March Madness Sugestions

The NCAA Men’s BBall Tourney is often considered one of, if not the greatest sporting event. Other contenders I would offer are: The World Cup, The Rider Cup (golf match up between USA and Europe), and any game of college football.

Between this year and last, I’ve compiled a list of ways to make March Madness even better (who am I kidding…I really just want to gripe).

Here’s what I came up with (in a countdown style):

#10a: 35 Second Shot Clock
35 seconds is just too long. 24 seconds is just too short. For god’s sake, let’s just make it 30 seconds. It’s not like 30 seconds is some obscure measure of time.

Along with this, I also like the 8 seconds backcourt violation (as opposed to 10). I don’t think I saw a game this year or last when a team was called for a backcourt time violation. And while I’m ranting, shouldn’t this backcourt violation be “timed” by the clock, rather than some ref who’s walking to one tempo, watching the ball bounce at another tempo, and is then expected to keep perfect seconds with his hand. It would be easy to have a clock and buzzer for this infraction – similar to the shot clock (or even integrated into the shot clock).

#10b: Get the Coaches Off the Court
If any part of the coach’s shoe touches the inbounds line, automatic T! This gripe actually applies to accurate officiating of all “lesser” infractions, including: a player stepping on the line when guarding the inbounds pass, stepping in the lane before ball leaves the free-throw shooter’s hands, and of course, traveling. These violations are called in elementary school…so why aren’t they called in college?

#9: The Play-in-Game
Just try to remember as many play-in-game participants as you can. Now try to remember the losers of this game.

Even if a play-in-game winner went on to beat a no.1 seed, it would do more harm than good, because the one guy who picked the perfect bracket would have had to pick “TBD” to win! How is that legit?! You don’t even know who it is you’re picking to win.

By the way, having a #10a and #10b was a joke to illustrate how stupid the play in game is.

#8: Commercials
For the most part, the commercials are tolerable…but only for the first 5 showings. CBS and her advertising affiliates need to remember that the people who watch these games typically watch a lot of them, and airing the same commercial to the same people in the double-digit qtys is probably more likely to result in product boycotts than a successful advertising campaign.

Here’s a simple rule for commercial creators: don’t air your commercial until you’ve watched it 10 times on full volume while enduring a massive hang-over.

#7: Whining about the 66th – 70th Teams that Didn’t Make the Tourney
Here’s another simple rule: before making a claim that some team was neglected by the selection committee, you must list ALL of the teams that this “deserving” team lost to.

This rule also applies to any head coach before making a statement about how stunned and disappointed he is and how he must go tell his poor players that “life just isn’t fair.” Give me a break! If you wanted to get in that bad, then you shouldn’t have lost to all of those terrible opponents! Even with a shitty season, almost all teams at least have a chance to suck it up and win 3 or 4 straight games and win their conference tourney for an automatic bid. If you can’t even do that, then get the “f” off my TV!

And ESPN (especially Dickey V) just fuel this nonsense every year! After the bracket is released on Selection Sunday, there are 32 match-ups that they could be promoting, predicting, and giving insight too…which is 20 times more interesting than hearing about some poor team that didn’t make it. So why do they spend 60% of Bracketology whining about some poor small school that will never get its chance to go and get demolished in the first round?

#6: Letting a Shot’s Outcome Determine a Foul
Whether or not a player fouls another has nothing to do with whether or not the ball goes in the basket! So why do refs consistently wait until it’s clear that the ball won’t go in before calling a foul? It is absurd. It’s always been absurd. It will always be absurd.

#5 CBS – No Sister Network(s)
ABC has ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN U, and ESPN Classic.
FOX has FOX, FSN, and FX
NBC has NBC, USA
CBS has CBS.

If any of the other broadcasters aired the tourney, we’d either see double, triple, or all of the games.

#4 Replay monitor
OK, I’ve had enough of this…and I’m not alone here. Seeing the large asses of 3 refs as they gather around an I-pod sized monitor with stopwatches trying to determine whether the ball went out of bounds with 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, or 1.2 seconds is outrageous. There was a game this year when they didn’t even give the ball to the right team – the replay showed that the ball went off of the other guy! But there they are, taking 6 minutes of real time to try to accurately determine how much time should be “fairly” put back on the clock before they give the wrong team one more chance to win.

#3 Show All Replays of All Fouls!
Yet another simple rule: If a foul was called and the action has stopped, show the replay.

This especially applies to shooting fouls. When a player is on the line, I have next to no interest to watch him wait for the ball, watch the ref tell the players “2 shots”, watch the coach pace, watch the players as they get into position outside the lane, or watch players check into the game for other players. For the love of St. Peter, just show the replay of the foul. There’s more than enough time to do it, and it’s not like we’d be missing real high octane action!

And when the replay is shown, I would like (just once) a commentator to wait until the replay is actually shown before telling us what the replay shows. Commentators always jump the gun on making their decision to support the ref’s call. As a replay is being shown, they will be saying how it was a good call, even though the replay clearly shows that it wasn’t! If they would just wait and watch the replay without pre-judgment that the ref was right, they would dramatically reduce their dumbassness.

#2 Too Many Time-Outs
Each team should have it’s qty of timeouts reduced by half (at least). Not only would this make close games more bearable to watch, but it would reward well-coached teams that actually prepare in advance for end-of-game situations.

#1 No Game Clock – Play to 80
Here’s what I propose:

· First team to reach 80 wins. You must win by 3.
· Automatic long TV timeouts would be scheduled for when the first team reaches 20, 40, 60 and 80 points…with the “40 point break” being equivalent to halftime.
· The shot clock still exists (30 seconds as mentioned above).
· Each team would still get a certain number of timeouts (probably 2 per team per half). Each timeout would be a long, TV timeout.
· If a team reaches 80 but has not won by 3, then (after the automatic TV timeout has taken effect) all remaining timeouts would be lost. Therefore, the 80+ action is completely timeout free.

For the most part, the game wouldn’t really be different. Teams are still equally motivated to play good offense, defense, shoot good shots, commit few turnovers, rebound, etc. The difference comes during end of game situations. This is how the end of games would be different:
1. No team is ever truly out of the game until it’s over. Teams would make furious comebacks, but rather than being fueled by the other team’s missed free-throws, comebacks must be fueled by furious defense.
2. The end of games would be fantastic. There are bound to be close games that end in back and forth epics of neither team being able to shake the other. If you’ve played ping pong before, you probably remember at least some games that went back and forth at the end.
3. No game would ever come down to who has the ball with less than 35 seconds left on the clock…which really just comes down to random, coincidental timing. This new system would be a much fairer and more entertaining.

Well, that’s it for my suggestions. And if you were curious…YES, my gripes do stem from bitterness of correctly picking only 2 of the Elite 8 and getting blanked on my Final 4 picks!