TV timeouts are ruining college basketball
March 11th, 2014 at 10:56 PM ^
DVR is an amazing advancement is TV tech. But it doesn't have as huge of an impact on any TV show for me, in comparison to hoops.
I can still watch a normal TV show w/o DVR. Football, hockey, the news, etc. but basketball? NO WAY. I can't watch Mich-Purdue without having a 45+ min lag on my DVR, let a lone an important game. I don't even consider watching M games in real time anymore. the times out are ridic and the DVR'd alternative is 100000000 times better.
March 11th, 2014 at 11:58 PM ^
One? That's it?
Meh.... Having no timeouts sounds like an idea from someone who's never played the game. Not that I usually put much emphasis on that, but really TO's are a part of the strategy and who doesn't like talking game theory? Granted, it's more of an issue in high school where I coach b/c the clock doesn't stop after a made bucket ever; therefore, you need to save them to potentially stop the clock.
They need to be shorter. Maybe one less per team. But, 1? That's extreme.
And how can one say coach's timeouts are worse than TV timeouts?! The only argument is they break up the end of the game and take away excitement. But if there weren't TV timeouts, then coaches couldn't wait for them to stop momentum and, therefore, they wouldn't be able to stockpile until the end of the game.
TV timeouts are far worse.
I've been attending college basketball games for almost 30 years and this expansion of the media ("official") timeouts has definitely taken a lot out of the game. It used to be that coaches had to use their own timeouts to control the pace of the game. The other team is on a roll - call a timeout. Your players are looking gassed - call a timeout. Judicious use of timeouts was part of the coaching strategy of the game. Now coaches are more likely to wait a minute of two of game time for the media timeout they know is coming every 4 minutes. When coaches had to use more of their own timeouts to control the game, it was a lot less likely that both teams would have 3 timeouts left in the last couple of minutes, leading to fewer situations where the last couple of minutes took 15 minutes of real time.
Either cut down on the number of team timeouts, or count every team timeout as a media timeout as well (counting down on the number of media timeouts). Or do something more radical like 10 minute quarters with 5 minute commercial breaks a very limited team timeouts.
Side note: If there weren't crazy long timeouts in college football, people wouldn't need to use their phones and the fake "wi-fi" issue wouldn't be an issue at all.
Athletic directors want to know why people aren't going to games? Becasue it's eff-ing boring 65% of the time with nothing of worth going on.
+1, upvote, all of the things
March 15th, 2014 at 10:19 AM ^
+1, yes, yes, yes over here too!
Stop stopping games for fucking TV adverts and maybe some of us will start coming to the games again.
March 25th, 2014 at 10:18 AM ^
My girlfriend, who grew up on hockey and soccer in the USSR, finds it almost impossible to watch American sports. It took us a while to figure out why--all she could say is that, except for soccer, our sports "have no flow". We play for a little while and then everybody stands around for three minutes twiddling their thumbs.
The clue was that she was able to enjoy baseball. If stoppages were the problem she'd hate it, right? There's no sport with as much standing around as baseball...but it's a natural part of the rhythm of the game. The commercials are plugged in while the pitcher is warming up for the next inning, something that had to happen anyway. There's not much difference in pace between a televised major league game and a local game at the sandlot.
The clincher was when I took her to a D3 basketball game. Maybe the players weren't much but it was what a game was supposed to be, no outside influence meddling with the pace. If somebody called a timeout it was because somebody involved in the game needed the timeout, not an advertiser.
D1 AD's take note: this is why my entertainment dollar is being spent at my local high school.
ok, so who's willing to trade TV TOs for ad patches on the jerseys?
There should be a limit on coaches' timeouts w/in a certain span of time. The last minute of a game is so tough to watch if teams have timeouts stockpiled. Even worse in the NBA. I say ban multiple timeouts w/in 2 minutes of gameplay. Or even one minute. And ban consecutive timeouts from opposing teams. So Beilein calls a timeout to set up a play, the opponent cannot call a timeout to set up their defense. And our players can't call a timeout to get out of a 5 second violation.
But they should follow the NHL model. Their timeouts are at the 14 minute mark, 10, and 6. So they let the game get going for a bit. In basketball the media timeouts break up the flow of the game. Not so much in the NHL. The media timeout is delayed if there's a powerplay or icing or after a goal. Basketball should figure out something differently and set up rules as to when a media timeout can be taken and when one cannot.
I think there should be 1 tv timeout at the 10 minute mark of each half. You should also get 4 total timeouts, but after halftime it goes down to 3 whether you use the one or not. I also think it should drop down to 2 TO's per team at the 5 minute mark of the 2nd half if the 3rd one hasn't been used. I think those changes would be great for the game.
March 14th, 2014 at 11:18 AM ^
You don't even have to reduce the number of timeouts to fix the majority of the problem.
The real issue is the timeouts called by a team after making a basket. So a team is trailing by 6 with 30 seconds left, they sink a 3 and then they call a timeout before the team with the lead can inbound the ball. What is ridiculous is that ordinarily only the team with possession of the ball is allowed to call a timeout (or a timeout may be called by either team during a dead ball situation).
Why is a team allowed to call a timeout in this situation? They are not allowed to call that timeout in the NBA, but NCAA rules allow it. Get rid of the post-basket timeout and you go a long way to fixing the problem.
March 19th, 2014 at 11:51 AM ^
coaches timeout from 5 to 2 or 3. Way too many times when a game is close in final miutes that coaches keeps calling timeout to run set plays. Tom Izzo is the worst at it. Always call timeout whereas Beilein just trust his players running his set and get a winning score from it.
I think Beilein uses his TOs at the end of games no more or less than the average coach.
Maybe he didn't much last year beacuse Trey Burke. But outside of last year, he usually will set up a play given the chance. Evidence: He always takes the use-it-or-lose-it timeout at the end of the first half.
but it's end of the game that is killing basketball IMO. Every possessions either starts or ends with a timeout. So irritating.
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