With basketball fans gearing up for NCAA Final Four tournament action, this should have been a layup for SportsLine.com (NASDAQ:SPLN). Traffic always spikes at the sports-related site this time of year, and with partner Viacom (NYSE:VIA) broadcasting the games on CBS, how could the online player miss the open shot? Well, the SEC -- and by that I mean the Securities and Exchange Committee, not the Southeastern Conference -- has moved in to stuff SportsLine.
Back in September, the company restated its financials to account for $8 million in options-related charges over the three previous years that it had failed to report. Now, the SEC is looking into the matter.
In hoops-speak, it's like heaving an air ball and then being called for a technical foul. It's like tripping on your own laces and being called for traveling as your face hits the court. It's like making a big mistake, only to have to relive it all over again on Disney's (NYSE:DIS) ESPN SportsCenter.
It's a shame because SportsLine was starting to make the headway to follow its profitable dot-com peers out of the penny-stock gutter. Last year, the company narrowed its losses significantly on a 27% spike in revenues. That was the pick but where was the roll?
While companies like iVillage (NASDAQ:IVIL) and CNET (NASDAQ:CNET) have joined the ranks of the profitable, with their stocks following suit, SportsLine has been warming the bench. Now that bench will be a little hotter until the SEC moves on to play somewhere else.
Are you bummed after the Xavier and St. Joseph's Cinderella seasons came to an end? Whom are you rooting for now? Should the tourney go to double-elimination, or is it perfect in its present form? All this and more -- in the College Hoops discussion board. Only on Fool.com.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz didn't fill out a bracket this year, though he was in two SportsLine fantasy football pools this past season. He owns shares in Disney but no other company mentioned in this story.
