Game stoppages for commercial/media breaks in general. I was in school this time 20 years ago, and the games weren’t as long because stations weren’t using every posession change or time stoppage to cram in cut-outs to ads. And you can tell the difference when the energy is naturally way up in the stadium and not pumped through speakers (though, to be fair, there were said to be canned noise at Penn State during those rough 2003-4 seasons of suckage).

You started to not being able to find local teams on the television at that point. Iirc, out in the Philly burbs, finding Pitt and Temple wasn’t easy, but at least PSU was on the local ABC or WPHL-17. That’s not true anymore for the Nits (and add ESPN to that accesibility).

CBS also still used stoppages to do actual analysis. At some point a few years later, they went off the deep end and just started jamming ads whenever possible. I used to track media for Nielsen for a few years toward the end of that decade in my 20’s. I think it was the 2007 or 2008 NCAA Tournament...holy ****, they changed feeds at will, but you still got jammed up with ads. I loathe CBS NCAA coverage now (football and basketball). Unwatchable to me, really. ESPN isn’t so bad by comparison, but it has gotten worse since the 2000’s.