show the setup in his hotel room as he waited on the NCAA selection committee to hand off the tournament bracket.
Photo by: Steve Scheer
the NCAA selection committee chair, return to his hotel room and fax the brackets to CBS in New York, a routine Scheer completed for 15 years, earning the NCAA’s trust as the only pair of eyes to see the bracket once it left the room. If ever there was a leak, Scheer would have been the likely suspect.

In the 1990s, the NCAA had moved its headquarters to Indianapolis and the committee held its meetings in the downtown Westin on the 15th floor. Scheer’s room was always one floor down, precisely under the committee’s suite. Scheer would wait patiently in his room for the call from the NCAA’s Greg Shaheen or Tom Jernstedt, then go fetch the brackets. If it was 4:30 or 5 p.m., CBS had plenty of time before its 6 p.m. show. Often, though, it was 5:30 or 5:45 before the brackets were prepared and ready to ship, creating a stressful bunch at CBS.

Scheer
“There was a lot of anxiety,” said Shaheen, a former NCAA executive who worked on the tournament for more than a decade. “When the cynics would imply that CBS was somehow influencing the brackets, I can assure you they’re not because they’re getting it so late.”

One year, Scheer left his room and sprinted upstairs to get the bracket from the NCAA. Upon returning to his room, Scheer put his card key in the door. Red light. Again and again, he tried the key and it didn’t work.

“For some reason, the hotel had me checking out on Sunday and the key stopped working,” said Scheer, now a producer at Fox Sports. “So I called hotel security and here comes the security guard walking slow and whistling like he’s from Mayberry RFD. I said, ‘Faster, please.’ That was the longest five minutes of my career.”



Keeping a secret

Think CBS is serious about keeping the brackets a secret until the Selection Show? Just ask Seth Greenberg, the

Seth Greenberg
Photo by: Getty Images
ESPN analyst who coached at Virginia Tech from 2003-12.

During his coaching days, Greenberg accepted an invitation to appear on CSTV’s bracket show. A producer at CSTV phoned CBS’s Steve Scheer on the afternoon of Selection Sunday to find out if Greenberg’s Hokies, who were on the bubble, had made the NCAA tournament field, just to prepare him for the appearance.

Scheer said no way. He couldn’t share any information about the brackets. The CSTV producer called again.
Finally, Scheer said, “OK, tell Seth he’s in the tournament. I don’t know if it’s the NCAA or the NIT, but he’s in a tournament.”

Greenberg’s team, which seemed to be perpetually on the bubble, didn’t make the field that year, but the coach’s colorful work as an analyst led to his on-air role at ESPN in later years.

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