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From: Steve Carlson, Production, CBS Sports
To: Sean McManus, President, CBS Sports
Date: March 4, 2015
Subject: Tournament production bumpers/teasers

Sean,
You wanted me to report back to you on the progress for the bumpers and teaser promos for the upcoming NCAA Tourney coverage. I've checked in with all teams and have some updates. I think you're going to be really pleased with the creativity and outside-the-box thinking our teams have done on this project.

1. Coach K's people are being difficult about the shots we have of him. They don't want him to come off as having a "mad face" or look "mean." We are currently fixing his eyes in CGI to make sure he looks less threatening. You won't be able to tell the difference.

2. From the regular season, we have a file folder of nearly 800 clips of Louisville's Montrezl Harrell sinking a shot, turning around and getting low to the ground and screaming at the camera dramatically as he runs down the court. Of course we'll run one of these going into every commercial break when Louisville plays, as usual, but we're going to have to find other ways to burn off these clips otherwise. Perhaps we can superimpose a handful of TD Ameritrade brochures into his fists for one, if that would please the sponsors?

3. Some great marketing/coach tie-ins this season: Mark Few has agreed to liberally apply Nivea for Men face lotion during the games, Roy Williams will eat out of a mason jar of Red Millâ„¢ Gluten-Free sorghum at time outs and Mike Bray has sold advertising space on the band collar of his shirt to a company that makes band-collar shirts.

4.  Since the big story this season is Kentucky's big dominance over the season and into the tournament, we've been working on some graphics for our analysis pieces and musical clip packages. Team has some good ideas:

-A stylish montage of each of the two Kentucky platoons shooting then cutting to a shot of a basketball goal comically overstuffed with basketballs because the team has shot so many, then the backboard and rim explodes into confetti spelling out "NCAA Tourney on CBS."

-A clip of John Calipari devouring a large rotisserie chicken with his bare hands, stuffing it into his mouth to show his dominance as a coach. The rotisserie chicken is other teams.

-Superimpose crowns onto the heads of UK players. This signifies that they are the kings. Of basketball, or of a fictional land where basketball is a thing people can own and govern.

-We make all the basketballs Kentucky players dribble look like earths. We can do this with a Microsoft paint program. This means that they are really good and the world is their oyster, and the oyster is a basketball.

-A graphic where John Calipari loads his team into a bus and the bus starts down a highway toward the sun, and then the bus flies up into the sky and directly into the sun, and the sun explodes, and then night falls over the planet and most people die as the human race decreases its fossil fuels and resources,  but those who live forge a new world underground in caves along streams and underground rivers until one day they walk out of their cave holes and look up into the sky, blinking and shielding their eyes because they've lived underground for so long, and then the dark clouds of ash which have covered the earth in darkness suddenly part and there's  big "NCAA on CBS" logo in the sky and animals come out of the woods and flowers begin to bloom again because life is new again and it's time for basketball!

Let me know what you think.

-Steve

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