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 three-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 three-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 Chad Pennington...
Greg Wyshynski is the Features 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 spring 2006. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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