(Sports Network) - I have a confession to make. I am a die- hard competitor in the fine sport of channel surfing.

Some nights, I fail to catch any good viewing waves as I paddle through the wasteland of the latest Zombie marathon on the SciFi Channel, or a tribute to the films of Ronald Reagan on Turner Classic Movies - two of the actual offerings available to TV fans in the past few days.

But late into the night on Tuesday, I found the perfect program for a longtime college basketball fan. The Big Ten Network was showing the original NBC broadcast of the 1979 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.

It was a historic broadcast on many fronts, as Michigan State beat a previously unbeaten Indiana State team, 75-64, for the national title.

It was Earvin "Magic" Johnson's first encounter with Larry Bird.

It was one of the worst officiated games I've ever seen at the championship level, this replay showing it to be just as bad as I had remembered it from the first time.

The contest was one of the seminal events in college basketball history, not so much for the quality of the game, which frankly didn't quite live up to expectations. But it became ground zero for the basketball tournament as a televised entity.

Two years later, CBS purchased the television rights to the tournament, forever changing it into the monolithic monster it is today.

Young basketball fans do not remember a time when the championship game was played on Saturday or Sunday afternoons before relatively limited television audiences. The first national final wasn't televised by NBC until 1969.

The title game finally moved to prime time in 1973, when Bill Walton scored 44 points on 21-of-22 shooting from the field as UCLA defeated Memphis State, 87-66.

At that time, only 25 teams were invited to the NCAA tournament and the NIT, played entirely at Madison Square Garden in New York City with a 16-team field, was almost as prestigious and was certainly as historically relevant.

In 1967, Marquette turned down an NCAA bid to play in the NIT when coach Al McGuire bristled at the seeding his Warriors had received in the NCAA tournament.

Instead, McGuire's Marquette team lost to a Walt Frazier-led Southern Illinois squad, 71-56, in a title clash more memorable all these years later than Lew Alcindor and UCLA winning the first of seven consecutive championships with a 79-64 victory over Dayton.

Frankly, you had more chance of catching an NIT contest on CBS during the 1960s and early 70s than you did one of the few NCAA games that were televised at that time. Weekends on CBS during the NIT's then-eight-day run were filled with NIT first-round, semifinal and championship games.

You were lucky to get regional broadcasts of any NCAA games until ESPN started showing first- and second-round matchups in 1982.

It wasn't until 1975 that the NCAA expanded the tourney field to 32 teams. It had grown to 40 squads by the time Magic and Bird competed for that epic title in 1979, and the success of that tournament moved NCAA officials to expand again to 48 teams in 1980.

The 64-team format didn't arrive until 1985 and the opening-round game wasn't instituted until 2001, when the Mountain West Conference's split from the Western Athletic Conference necessitated another bid.

Nowadays, viewers are almost over-saturated with televised games. In my office over the four days of the first and second rounds of tournament from Thursday through Sunday, I could choose from any of 48 games. I could even watch a split screen with games from all four regionals at the same time on the DirecTV Satellite broadcast.

I'll be back in front of the tube beginning on Thursday night, when the 16 remaining teams begin to be whittled down to the Final Four. For that, we owe a big thanks to Magic and Larry.

LOOKING AT THE FIRST TWO ROUNDS

Like most basketball fans not rooting more for their tournament brackets than teams they actually admire, I enjoy seeing major upsets in the early rounds of the tournament as much as anything else. So I was disappointed when teams like Cal State Northridge and East Tennessee State fell short of monumental upsets.

The best this year's tournament had to offer was No. 13-seeded Cleveland State's resounding victory over No. 4 Wake Forest in a Friday night first- round game in the Midwest Regional. That opened the door for Arizona - a team most observers didn't feel even belonged in the tournament with a 19-13 record - to reach the Sweet 16.

No. 12 Arizona outlasted No. 5 Utah, 84-71, in the first round before ending Cleveland State's dreams in the second round with a 71-57 win. Ironically, the Wildcats had won only two of 10 road games in the regular season.

Western Kentucky, seeded No. 12 in the South Regional, earned some kudos for winning a first-round game, 76-72, over No. 5 Illinois and pushing No. 4 Gonzaga to the limit before losing in the final seconds, 83-81.

Villanova nearly blew a homecourt advantage it never should have had on Thursday night at Philadelphia's Wachovia Center. The Wildcats played three games at the Wachovia in the regular season and another next door at the Spectrum, one under the limit that would have forced them on the road for the first and second rounds.

But an inspired and senior-oriented American squad gave Villanova all it could handle before running out of gas in the second half. The Wildcats came back for an 80-67 victory, and then destroyed UCLA, 89-69, in the second round.

When the weekend ended, the tournament would feature all four first, second and third-seeded teams in the Sweet 16 for the first time in tournament history. Fourth-seeded Gonzaga and Xavier, fifth-seeded Purdue, and 12th- seeded Arizona completed the rather predictable group for the regional semifinals.

Top-seeded North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Louisville and No. 2 Memphis all showed various signs of vulnerability in the first two rounds, but Connecticut showed no ill effects from its previous six-overtime encounter with Syracuse in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals. The Huskies were the team of the first two rounds, with crushing wins over Chattanooga and Texas A&M.

No. 3 Syracuse didn't look too worse for wear either in wins over Stephen F. Austin and Arizona State.

North Carolina probably wouldn't have survived without the return of point guard Ty Lawson for a second-round challenge from LSU. Lawson scored 21 of 23 points in the second half of the Tar Heels' 84-70 win.

Unlike the brackets of President Barack Obama (web | news | bio) , the lack of upsets shredded my field, but I'll still go out on a limb for the Sweet 16. I see Louisville and Kansas advancing to the regional final in the Midwest, UConn and Memphis moving on in the West and Pittsburgh and Villanova sliding through in the East.

While a Villanova win over Duke might be considered a minor upset by some, I'm looking for bigger upsets in the South, with Gonzaga out-slugging North Carolina and Syracuse dumping Oklahoma.

My picks to advance on to the Final Four over the weekend are Louisville, UConn, Villanova and Gonzaga.



CATCHING UP ON THE NIT

There is little doubt in my mind that the NIT field of 2009 is one of the best in years, and this once-fading event has returned some of its luster with a slew of exciting games.

The matchup on Monday night between St. Mary's and Davidson would have made for a nice NCAA game, with Patrick Mills and St. Mary's out-dueling Stephen Curry and the Wildcats to advance to the quarterfinals on Wednesday night against San Diego State.

Kentucky is at Notre Dame on Wednesday in the other remaining quarterfinal, even as rumors of a possible firing swirl around Wildcat coach Billy Gillispie.

Baylor and Penn State clinched trips to Madison Square Garden next week with road wins over Auburn and Florida, respectively, on Tuesday night.

It should make for some great basketball next week in New York.





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