College basketball has been plagued by a decline in watchability for the sport to the point that “How to Fix College Basketball” has become one of the more popular thinkpieces in sportswriting. Aside from the issues surrounding the one-and-done rule and the overall state of the game, the actual functional basketball action is plagued with problems. A typical college basketball game has become two and a half hours of watching rock ’em sock ’em robots, just with dozens of timeouts. Scoring is down, games are longer, and the pace of play is often excruciatingly slow.
Thankfully, the NCAA is hoping to do just a little bit about it.
The NCAA rules committee has proposed several changes for the upcoming season, including a couple that should systematically improve watchability.
First, the shot clock will be reduced from 35 seconds to 30 seconds. This is an obvious alteration that should have happened years ago that will improve the speed and flow of the game. The best thing we can say about it is “better late than never.”
The rule changes that might be even better for college basketball fans are the adjustment in timeout rules. The current system of media timeouts in college basketball is one of the greatest evils in the history of humankind. There are few things more obnoxious than a timeout called at 12:01 remaining in the half, followed by a commercial break, followed by a few seconds of actual basketball, followed by a mandatory media timeout, followed by another commercial break, followed by four minutes of actual basketball before another mandatory media timeout, and another commercial break. It brings about vertigo just reading about it, right?
Have you ever seen a handcheck foul separate two commercial breaks? Then you’ve been in the third circle of hell. It’s become a running joke in college basketball.
Bill Walton: "Another timeout?"@DavePasch: "Media timeout."
Walton: "We just had one!"@DavePasch: "You're catching on."— Ken Fang — Very Asian (@fangsbites) January 15, 2015
While it’s not a complete fix, the changes outlined below would present a bit of relief for increasingly impatient fans and the horrible, no-good, very bad proliferation of timeouts.
#MBBRules Committee proposes changes related to timeouts. pic.twitter.com/qrGYSL8tk7
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) May 15, 2015
The first rule should theoretically cut down on the end-of-game marathon situations where it takes half an hour to play the final two minutes.
The second rule is a way of saying “speed up the game without cutting back on advertising revenue.”
The third rule finally helps out the dreaded scenario above and prevents most of the back-to-back lengthy timeouts from happening.
Again, this isn’t a complete fix, but these are welcome changes. (And at this point, it’s worth noting that the recommendations have to be ratified before becoming official.) We’re still going to have a multitude of media timeouts in college basketball. Most networks still only allow 2 hours for a game window even though many of them routinely go well over. Perhaps these rule changes get games closer to actually finishing within two hours and ease the stress on fans and programming departments. Most importantly, they should make college basketball at least a little bit more watchable.
