I know not all of you have been following along with our enormous, unwieldy live blog this season. And if you are following along, you might notice if you blink twice, you miss a lot. It’s a lot like life, in that way.

Last evening during the live blog, Chris Korman of the Herald-Times typed these words sometime in second half: And we’ve been shut down. I kid you not.

There was a lot of confusion in the following moments. Was it the dirty, filthy NCAA shutting those blogging from courtside down? No. Was it that monolith ESPN, the TV rights holder for the game? Closer. It was actually International Sports Properties.

I’ll let Korman explain:

Steve Shutt, an assistant athletic director at Wake Forest, cited an ACC rule permitting only four blog posts per half when making the request, which both publications complied with. The live blog continued to be operated by contributors from the H-T, IDS, HoosierNation.com and Inside the Hall who were not credentialed to cover the event.

After the game, Shutt said that the ACC rule on blogging was probably not in writing anywhere but followed common practice. Last year, the NCAA began limiting the number of blog posts reporters could make during all of its championships events.

He also said that Wake Forest could not allow the dissemination of information about the game on the Internet by courtside reporters because it violated the multimedia rights agreement the school has with ISP (International Sports Properties).

Under the agreement, which is for between $800,000 and $1.2 million per year according to Shutt, ISP owns the radio and Web rights to Wake Forest games.

ISP relies on drawing viewers to the Wake Forest Web site — which includes a GameTracker feature that allows fans to follow the game in close-to real-time — to set its advertising rates and generate revenue, so the university could not allow reporters to operate a blog that may divert readers from the official Web site.

(more…)