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The Jester’s Quart
March 17, 2006
Instantly Controversial For NCAA
I don't watch much regular
season college basketball, because I find it to be a pointless waste of time.
There are only about four games in each conference that determine anything
important for the postseason, so I'll watch those. Every other game is basically
just a glorified exhibition contest, something to fill arenas with students and
high-paying alumni, and fill cable sports television networks on the weekends.
Regular season college basketball is actually a lot like the NHL exhibition
season: you might watch one or two games involving rivals, but for the most part
you just don't want anyone to get injured. That puts it somewhere behind the
functional joys of the NFL preseason and ahead of the endless yawn of the Major
League Baseball exhibition season. (Great idea, by the way, that World Baseball
Classic was. Zero interest, the end of Roger Clemens, and we are yet again
reminded that baseball has been carried for over a decade by Latino and Asian
stars. Can we please just get a World American Football Classic going so the
Steelers can pummel some 85-pound Korean dudes?)
Not having watched much NCAA basketball, outside of March Madness, has
disconnected me with some of the innovations in the men's game. I did not know,
for example, that fighting for your tournament life every single night in the
ACC was less impressive than being the second-best team in the CAA when it comes
to the selection committee. I also didn't realize what a fluke the Syracuse run
in the Big East tournament was, not having witnessed the true colors of the
Orange in the regular season.
I also didn't conceive how much instant replay has crept into the college game.
It may have been the grease from my sixth piece of Papa Johns' pizza - or my
distraction as I attempted not to drop a glob of garlic sauce on my red
button-down - but I swear I saw the officials review something that I really did
not think was reviewable during the Pacific/Boston College first-round classic
on Thursday afternoon:
Is figuring out if a player's feet are on the line during a 3-point basket
really a reviewable infraction?
Again, I might be wrong. Everyone else in the room seemed to think that's what
the referees were checking when a Pacific player sunk a trifecta in overtime.
If that was the case, what a joke. I mean, let's just review EVERYTHING from now
on. What about traveling violations the referees missed? What about illegal
picks? What about using the play clock to determine five-second violations?
Hell, let's just make the games 10 hours long every night.
I searched and searched the NCAA rulebook, but couldn't find any inference to
this 3-point rule, so maybe it was another situation (shot clock, maybe) the
officials were checking on. Perhaps it's like in the NBA, where if an official
is ruling on a clock violation, he is also allowed to double-check everything
else that happened in the play, including the validity of a basket.
While I didn't find that specific replay rule, I did find a few other
eye-poppers about instant replay and NCAA men's basketball. Did you know:
If a player is doubled over in pain or is bleeding, the referees can review how
that happened. If another player is viewed using "combative and flagrant" use of
his hands, legs, arms or feet, then it can be ruled a fight and the second
player is ejected.
A coach asks for a correctable error due to a shot-clock violation, but there
isn't a camera that captured the shot and the shot clock. But a school official
is in the stands with a camcorder, and he has the video necessary to make the
ruling. The official can't use the camcorder footage to make the call...unless
the school administrator is seated at the official courtside table and all of
the camcorder's equipment is there as well. Then they can go to the video tape.
(This makes me wonder if they'd still be able to use the footage if the battery
charger is in the administrator's car, or if the NCAA would sue the
administrator for violating its broadcasting agreement with ESPN.)
The officials can review a try for a field-goal to see if it was released before
the reading of 0:00 on the clock at or near the expiration of the game, but only
if the shot "will determine the outcome of a game (win, lose, tie)." So if Duke
is up by 20, the betting line is 19, and a Boll Weevil State player sinks a
basket "after time expired," the refs won't even give it a second look. I wonder
why...
In my book,
"Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History," the
issue of "Instant Replay Abuse" is in the top five. There's just too damn much
of it in some sports, and not enough of it in others. It pains me to think that
officials in basketball can add 0.3 seconds back on the clock in a meaningless
regular season game, but NFL officials can't review pass interference in the
Super Bowl.
Maybe if a team administrator filmed the infraction with a camcorder from the
sidelines...
RANDOM THOUGHTS
There was a bomb scare at the first-round NCAA tournament games being played at
San Diego State's arena
on Thursday. Turned out to be a false alarm, as bomb-sniffing dogs were simply
picking up the scent of Marquette...
Can we please have a moratorium on these stories where Think
Tanks estimate the millions of dollars
companies lose when their employees are watching the NCAA tournament
or skipping out to see the latest "Star Wars" movie? How about this: quantify
how many years are shaved off of my life sitting in meetings in which bosses -
the same ones who deal with the financial hardship of hiring basketball fans --
bore our asses to death with the sound of their own voices...
Members of the Three 6 Mafia
have been reportedly using their Oscar for Best Original Song to gain access to
hot clubs in the L.A. area. Which is great news if you figured they would have
melted it down for a new set of grillz by now...
And finally, I don't want to say that it's tough being a
Jets fan, but on the same day
the Miami Dolphins traded for Daunte Culpepper, the lead story on the Jets'
official web site was that the team's children's television cartoon show won a
local Emmy award.
Maybe they can use the trophy at quarterback. It couldn't be any more fragile
than Pennington...
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Published on the web and www.SportsFanMagazine.com since 1997, "The Jester's Quart" is a weekly satirical look at sports, pop culture and why NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is a jackass. Columnist Greg Wyshynski is the Senior Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" will be published in April 2006. Email Wyshynski at jestersquart@hotmail.com.
