Comment Re:The Real Scoop (Score 2, Informative) 302
With basketball, I don't believe it was enforced, mostly because it's such a huge event, with such a huge amount of media covering it, that it would've been damn near impossible to do anything about it.
CSTV owns a lot of these rights through their relationship with CBS and TV rights. Others go to niche sites that provide live scoring, like in the case of wrestling or rowing.
You have to realize this - chances are, the game is on radio and TV. That's $$ for the NCAA and the host institution via sale of rights. If you're a commercial station, and you want to broadcast an NCAA game on the radio, you need to purchase those rights. But also, you've got live stats, generally provided by the institution. Those features generally include running commentary, so OF COURSE you want people looking at that (and pumping ad revenue to you) rather than the newspaper's blog. It's competition - schools and the NCAA are media outlets in and of themselves. Every university has its own site that generates a non-trivial amount of revenue (in some cases, a significant amount), and schools are damn well going to do what they need to do to maximize that revenue and pour it back into its programs.
Nobody's pockets are getting lined with gold here. Nobody at the NCAA is getting fat bonuses because bloggers aren't blogging, and people working at the universities sure as hell aren't banking anything off it. These are all non-profit organizations we're talking about here. Schools' sports information departments have been providing statistics, stories, photos, and anything else you can think of for decades to media outlets, for free. A lot of local papers don't even send reporters to cover their smaller colleges anymore, they just write stories based on those press releases.
As I said above, bowl games are NOT NCAA events; blogging would be at the discretion of the individual bowl. The Kentucky Derby is obviously not one either; regular-season collegiate contests don't count either (so if you're a newspaper reporter and want to blog UNC-Duke basketball, and the home school allows it, knock yourself out).
The no-blogging terms are no secret. They're on the back of most NCAA credentials; the others direct credential-holders to the NCAA's terms on its web site. I'm going to guess the wording is on baseball credentials, too.
I hope the NCAA does change its policy, because it ultimately hurts the schools most of all. But for now, there isn't much anybody can do to make them change. It's their party, and they'll invite whoever they please.
