Sunday, March 28th "Daylight saving time; Betis-Barcelona rained out; NCAA tourney and the Wall Street Journal"

For those of you in Spain, or Europe for that matter, who are calling home remember the hour change does not take effect in the U.S. until next week. That may also keep you from missing a call as I did today.

It's been raining for three straight days, except for a bit of Sun this afternoon. I had my day planned around the Betis-Barcelona game which was hopefully going to be an exciting match. After arriving an hour early with little more to do than wait under the shelter of the stadium it was quite a disappointment

to have the game canceled. Especially so for all of those who purchased individual tickets at the gate to see Barcelona play. Many traveled from Barcelona but the field conditions were awful. Everyone was glued to the closed circuit TV by the food stand to see the referees wander around the stadium trying to bounce the ball - a key to whether the game can be played. If the ball doesn't bounce off the grass it's generally called off. And although the Betis players and coach were ready to play Barcelona preferred not to. One reason may have been the absence of some key players from their lineup, although after seeing the filed conditions up close I can't argue with the decision. The game is to be replayed on April 14th, except for those unlucky Barcelona fans who won't be able to return.

On to the NCAA tournament, where I experienced some technical glitches and of course errors by CBSsportsline. One being the blackout of the Duke-Seton Hall game even though I received a wonderful one sentence reply from them that, simply "there are no blackout games" when I inquired whether they determined blackout games by billing address or IP. Turns out they didn't broadcast the game at all due to it being a nationally broadcast game and mainly forgetting they had international viewers. They are looking into a solution for next year's tournament. Aside from this the quality is worse than Yahoo as they haven't gotten the streaming video part down yet. Instead of fluid motion I watched stopped frames and heavy pixilation. I did manage to get two interviews from the Wall Street Journal out of all of this - one for my experience last year and another for my viewing experience this year with CBS. For those of you who subscribe (it's a subscription only web site - and an expensive one) you can find a few articles listed in the technology section. The reporter liked my story about watching the NCAA final tape delayed in the Tex Mex bar last year. A warning yet again to those planning to see it there - Sportmania shows the highlights and results before the game begins which ruins the event for most.