My biggest gripe about college basketball this season,and in fact most people’s biggest gripe about college basketball this season, has to be the number of fouls called.
The season is barely two weeks old and all you hear about regarding the game is he complaints about how the games are being called. The complaints are mostly from fans and those consumers of the game aren’t happy.
Lets just cut to the chase, if you watched Duke-Kansas there was a stretch in the second half where a game between a No. 4 and No. 5 team was just unwatchable. And no, I’m not a sour-grapes Blue Devil fan complaining that Duke didn’t get all the calls in this game, the fact is the calls were excessive on both ends. And it isn’t limited to just Duke-Kansas.
In the Duke game alone there were 43 files called and 63 attempted foul shots. In the game before, Kentucky and Michigan State, there were 46 fouls called and 53 free throw attempts. That is just two games worth but if you watched the games at all you realized there was at times zero flow.
So many people are complaining about “new’ rules but there are no “new” rules. Basketball didn’t adopt a new definition of what is a foul, they are just going back to the book and enforcing more what has already been considered a foul. The goal, to make basketball less physical and less of a slug fest and more of the game of skill it was designed to be.
Analysts like ESPN’s Jay Bilas are lauding the decision to tighten up the calls as good for the game, but based on how the season has started to date, it is the complete opposite.
Now calling the game more tightly in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. You want to avoid the teams who use brutish behavior to try and win out over more talented teams, but the game of basketball, like it or not, has become more physical by definition and by the nature of the players.
This isn’t your grandfather’s game. These kids are super athletes. They are bigger, faster, stronger than their predecessors. They are trained from the time some of them can walk, they lift weights almost that soon, they take supplements, these aren’t normal people here, they are well-tuned machines.
And with all due respect to Jay Bilas, these guys make most in his generation seem like bumbling oafs. These guys have power and finesse all in one. They move faster than most people can keep up with and there is no way to have them just stop playing the way they have essentially been trained to play since they could dribble a basketball.
The game has changed and it is time to rethink how the game is officiated. Sure calling the games a bit tighter is a good concept but the execution has been in a word poor. If this is the direction the game is going then I for one am not interested in watching free throw contests.
Every time a person’s hands even come close to another player the whistle blows and the game stops. A game that tips off at 10:20 doesn’t end until 12:20 or later with more stoppages than Greyhound bus routes.
So, NCAA, let the players play, and save the whistles for real fouls.
