What's wrong with college basketball and how to fix it

[KamaAina]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/forde-minutes--what-s-wrong-with-college-basketball-and-how-to-fix-it-082255594-ncaab.html

The disappointing aspect of the overall pace and aesthetics of college hoops is that the sport’s decision makers were in the process of fixing it last year. And then they lost their nerve.

After a lot of early whistles and the beginning of a nationwide adjustment for the better, officials abdicated on calling it tight (1). At the start of conference play last January, we started backsliding to wrestling matches in the paint, hand-to-hand combat on drives, cutters bracing for collisions and secondary defenders collecting bogus charge calls. That has continued this season, with awful results.

“We made great progress a year ago … to try and limit contact in the game,” Georgia coach Mark Fox said. “I think we can’t lose sight of that, because it helped last year. We need to stay the course with the rule changes made a year ago.”

Scoring has plummeted back to where it was before the refs tried to clean up the game – actually even a little bit lower. Not coincidentally, TV ratings are far from robust. There isn’t much fun to watch.

[Scuba]

1. Ha! That's not even what's wrong with college hoops.

Protecting the health of the players should be the prime objective when it comes to contact rules and subsequent calls. From my seat, there appears to be improvement on that front with recent new rules.

But hard-nose defense and low scores don't make for a boring game, and least not to this fan, although I have to admit I can't stand and never watch the NBA.


In my mind, the biggest problem with college hoops viewership is that the game is so often interrupted that it becomes unwatchable in real time. The TV timeouts after each four-minutes of playing time is bad enough, but the worst is the last two minutes of any close game.

Those two minutes of playing time may take a half-hour to watch, what with coaches timeouts and constant fouling/free throw shooting. The NCAA should investigate and test means to speed up the end of these close games.