Among the changes expected for college basketball next season is a shortening of the shot clock from 35 seconds to 30.
When it comes to improving both the overall product and interest level from the casual fan, how about a shorter season, too?
The just-completed NCAA tournament was really good. There was drama from the start, one Goliath and a handful of giant killers, a Final Four featuring four name-brand teams and a shot at history derailed. The quality of play was good throughout -- and so were the TV ratings.
People watched and enjoyed college basketball over the final two weekends of March and the first weekend and Monday night of April. Was anybody watching on the second week of November, the week before Christmas or even the middle of January?
TV is the boss, but it's not just about who's paying the bills and how many people are watching. The overall product -- and the players themselves -- would benefit from college basketball becoming essentially a one-semester sport instead of the six-month marathon it is now.
Since the best players stay only a year or two and many in the next tier are transferring at least once anyway, why not embrace the short attention span generation?
Wait, what were we just talking about?
Ah, yes. Too much college basketball, too soon.
A 2013 rule change took away what had been an across the board Oct. 15 starting date for official preseason practice and changed it to 42 days before a team's opener, generally somewhere in the last few days of September. Regular seasons have started almost three weeks before Thanksgiving in some years; this season didn't end until the day after Easter.
As an example of how college basketball is hurting itself with such a long season, Ohio State's 2014-15 season started last Nov. 14, the night before the Buckeyes football team played its 10th game of the season. The Buckeyes football team went on to play 15 games, winning the national title in the first College Football Playoff title game on Jan. 12 -- the night before the Buckeyes basketball team played its fifth conference game.
Do you think many people in football-crazed Columbus gave two darns about the basketball team, especially with a home schedule that included the likes of UMass-Lowell, Sacred Heart, Campbell, Colgate and High Point?
It turned out that Ohio State's basketball team had a consensus All-American in freshman D'Angelo Russell, and it's likely that Russell was so good that he'll be heading to the NBA after one season. It was probably late January before anyone on campus recognized him, let alone knew him as a star.
Russell is well within his rights to walk from Columbus after one season. Something is missing, though, if a player of his caliber can still walk into Chipotle anonymously in the midst of conference play.
Moving the start of the season back approximately a month -- and allowing it to coincide with the end of the fall semester on most academic calendars -- might take some getting used to, but it would be good for the game. Teams could still play their full allotment of games and get the mandatory TV exposure that has student-athletes from, say, West Virginia playing games that start after 9 p.m. ET in places like Lawrence, Kan., on a Monday night. Longtime West Virginia coach Bob Huggins joked about the welfare of the student-athlete always coming first during this year's NCAA tournament, but pushing the calendar back would be an actual rare step towards that.
The players could miss almost no class time in the first semester. They could go home, even briefly, for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Conference play could start around the time most students return to campuses for the start of spring semester, adding some spice and fan interest. The additional skill development that drove regulated summer teaching time and the earlier start for fall practice in recent years could still take place.
All of the early-season, made-for-TV tournaments in tropical locales could still exist, too; most colleges are on Christmas break for at least four weeks. One TV network owns most of those tournaments, anyway, and that network could space them out from roughly Dec. 15-Jan. 15. Coaches will still sign up for those tournaments because the chance to go to Maui, Puerto Rico and the like is used as a recruiting tool in addition to getting their teams the chance to play in a tournament-like atmosphere.
Pushing back three or four weeks at the start of the season and two at the end could help make more stars, healthier rivalries and bring more eyeballs -- and dollars. That Wisconsin-Duke game in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge played early last December that ended up becoming a national-title game preview could have been a bigger TV hit when football season was over.
If the championship game isn't going to be until April 6, what's wrong with April 13 or 20?
CBS would throw a fit because it also has the Masters, but the Final Four is played on Saturday night and golf is still a day sport, even in the TV-rules-everything age. The recent changes to the NCAA tournament TV contract have brought on other networks anyway. Regular fans can't get enough college basketball for a period of a few weeks; why not try to make that last a few more?
It takes a real junkie to fully appreciate the 24-hour hoops marathon that airs on ESPN each November. It's good basketball -- and a lot of it -- featuring teams from all over the country.
What if that started on, say, the morning after the Super Bowl? Viewership would probably be up. The NCAA tournament would be within screaming distance, not a whole winter away. Teams would still play in it, too. There are hundreds of teams that would play anyone, anytime, anywhere to get on national TV.
Shortening the season would be maximizing the season. You don't have to be a math major to know that the last week of September to the first week of April is a really long time.
It's also no coincidence that a player who's fallen out of the rotation or a coach's good graces announces the day after his season ends that he's transferring. Players are tired. Coaches are, too. Snap decisions get made. Fans are turned off by free agency and the fleeting nature of today's players and teams, and tightening the window would allow fans a chance to better get to know the game's stars.
There's plenty about college basketball that's worth at least discussing in regards to potential change. Not being in such a hurry to tipoff a marathon season seems a good place to start.
