Replay is suffocating college basketball: ‘We’re damaging the game’

“Oh yeah, I heard about it,” Colorado Coach Tad Boyle said. “I heard about it, read about it, was told about it. I haven’t actually gone back to look, but the message I got was pretty clear: We have to take a serious look at changing the way replay is handled.”

“It’s absolutely something that will be on the agenda, needs to be on the agenda,” said Rick Hartzell, who is on the committee as the vice president for athletics at Upper Iowa College — and who also refereed more than 4,000 games in a 40-year career. “I understand the notion of wanting to get every call right. We all want that. But you reach a point where the rhythm of the game is being affected if guys are taking too much time at the monitor.”

There are 12 men on the rules committee: six represent Division I schools; three represent Division II and three represent Division III. Dan Gavitt, the NCAA vice president who runs the NCAA tournament, and J.D. Collins, the supervisor of NCAA officials, sit in on the meetings and have input even though they don’t have votes.

Gavitt has believed for years that the length of time spent on replays is a problem. “I think in the pursuit of perfection we’re damaging the game,” he said. “I understand why the officials want backup and want to get everything right, but we have to think about everyone involved in the game: players, coaches, fans, the TV audience. I think we’ve gotten to a point where we need a time limit.”

The replay problem isn’t unique to college basketball. Replay has been a risk/reward proposition since leagues began adopting it. The reward is overturning calls that are clearly wrong. The risk is disrupting a sport’s flow and still not getting it right.

One conference has taken steps to cut down on the endless delays. Four years ago, the SEC began putting two people in a Birmingham, Ala. studio to assist with replays. Before this season, Commissioner Greg Sankey hired Mike Eades, one of the sport’s most respected officials, to supervise the officials and the adjudication of replays.

“It’s really just about efficiency,” Eades said. “When the [officials] head to the table, our two guys almost always know what they want to look at before they get there. By the time they get the headsets on, they usually have the best possible angles cued up. That saves a lot of time. I think we probably had less than five replays this season that lasted more than two minutes. Usually, it’s closer to a minute. The key is having guys in the studio who know the rules and understand the game. I think we have that.”

The lead on-court official still makes the final decision, but that is helped and guided by studio assistance.

“I think that’s a very good idea,” Boyle said. “Of course, there’s a money issue there. The SEC can afford to pay for the studio and the guys in the studio. All the power conferences should be able to do that financially. It’s definitely something for us to discuss this spring.”

The financial differences between the upper crust and mid-majors and between Division I and the lower levels is always an issue when the committee meets. Almost no D-II or D-III games have replay, so even though they have half the votes, they are essentially unaffected by the issue and tend to go along with Collins, the officiating supervisor.

The officials, represented by Collins, argue that the goal is to get every possible call right. Since almost every D-I game is on television now in some form, officials are sensitive about replays showing a mistake without them having the chance to correct it.

Boyle, whose committee term ends this summer, is an unapologetic opponent of all replay and frequently tells his colleagues how he feels. “It’s a game played by humans, coached by humans and officiated by humans,” he said. “All of us make mistakes. As a baseball fan, I still remember the missed call in Game 6 of the ’85 World Series. Replay would have corrected that. But how many times during baseball season nowadays does the game get stopped for a call that’s too close to clearly overturn?

“I know the ship has sailed. I get it. I think we absolutely need to discuss ways to make replay less invasive to the rhythm of the game. We already have nine TV timeouts [and 10 during the NCAA tournament], so adding more stoppages clearly isn’t a good thing.”

Boyle would like to see more replays conducted during those TV timeouts — the way determinations about whether a shot was a three-pointer already are. “If it’s a game with 90-second timeouts, they have 90 seconds; if it’s a national TV game then they have an extra minute on top of that. When the timeout is over, they have to make a decision and then play.”

Calls, of course, are only supposed to be overturned if there’s a clear-cut error. If officials can’t decide which way the call should go in 60 seconds — or 90 seconds, tops — then let the call on the floor stand. Some will argue that games with fewer cameras offer fewer angles. True. That also means it should take less time to see all angles.

“I’d be for that,” said Tennessee Coach Rick Barnes, another member of the rules committee. “Of course, we’ve kind of solved it in the SEC, but I get that not everyone has that kind of money or wants to spend that kind of money. If you have a time limit for everyone, you take care of that.”

Saturday, midway through the second half of an America East semifinal between Maryland Baltimore County and U-Mass.-Lowell, the game stopped for almost five minutes as officials decided whether there had been a hook-and-hold foul. UMBC, up 10 points at the time, ended up losing, 79-77.

“I don’t want to take anything away from Lowell because they were great down the stretch,” UMBC Coach Ryan Odom said. “But that delay definitely hurt us. We never got back into an offensive rhythm. And, for the record, if we’d won the game, I’d say the same thing.”

Everyone agrees the rules can and should be different in the final moments. That’s why officials can now go to the monitor to decide out-of-bounds calls in the game’s last two minutes.

“The last two minutes, as far as I’m concerned, taking extra time to get it right is fine,” Boyle said. “But the rest of the game? I think putting a time limit on trips to the monitor makes a lot of sense.”

The rules committee’s May meeting should be fascinating. Here’s a suggestion: Before anyone says anything, make them all sit though the last two minutes of Wisconsin-Iowa. If anyone is still awake when that’s over, take the vote right away.