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Friday, March 22, 2013

8 ways to change March Madness into March Gladness

Screen shot 2013-03-21 at 9.57.27 PM 

As much as I love to watch the NCAA men's basketball tournament getting under way this week, parts of the game still drive me crazy. And when the governors of the sport come to their senses and appoint me their czar, these are the top eight sanity-restoring fixes I'll implement:

1. Eliminate timeouts in the last minute of every game.

Coaches can and should prepare their players for the many contingencies that occur in the final, frantic seconds of a close contest. Ideally, basketball is a flowing game that rewards training, planning and split-second good decisions.

From 1910 to 1948, college rules prohibited coaches from even speaking to players during timeouts. But now we're at the other extreme, and the tendency is for coaches to hoard their timeouts and turn the final minute of the game into something resembling a huddle-based sport, such as football.

In the last 60 seconds, Czar Zorn would allow only quick timeouts — 10 seconds, say — for substitutions. Play on!

2. Reduce the incentive for teams that are losing to commit deliberate fouls.

Breaking the rules should not be a potentially effective victory strategy. Yet now, particularly toward the end of close games, it makes sense for the team that's behind to grab wildly at their opponents. This not only stops the game clock, it usually forces the fouled player to shoot free throws, turning a fast-paced team game into the slog of an individual skills contest, while giving the fouling team a good chance of securing the rebound.

When the foul is obviously strategic in the judgment of the referee, the offense should get one free throw and retain possession of the ball. When the foul is arguably part of a genuine defensive effort, the offense should be able to choose whether to shoot the free throws or take the ball out of bounds, particularly in the last five minutes of the game.

3. Institute an NBA-style 24-second shot clock at all levels of play.

To balance my first two rule changes, which would disadvantage teams that are behind, I'd compel the offense to act quickly so as to prevent stalling tactics, and I'd also . . .

4. Disallow mercy-timeout requests.

In 2006, the NCAA got rid of the rule that permitted an airborne player holding the ball to get a timeout while flying out of bounds.

I'd add to that: A player's request for a timeout should not be honored if he or she is trapped by defenders, temporarily in possession of the ball in a scrum on the floor or unable to find an open teammate to pass to as the five-second limit approaches on an in-bounds play.

Can quarterbacks call timeout when they're being chased out of the pocket and can't find any open receivers? Can goalies call timeout when faced with a breakaway attack? Can tennis players request a break in the action during exhausting rallies?

Of course not. So neither should basketball players in distress (nor their coaches on the sidelines) be permitted to grab at the lifeline of a timeout.

5. Prohibit folderol between free throws.

Note my self-aware curmudgeonly terminology. But the hand-slapping, fist-bumping and back-patting of the shooter between free-throw attempts has gotten out of control. Such time-wasting contact should result in a forfeit of the second free throw. And any attempt to call timeout between free throws should result in a technical foul.

6. Give a player fouled in the act of shooting the option of the standard two free throws (three if the shot came from beyond the arc) or the opportunity to take the same shot again from the same spot on the floor, but without any defenders present.

This would discourage the strategy of committing semideliberate fouls on breakaway layup and hacking at taller players who are good right around the basket but lousy at the line. Another way to discourage that same strategy would be to adopt the long-abandoned NBA rule that gave a player fouled in the act of shooting three tries to make two shots.

7. Reinstate fouled-out players during overtime.

Give them one more foul per extra period. And, during regulation, allow players who reach the foul limit to stay in the game, but make each subsequent foul they commit a technical foul that gives the other team free throws and the ball.

8. Expand the NCAA men's tournament to 96 teams.

Have 32 play-in games to make the 64 lowest-seeded teams play their way into the canonical 64-team bracket. This season, 21 teams with at least 20 victories were left out, ending up instead in the National Invitation Tournament. Any one of them would have been capable of pulling off one of those upset victories we love so much.



Sports rules aren't set in stone, as we saw in this week's announcement of changes in football rules and as we see in this history of NCAA basketball rule changes. I count 61, though some were reversed -- i.e. no dunking...wait, yes dunking.  Notably:

1923-1924  -- The player fouled must shoot his own free throws. Before this rule, one person usually shot all the free throws for a team.
1937-1938 -- The center jump after every made basket is eliminated.

1944-1945  --Unlimited substitution is allowed
1948-1949 -  Coaches are allowed to speak to players during a timeout.
1952-1953  --Teams can no longer waive free throws and take the ball at mid court.
1967-1968  --The dunk is made illegal during the game and during warmup
1976-1977 -- The dunk is made legal again.
1997-1998  -- Timeouts can be made be players on the court or the head coach.
2006-2007  --A timeout will not be recognized by an airborne player falling out of bounds.

This NCAA publication (.pdf) is more complete on the subject of rules changes. Here are a couple of interesting summaries:

Clock Stoppage:

1905-06, Time stopped only when ordered by the referee. It did not stop for dead-ball situations such as free throws or when the ball was out-of-bounds.

1924-25, Time stopped when ordered by the referee for injuries, substitutions, two-shot fouls and timeouts requested by the team captain. The clock kept running at all other times including dead-ball situations, such as out-of-bounds.

1947-48, The clock was stopped on every dead ball the last three minutes of the second half and of every extra period. This includes every time a goal was scored because the ball was considered dead until put into play again. (This rule was abolished in 1951.)

1963-64, The clock is now stopped when any violation is called. This includes when the ball goes out-of-bounds. The rule prevents delaying tactics for the purpose of consuming playing time when the ball was out of play.

1993-94, The game clock was stopped after successful field goals in the last minute of the game and the last minute of any overtime period with no substitution allowed....


1910-11, No coaching was allowed during the progress of the game by anybody connected with either team. A warning was given for the first violation and a free throw was awarded after that.

1948-49, Coaches were allowed to speak to players during a timeout.

1964-65, Coaches had to remain seated on the bench except while the clock was stopped or to direct or encourage players on the court. This rule was to help keep coaches from inciting undesirable crowd reactions toward the officials.

1984-85, The coaching box was introduced, whereby a coach and all bench personnel had to remain in the 28-foot-long coaching box unless seeking information from the scorers’ table. 1985-86, The head coach could stand throughout the game, while all other bench personnel had to remain seated.

1986-87, A coach could leave the confines of the bench at any time without penalty to correct a scorer’s or timer’s mistake. A technical foul was assessed if there was no mistake. (This penalty was changed the next year to a timeout.)

1994-95, The fighting and suspension rules were expanded to include coaches and team personnel.

1995-96, All unsporting technical fouls charged to anyone on the bench counted toward the team foul total.   

Comments below include posts on an similar item published Wednesday



"Teams and coaches need to figure out their end-of-game contingencies in practice, not during endless x and o sessions on the little white board as the clock winds down." Totally agree. The endless timeouts wreck the flow of the game for me, but I suspect the sponsors love them.

The most important change is to make it that after a free throw, the team that shot the free throws should get the ball back.
Basketball is the only game where you get a penalty to get an advantage.

ZORN REPLY -- I would instead institute a rule that a team always have the option of taking the ball out of bounds after a foul, and in the last two minutes of the game on a shooting foul a team that's tied or in the lead could get the option of the two free throws (or three, in the case of a foul on a three attempt) or ONE free throw PLUS the ball out of bounds.
To balance out the disadvantage this places the trailing team in, I'd shorten the shot clock to 24 or even 20 seconds in the final two minutes.
Play ball!

Why no outdoor NBA games?

I'd be happy if they started calling palming again. The less they call it, the more flagrant it becomes, to the point where last weekend I saw multiple instances of ball-handlers with their hands completely under the ball. A talented dribbler is an artist and a joy to watch, but college and the pros are marginalizing those so skilled. Says the grouchy old guy.

@John Etheredge: In most games, particularly tournament games, TV has already utilized its allotment of commercials in the standard time outs earlier in the game, so the sponsors generally don't benefit (at least not that often). So, what you're left with is the typical banal musings of the commentators, which, to tell the truth is just about as bad as the commercials in terms of interrupting flow, so yeah, I'm all for this change, as well.

EZ--look out for Nate Wolters and the Jackrabbits! That guy is a stud scorer.

Amen to #3 especially. As a corollary, call all intentional fouls as intentional fouls, especially in the last two minutes. Fouling should be a penalty, not a strategy. Plus the desperate "hope they miss the free throws" strategy is both undignified and excruciating to watch.


"by his teammates." - Are you being sexist?

The first suggestion they tried a few years ago to implement in high school, it went no where, the players ignored it. Good idea though. They also pat him/her when he/she makes the free throw.

High school will not allow a player to call a timeout while going out of bounds - should be adopted by college and pros.

The 3rd idea is no different than football with timeouts being called in the last minute and throwing the ball out of bounds on purpose. or spiking it. I'm against this one. Make your free throws and play some defense and this is a moot point.


They have done some college games outdoors on aircraft carriers and have worked out well - except for slick wood floors and being cancelled due to weather.

ZORN REPLY -- Call a couple of technical fouls for congratulatory/exhortatory contact between free throws and the practice will stop. Simply discourage it and it won't.

I wish the refs would start calling traveling violations. When I see a guy take 3 1/2 steps before a dunk, you know that he broke the rule but the refs let it go.

We weren't allowed to do that in high school.

Also call traveling as those of us who grew up playing know it to be, i.e. no three steps in a lay-up; no "jump stop" ( if you leave the ground with both feet and don't get rid of the ball before you land, you have travelled.) Makes me crazy. If I reffed, I'd be howled out of the gym.

It's not the 3 1/2 steps it's the forth and fifth sometimes that drive me crazy. And please go back to the jump ball.

==Garry's rule prevailed In the middle of the last century: the rule on a two-shot foul was that one could replace the 2nd shot with taking the ball out ---- Adopting this would certainly reduce the deliberate fouling at the end of a game.

BC and Steve,

Those are a couple of reasons I don't watch the NBA.


Are you kidding? Watch a youth or high school game, jump balls would add 15 minutes to each game.


That is one of the rules that's on the books but refs don't enforce unless it becomes ridicuolus. That along with coaching boxes and playing out of bounds (you aren't allowed to run out of bounds to avoid a defender)

@barry3: Thinking more in terms of college.

Any hard foul which injures another player should add 20 points to the other team's total. If you want to see people hurting each other, there's always boxing.

Can't stress the overabundance of timeouts enough. Take away at least a couple from each team. For the casual fan (NCAA tourney & Bulls playoff games) the last 3 minutes of a non-blowout game are as exciting as toenail clippings.

Check the explanation of NBA timeouts, and compare to hockey. 'Nuff said.

Eric--Sorry, but I think you're coming off as kind of a grump here. I find the fist-taps after free throws a vaguely charming and ultimately harmless affectation. And it's nonsense to say they take time off the game. I don't know what games you're watching, but the free-throw demos I see never take more than two or three seconds, and it's impossible to say the shooter would shoot that much faster if they were forbidden.

As for the timeouts, they heighten the suspense and anticipation of a close game. (Or at least they do if the broadcasters let us watch a few all the way through, instead of stuffing a commercial into every single gap.)

If timeouts bug you so much, maybe you should give soccer another try. That clock *never* stops.

Or maybe baseball, Pan. Boring as watching paint dry, but there's no clock at all!

--George Carlin's bit on the differences between baseball and football (one of his funniest) had as one of them: "Football is rigidly timed. Baseball has no clock! We don't know WHEN it's gonna end!"

@garsky - Totally agree. IMHO, the " palming is acceptable foolishness all started with Magic Johnson - who I saw as a high school freshman beat my high school in the Michigan High School State Championship Game after our school sent the game into overtime with a longer than half court shot (Kevin Smith, who went on to play for Dick Vitale at the University of Detroit) . . . . .

Eric, I just have one question: WHAT'S YOUR HURRY?

It seems that all the changes except the last one are meant to speed up the game. But most college basketball games take about two hours, pretty short compared to other events. (like DaveB said, baseball is the game that really needs to be speeded up). In particular I don't want a 24 second clock because I don't want to see scores like 118-115. (Plus, I don't think most college athletes would have the stamina for that). You don't have to have high scores to have a good game and vice versa (just look at the Pro Bowl). Watching people foul at the end of a game may be annoying, but I've long excepted it as part of the game. What is really boring to watch is one player dribbling the ball for twenty seconds with everyone just walking around the court not really attempting to play defense because the game is essentially over. Eliminating high fiving between free throws is just silly, since it doesn't really interrupt the flow of the game any more than bouncing the ball between free throws, I think it's good to show support to your team, especially if you have a player who doesn't shoot FTs very well.

All that said, I would love to see a tournament with 96 teams. Or 128 teams.

And some year (probably won't happen in a thousand years) a national champion with a LOSING record.

If they drive you crazy, at least it's a short trip. :-)

Way too many timeouts in Basketball - add in the ridiculous 2 tiers in the NBA,(when does a 20 second time out last 20 seconds?) and the NBA allows 16 total time outs. I think in football there are also too many TO's, 6 per team per game. 1 per team each half would be fine.

That is one thing the NHL has right, 1 timeout in regulation, that's it.

ZORN REPLY -- This gets to my football timeout suggestion -- that the clock stop after every whistle in the last two (I'd settle for one) minute of the game. So no more simply taking knees; no more forcing a team that's behind to pass to the sidelines. To make up for the extra time this would take, I'd suggest a running game clock for the first five minutes or so of every half and/or limiting timeouts to one per team per half.
The irony you might see is that my suggestion would drastically prolong the last minute of a football game while my suggestions for basketball would drastically shorten them.

My initial instinct is to agree with #3 and #4 and possibly #2. Will have to chew on this a bit but you're tossing out a lot of changes to an immensely popular sport. If the officials and coaches were paid by the hour I might give your ideas more credence.

Would like to see traveling called properly. Jumping into the air with both feet off the floor and landing and then shooting or passing is traveling. Taking between three and six steps without dribbling is, one assumes, traveling, as well.

Also, not allow an offensive player to knock down the defensive player when the defensive player is properly positioned and then have a defensive foul called. There are few offensive fouls called in college games.

Other suggestions regarding TO in the last minute of play or when trapped are appropriate. Fouling to get an advantage should be stopped. A team should not be rewarded for committing a discretion.

Wisconsin just lost -- I believe they're the third #5 seed to lose to a #12 seed already. I would hate to be a #5 seed in the NCAA tourney!

EZ: First, kudos to the Wolverines, they thoroughly dominated my Jackrabbits despite a subpar perfromance from their player of the year candidate.

As to the updated post--it does seem to me that one of the running themes of your proposed reforms is to reduce the emphasis on free throw shooting. While I can certainly understand that, it does seem to me that this is a skill that's been a big part of the game for a long time, and I would kind of hate to see that element of the game reduced to the extent you're suggesting. A truly championship-caliber team ought to be able to hit its free throws.

ZORN REPLY -- I see free throws as a grudging necessity, a compromise with the ideas of the -- kind of like the shootout in hockey or soccer. You need to have a real penalty in place for fouls that hinder the contest and that, if unpunished, would result in unfairness.
Pickup basketball games almost never have them, just as they almost never have foul limits, and for the most part this works only because of a certain ethic on the court. In high stakes game you need a way to prevent players and teams from simply fouling the shooter every time.
Automatic points would be antithetical to the game -- kind of like a balk is, if you ask me -- so the free throw is the solution.
I wonder what the designers of the game felt was an ideal percentage for foul shots? I mean, they set the stripe at 15 feet for a reason, presumably -- not too close, not too far -- and must have had some idea what they thought the make percentage would be//ought to be. My guess is that they wanted it to be similar in reward value to the reward value of a field goal attempt... so 50 percent-ish. On a layup, that's not even close to fair.

SandyK - or a Badger fan :-(

How about give the players, who are the actors in this play, a piece of the action. Right now they receive (using the infamous words of Mike Ditka) "a big fat zero" percent of the $770 million that CBS will pay to air the games this year and that's on top of ticket sales, merchandising, concessions, etc. Instead of calling this March Madness it should be renamed March Exploitation.

The 24 second clock is what is wring with the NBA. There is no such thing as an offense unless you count pick-n-roll and drive and dish for the 3. Teams don't have to learn how to play defense with the clock acting their sixth-man.

Players foul out, they foul out and stay on the bench.

Expand the tournament - 68 teams are enough.

Learning how to make free throws, something teams do poorly now, eliminates the need for some of these other rules.

Two more things that need to be better enforced - 3 seconds and the offensive person driving to the basket hooking the defender.

--Great column, Eric!

I agree completely with the mercy-timeout (which I call the jeopardy timeout, and always with a sneer). 30 yrs. ago calling such a timeout was smart. Now it's just a cliche. It insults good defense. Ban it!

Speaking of good defense, get rid of the possession arrow and give the ball to the defense. If the situation makes it unclear who's on defense/who's on offense, then use a jump ball. The possession arrow assumes both teams play defense with equal tenacity and rewards them equally.

I hate all the timeouts. I hate that coaches can call them. I'm usually no longer paying attention when the game ends, because I get bored with the constant, repetitive slogging to the free throw line. I'm with you, Eric, that this insults the beauty and fluidity of basketball.

Amen to all the comments about palming and traveling.

One more (silly) thing. If a coach comes out to the court wearing a suit and tie, hit 'em with an immediate T. Why do they dress like bankers and lawyers? They are coaches. It's a gym.


No, it does not. Even if trailing teams were nearly 100% certain that the leading teams would make the free throws, they'd still commit the desperation fouls. If you're going to lose, play the game and lose with some dignity and respect for the fans. Stop it with all the fouls and timeouts. It's like Hillary Clinton staying in the '80 primary with the "wait, but maaaaaaaybe there's some way I could possibly win with the superdelegates."


If you can't make free throws - 1 15 foot shot woth no one defending you, you don't deserve to win.

Stop blasting that stupid horn! Other sports manage without it

Really agree with all the ideas except the 24 Second Shot Clock. While some view college sport as a minor league for the Pros, the colleges don't have to adopt the pro rules also. The problem with the college shot clock is that the historically dominate schools will become even more so. With a faster game, depth will play an even more significant role. Mid Majors and those with higher academic standards, and those with less than state of the art facilities, will hardly ever pull off upsets just by playing smart basketball within their abilities. In addition, because of the increased speed, the current power schools (sometimes those with dubious standards for athletes ie. Memphis, Cinncinati, Kentucky), won't have to promise recruits that they will be starters because there will enough playing time due to the increased speed.


To reiterate what EZ said, free throws are awarded as compensation when the defensive team has unfairly interfered with the offensive team trying to score. Emphasis on the "unfairly." The rules should not encourage fouling as a strategy.

Make your free throws and that strategy won't work

I agree with most of your article and have noted for many years that Basketball is the only game I know of where committing a penalty could help the offender. I will never forget DePaul's appearance in the tournament when they lost their lead and the game because they couldn't make free throws down the stretch.
One other thought is to borrow from Soccer where the
ref will not call a foul if calling the foul will hurt the team being fouled such as in a break away. I think the same rule could be applied to Basketball.

We're going in circles here. I've already noted that even though the strategy won't work in terms of delivering a win, teams will still try to use it because hey, they've got nothing to lose, and there's maybe a .05% chance the other team will miss. Better than nothing. Meanwhile, the fans still have to sit through all the tomfoolery.

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