College Basketball Rules I'd Like To See Implemented
There’s a lot going on in the world of college basketball right now. I talked about how I’d change the rules off the court – i.e. essentially redefining what amateurism means in response to the Rice Commission on college basketball which was in response to the FBI investigation. However, this is a yearly blog I write in effort to continue my push to become commissioner of college basketball. Some of these rule changes you probably read last year when I wrote this, but I’m a guy who evolves. I’m not set in my ways. There are always little changes that I’d like to see or adjustments to the rules. Luckily we get to see part of this as the NIT has used experimental rules the last two seasons and they’ve actually been pretty good. Now, I want to preface this with the fact that in general college basketball doesn’t need ‘fixing.’ There are just things that can make it better, which is why I’m here. Remember, you won’t see anything like pay the players, I discussed that in response to the Rice Commission report.
1. Move to four quarters and reset the fouls – Pretty basic here. College basketball is the only version of the game in the owrldthat plays with halves. There’s no rhyme or reason to it and there’s no reason not to switch. Right now there are 9 guaranteed stops to the game with 4 TV timeouts in each half and halftime. You can keep the sponsors happy and ad money coming in by doing stops after the 1st and 3rd quarter, halftime and then TV timeouts at the 5 minute mark of all 4 quarters. Now with resetting fouls, this will help with the foul calls that we’re seeing. Remember the national title game between Gonzaga and UNC? Of course you don’t because it was borderline impossible to watch due to the lack of flow and constant free throw shooting. Resets fouls at the start of each quarter. Go like FIBA and the NBA where the bonus starts on the 5th foul. Fouls 5-7 can be 1-and-1 and then anything over 7 in a quarter you’re shooting two.
2. Defensive 3 seconds – If there’s one call college refs consistently struggle with it’s the block/charge call. They’ve instituted the circle under the basket to help with that, but it still gets called wrong more often than not. Now, while I’d love to get rid of the charge completely, the best and most logical thing to do is defensive three seconds like there is in the NBA. There are limited charge calls in the NBA and that’s because there’s space in the lane. People want to see offense vs good defense. This will force more teams to go man-to-man or at least extend the zone. Less congestion in the lane, the more cuts we see and the less charges we see. Sorry, Syracuse.
3. Change from 5 Fouls to 6 Fouls – This is the biggest debate in college basketball right now and personally I don’t see it as one. There’s absolutely no reason to leave it at five fouls. The way the game is officiated (rather poorly and inconsistent) to how athletic these guys are, it’s time for this to change. The only two reasons people give me to keep it at 5 fouls is the NBA is 48 minutes therefore you get 1 foul per 8 minutes and to teach defense without fouling. Both are beyond dumb. If you believe that first one, do you believe high school basketball should go to four fouls because it’s 32 minutes? On top of that, don’t you want to see the best players on the court longer? Too many times games are decided by who has the better 8th or 9th man. That’s not entertaining. The argument that ‘there will be more fouls?’ is also a little absurd. You’re talking at most one or two more fouls committed per game and again that will be by better players. Again, I want to watch the best players here.
4. No more hanging on the rim technicals – In fact, hanging on the rim should be encouraged. This is by far the dumbest technical foul rule in the game right now and we’ve seen some just bad calls because a ref wants to hear his whistle. Dunks are fun and exciting, if a kid happens to spend an extra second on the rim who is it hurting? Let’s all stop pretending like we care about sportsmanship and showing up opponents. If you played competitive sports at any level you know what happens between the lines. If you don’t want to see me celebrate keep me off the rim.
5. Reviews can only go to 1 minute and no huddles – I don’t have a problem with replays and making sure the call is right. However, it can’t take a 5 minute delay to look at a call. There are three officials on the court plus one on the bench. One official needs to be on the floor at all times and not letting the teams go towards their own bench. Don’t give teams a free timeout, especially late in games. From there the other officials have 1 minute to review the play. If they can’t determine a call in that 1 minute time frame, the call stands and play resumes. Too often these things are dragged out and just disrupt the flow. I don’t want to make this like football where you have coaching challenges, but we need to do something to help the flow of the game here.
6. Start the season in December – Right now the first month of college basketball gets buried and we actually get some great games in that time frame. The schedule isn’t favorable to the sport. When college football dies down as it is right now, college basketball is playing a bunch of nobodies and everyone is getting ready for conference play. Start the season in December and have that first Saturday after conference championships in bowl games be a huge slate of games. Have that be where the Maui/PK80/Atlantis all run. I’m not dumb. This is always going to take a backseat to football and even the NBA to a degree, but have the season run from December to April. Yeah, April Madness doesn’t have the same ring to it, but I bet people still tune in. College basketball needs to take advantage of this time of the year and they simply don’t.
7. The major 6 conferences play a conference battle – Right now we have the Gavitt Games (Big East/Big 10), ACC/Big 10 Challenge and SEC/Big 12 Challenge. We need to get the Pac-12 involved here so I suggest moving it as such. I know people want to keep the ACC/Big 10 Challenge so let’s go ahead and keep that. From there go SEC/Pac-12 and Big East vs Big 12. Run them all during the same week and you’ll have some big time games. Think of the possibilities with Duke/Michigan State, Arizona/Kentucky, Villanova/Kansas.
8. Bring back BracketBusters – I mean actually bring it back. Yeah, they are doing the MVC/MWC Challenge and shit like that, but BracketBusters was such a better name and an awesome idea. The event ended in 2012 when we had 122 schools playing each other. It’s an awesome way to give exposure to some of the smaller schools while also giving them a chance to help their resume. Shit, if ESPN/Fox don’t want it, we’ll host it here. I know a guy who excels at play by play; paging Smokes, Tommy.
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9. No more AP/Coaches Top-25 – I hate the polls. The people that vote in them are pretty much clueless when it comes to the sport and don’t even watch games – as they’ve admitted before. Let’s get rid of their worthless polls. Instead the committee should be forced to release rankings similar to what they do in college football. Have it released every week, but make them release a top-25 and use those rankings as those are the ones that ultimately matter. It gives us more transparency as to what the committee is viewing and that’s all everyone asks for in this thing. The release of the top-16 the last two years has been wonderful. Let’s get more of that.
10. Speaking of the committee, new members – The committee should not be made up of AD’s. There should be a mix of former players, coaches, media members and AD’s to get a little bit of every voice in there. Get these people together more often and make it a full time gig as the they’ll be releasing rankings and going over games. Oh, what’s that? I live close to Indy and have time to come help. Well, silly me, I just made myself head of the committee.
11. Transfer rule – I hate that kids have to sit out for a transfer. I’m all for letting kids transfer and be eligible immediately, but this should especially be the case if a coach leaves. If a coach you committed to or played for is fired/takes another job/whatever, you have the right to visit other schools with the ability to recommit to the new coach without any penalty. Let’s stop punishing kids for this sort of stuff and stop pretending players commit to a school over a coach/system.
12. Gus Johnson back to the NCAA Tournament – I don’t care about TV deals, it’s a national disaster that Gus Johnson isn’t calling NCAA Tournament games. We did the right thing by getting the greatest human alive, Bill Raftery calling the Final Four, now let’s get Gus back.