ESPN lost their bid to air the NCAA Tournament, but they still won today

I doubt that I was the only one that believed that the Worldwide Leader was destined to land the NCAA Tournament's broadcasting rights.

It only made sense. They have so many channels -- ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U, ESPN Classic, ESPNNews, ESPN FullCourt -- they are able to stream the games online with ESPN 3, and they spend more airtime covering the sport than any other broadcasting company.

ESPN had a chance to completely take over college basketball coverage by landing the NCAA Tournament.

But they didn't. CBS teamed with Turner Broadcasting to win the rights.

Here is ESPN's release:

We made an aggressive bid and believe our combination of TV distribution, digital capabilities, season-long coverage and year-round marketing would have served the interests of the NCAA and college fans very well. We remain committed to our unparalleled coverage of more than 1,200 men's and women's college basketball games each season.

But the WWL wasn't a loser today.

In fact, the announcement of a 68 team tournament may have saved their coverage of the sport.

College basketball's regular season is a bit of an afterthought as it is. Any team with a shot at winning a title, and, with very few exceptions, any team capable of making the Final Four, will know that they are in the tournament by December. The most meaningful January and February games are usually played between teams like Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, or Florida and Mississippi State. Teams that are not generally on the national radar, fighting for the last few 11 and 12 seeds.

With a 96 team tournament, those meaningful games would have been between teams in the bottom of the power conferences, or middling teams in mid-major leagues. How many people are really going to care about potential bubble battles between the 90th and 100th best teams in the country?

When the NCAA announced that they were going to expand to just 68 teams, they made sure that games played in November and December were still meaningful. They made sure that teams still needed to play a difficult non-conference schedule -- which sets up some of the best early season, non-conference match-ups -- if they want to secure a bid to the tournament. They ensured that there would still be fans interested in watching those games.

Those early season games are the ones that ESPN broadcasts.

A 68 team tournament also means that the conference tournaments and championship week are still as important as ever. Again, those are games that ESPN owns the rights too.

So while ESPN lost out on their bid for the NCAA Tournament, they still won today because the college basketball games that they do air still matter. There will still be great early season match-ups. Championship week will be just as important as ever.

And there will still be eyes on the television sets when there are games on ESPN.