College basketball games are entirely too long. Here are 5 ways to fix the problem
It has become an epidemic, these college basketball games that take entirely too long to complete, thus eating into the viewing time window of the next game on the television schedule.
The problem reached its peak on Feb. 26 when more than 40 minutes were required to play the final 3:33 of Vanderbilt’s 86-84 win at Texas A&M. The entire length of the game was 2 hours and 47 minutes.
By the time the final horn sounded in College Station and the SEC Network had switched to Kentucky vs. Oklahoma in Norman, there were less than eight minutes left in the first half of a game that UK won 83-82.
This past Saturday, a production truck fire caused ABC to lose the feed in the second half of Auburn’s 94-78 win at Kentucky. Even without that, the game would have easily pushed past the two-hour window ahead of the NHL game between Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins that followed.
According to the official box score, the UK-Auburn game’s duration was 2:32.
As a solution, some argue the television networks need to expand the window for games beyond the normal two hours. That might solve one problem, but not the other, i.e. the fact that the games themselves are too long.
Here are five ways to fix that problem:
1. Adopt the four-quarter format
Men’s college basketball is the only sport that clings to playing two halves of its 40-minute game. The women’s college game adopted a four-quarter format before the 2015-16 season and the system works just fine.
Fouls reset at the end of each quarter. That cuts down on the tediousness of one team reaching the bonus early in a half, then endlessly parading to the foul line.
2. Limit the number of timeouts
As it stands now, each team is allowed three 30-second timeouts and one 60-second timeout per regulation. Teams can carry over two of their 30-second timeouts from the first half to the second. If not used, they lose the third.
Do coaches/teams really need that many timeouts? Of course not. The game already allows media timeouts at the first dead ball under 16, 12, 8 and 4 minutes. Plus, the college game includes a 15-minute halftime.
Cut the timeouts to two 30-second timeouts and one 60-second timeout. Make it so that just one 30-second timeout carries over from the first to the second half. That would be a start.
3. Limit the number of monitor reviews
Saturday’s Kentucky-Auburn game included three monitor reviews. In the first half! Too many games suffer the constant interruptions of officials’ twirling a finger in a circular motion, pulling on headsets and standing at the scorer’s table while staring at a monitor.
Adopt the NBA’s challenge system. Each team gets one challenge per game. A successful challenge would earn an additional challenge.
With all the assistant coaches and support staff members on the bench these days, surely teams can figure out which call or calls are in need of a review.
4. Limit the length of the reviews
Former NFL general manager Bill Polian was on the competition committee that first installed the league’s replay review system. The goal, said Polian, was not to overturn every call, but to overturn the most egregious calls.
Same should go for college basketball. If it takes longer than a minute for the officials to review a call, stick with the call made on the court. If the call is wrong, so what. Human error is part of the game.
5. Change the free-throw rule in the final minutes
Some have argued that the only way to stop the constant fouling at the end of games to have the team that is fouled to either (a) take free throws and then take the ball out of bounds or (b) be given the option of taking the ball out of bounds instead of the free throws.
Here’s a better solution: Bring back an old NBA rule. For a time, professional basketball teams in a bonus situation were allowed to take three throws to make two. That was abolished before the 1981-82 season. I say bring it back for college basketball. Make it applicable to the game’s final two minutes.
Mark Pope’s thoughts on officials’ reviews
On his weekly call-in show Monday night, UK coach Mark Pope if he had any suggestions about a way to cut down on the number of officials’ reviews during the course of the game.
“Yes,” Pope said. “I think it would be really helpful for college basketball actually -- probably not going to be super exciting for coaches -- but I think right now we’re taking the onus and all the burden is on the referees. That’s why we have a million reviews.
“Jay Bilas, every time we sit and talk he’s like, ‘I don’t understand. We can go 38 minutes without a review and the game is fine and in the last two minutes we have 72 reviews.
“People don’t really love my opinions even though I think they’re all correct. I’m still on my horse about pushing for 40 games. I’m gonna continue beating that drum for awhile.
“I think in terms of these reviews . . . this is what I want, I want coaches to have one opportunity for a review. Because this is what that does, it takes the onus off the officials and it says, ‘Did a coach take a review already? If he did was it accurate? Did he get it back or did he lose it?’ It puts the pressure on the coaches to have some discretion about when they use a review. It frees up the referees where they don’t have to check themselves and cover themselves all the time.
“I want to have a flag. I want to have a flag in my belt that I can throw out on the floor. That’s what I’m looking for.”
