Picayune Extra: Ten ways to increase March gladness
Plus the Tweet Sixteen finalists in my Twitter bracket tournament
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To coincide with March Madness — the NCAA basketball tournaments in which the Michigan Wolverines have advanced to the sweet sixteen for both men and women — I am running my first ever Tweet Madness bracket poll. It, too, is now down to 16 finalists. Please click here to participate in the poll.
Since I spent most of the weekend watching hoops, I figure it’s time to share my newly expanded list of proposed reforms to the rules of basketball. The game has no patience for purists — the NCAA has tweaked the game 64 times according to History of NCAA Basketball Rule Changes — so nothing here should seem particularly radical.
1. Eliminate timeouts in the last minute of every game.
Coaches can and should prepare their players for the many contingencies that occur in the final, frantic seconds of a close contest. In the final 60 seconds the rules should allow only for quick timeouts -- 10 seconds, say -- for substitutions.
2. Reduce the incentive for teams that are losing to commit deliberate fouls.
Committing a rules violation should not be a potentially effective victory strategy. Yet now, particularly toward the end of close games, it makes sense for the team that's behind to grab wildly at their opponents. This not only stops the game clock, it usually forces the fouled player to shoot free throws, turning a fast-paced team game into an individual skills competition.
So when a referee deems a foul to be obviously strategic, the offense should get one free throw and retain possession of the ball. When a foul committed with one minute to go or less is arguably part of a genuine defensive effort, the offense should be able to choose whether to shoot the free throws or take the ball out of bounds.
3. Institute an NBA-style 24-second shot clock in college ball.
To balance my first two rule changes, which would disadvantage teams that are behind, I'd compel the offense to act quickly so as to prevent stalling tactics, and I'd also . . .
4. Disallow mercy timeout requests.
In 2006, the NCAA got rid of the rule that permitted an airborne player holding the ball to get a timeout while flying out of bounds.
The logic behind that supports my proposal that a player's request for a timeout should not be honored if he or she is trapped by defenders, temporarily in possession of the ball in a scrum on the floor or unable to find an open teammate to pass to as the five-second limit approaches on an in-bounds play.
Can quarterbacks call timeout when they're being chased out of the pocket and can't find any open receivers? Can goalies call timeout when faced with a breakaway attack? Can tennis players request a break in the action during exhausting rallies? Can an outfielder call time out when blinded by the sun and unable to see a fly ball?
Of course not.
So neither should basketball players in distress (nor their coaches on the sidelines) be permitted to grab at the lifeline of a timeout.
5. Prohibit folderol between free throws.
The hand-slapping, fist-bumping and back-patting of the shooter between free-throw attempts has gotten out of control. Such time-wasting contact should result in a forfeit of the second free throw. And any attempt by the non-shooting team to call timeout between free throws in an effort to freeze the shooter should result in a technical foul.
6. Give a player fouled in the act of shooting the option of the standard two free throws (three if the shot came from beyond the arc) or the opportunity to take the same shot again from the same spot on the floor, but without any defenders present.
This would discourage the strategy of committing semideliberate fouls on breakaway layup and hacking at taller players who are good right around the basket but lousy at the line. Another way to discourage that same strategy would be to adopt the long-abandoned NBA rule that gave a player fouled in the act of shooting three tries to make two shots.
7. Eliminate the concept of fouling out of a basketball game and instead increase the penalties for each foul a player commits over the foul-out limit.
An escalating number of extra free throws for each additional foul over the limit by a player ought to be enough to discourage rough play. Alternatively, treating each foul over a player’s limit as a technical foul would also do the trick.
8. Expand the NCAA tournaments to 96 teams.
Have 32 play-in games to make the 64 lowest-seeded teams play their way into the 64-team bracket. In the just concluded season season, 20 men’s teams with at least 20 victories had to settle for National Invitation Tournament bids. Any one of them would have been capable of pulling off one of those upset victories and becoming a Cinderella.
9. Halve the length of halftime.
This is my proposal for every sport with intermission periods. The Super Bowl, with its halftime musical extravaganza, would get an exemption. But enough with the jibber-jabber panels and their platitudinous observations.
10. Get rid of the in-game coach interviews during time-outs.
Coaches should be coaching during the game, not feeding inanities to sideline reporters. These interviews — new this year, I think — seem to have been inspired by the in-game interviews with baseball managers, which are conducted at times with the managers really aren’t doing all that much anyway.
Men: Shut up as you fill up
WBEZ-FM 91.5 reporter Natalie Moore’s excellent column in the Sun-Times highlighted a problem that, due to my male privilege, I’d never considered.
Prompted by the slaying of Salena Claybourne, who was fatally shot recently by would-be carjackers as she was filling her tank at a South Shore gas station, Moore wrote:
Getting gas is my least favorite errand — and not because of the recoil-inducing prices that are more than a latte per gallon. … For me, gas stations represent unwanted attention that on the surface may seem innocent, but I worry about whether violence lurks. I don’t like men approaching me for spare change or asking to pump my gas. I don’t like men hitting on me from their driver’s side. I don’t like that I must be careful in my rejections so I’m not bothered more. …
My message to men is: Leave women alone at the gas station. We want to be left alone.
Not even small talk, fellas. Not at the gas station, not in an elevator, not on a lonely sidewalk at night, not in any situation where a woman on her own might feel vulnerable or intimidated.
If she wants to interact with you (she almost certainly doesn’t) then she’ll make an overture (she almost certainly won’t). Got it?
Notes and comments from readers —lightly edited —- along with my responses
Some of these messages are in reference to items in last Thursday’s Picayune Sentinel.
Steve H. — You wrote that you have seeded the tweets in the Tweet Madness bracket poll by the percentage of votes they received. So, it's like teams in the tournament, such that the highest-rated one faces off against the lowest-rated one, etc.? Meaning an 8 against 9 should theoretically be the most competitive?
I ask because I'm bummed out that 2 of my favorites are gone already, having gotten 49 and 45% of the vote, respectively. (The two being "My son asked me where poo came from. I was a little uncomfortable but gave him an honest answer. He looked perplexed and stared at me for a minute then asked….and Tigger??? “ by @mariana057, and "It should be called ‘Couch Mix’ because I’m guessing less than 1% of it is actually eaten on a trail” by @RickAaron)
They both lost to worthy competitors, at least, and I guess, honestly, it's not like any of the ones that advanced are duds.
And why have you already gone on to the second round, rather than milking this for a couple weeks to sync with the actual timing of March Madness?
Thanks! It's certainly good fun.
Ted N. — I hate how the leaders in the Tweet of the Week poll are always the ones that take a political position most readers agree with. *I* agree too! But making a point I agree with is not the same as being funny.
I’m strongly considering segregating current-events (political) tweets from the more timeless quips in part because there’s an apples-and-oranges problem and in part because edgy political tweets tend to overwhelm the others.
I have this bracket poll timed so that I’ll post the final four in Tweet Madness when it's NCAA men’s Final Four weekend. And yes, I ranked them all by the percentage of the vote they got on the week they won, which is admittedly fairly random because some weeks have much better entries than others. If I do this again next year I'll probably just randomize the finalists and have two divisions (current events and timeless)
Steve R. — You wrote, “It seems obvious to me that Hispanics deserve at least equal representation with Blacks on the (Chicago City) Council.”
Perhaps that makes sense if race or skin color is the only factor you look at. How that squares with a color-blind and post-racial society isn’t clear. Pick any other political factor and substitute it. “It seems obvious to me that pro-choice proponents deserve at least equal representation with pro-life supporters on the council.” Or police supporters versus defund the police fans.
The point is, elevating a single factor to drive the selection of boundaries is fraught no matter which one you choose. Ideally, carving up maps should be blind to politics and demographics, including race and ethnicity.
It's not the only factor *I* look at, but the political coalitions look at it quite strongly and the Voting Rights Act demands that it be a significant factor in how boundaries are drawn. To be clear, I am not the one counting up ward majorities. What I am saying is that since this is a major factor for consideration, fairness would dictate a more equitable balance.
The idea of non-geographical representation -- interest group voting -- is one I haven't given a lot of thought to but is certainly thinkable/doable in the modern world. A senator representing pro-choice interests makes as much sense as a senator (two actually) representing North Dakota. How that would work in practice I don't know, but... discuss!
Curtis L. — I didn’t opt into the class action suit against Facebook for violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by tagging people in photos using facial recognition technology because
1. I think if you're on Facebook and you post photos then the photos are pretty much fair game for FB or other to use, tag, etc.
2. I don’t think users who joined the class and will recover some $400 each should be allowed to stay on Facebook. To me it's like being a member of a club and suing your club. A tad disloyal.
3. BIPA was a solution looking for a problem.
I will have no qualms about cashing Facebook’s check given what Facebook has done to the journalism industry and given how its algorithms have promoted poisonous nonsense. BIPA seems like a futile last-gasp effort to block the inevitable spread of identification systems — familiar with gait biometrics? — that will one day render it difficult to impossible to leave the house without being recognized and tracked by the cameras. We will all be living in the equivalent of a small town in which everyone is up in everyone else’s business.
That is a problem. But I would not call BIPA a solution.
Jake H. — Reading you swear now after so many Trib years feels like running into your teacher at the grocery store -- a little awkward. But I guess you're the proprietor now, dammit, so cuss it up!
Steve R. — I’m not a prude, but frankly, the use of foul language in the Picayune Sentinel tends to cheapen your whole enterprise here. It does seem to reflect how our society has gone, but it would be nice if you could set a higher standard for yourself and your readers.
I’m sparing in my use of profanity but I think there’s value in writing in ways that adults actually talk — a value recognized in such high-standard publications as The New Yorker. Cuss words are strong, in many cases, and provide emphasis and piquancy that the so-called minced oath equivalents don’t, by golly.
I frequently run into this when curating tweets for the weekly poll: Do I expurgate, as I always had to do when writing for a “family newspaper” (as if children read newspapers anymore and as if they’d be shocked by foul language)? Or do I print the punchier words that some find offensive?
The argument against swearing in print is the “higher standard” argument — that by using words that some find coarse or even objectionable (really, though?), the writer or speaker signals that such words are acceptable in most or all situations. It’s why I tried never to curse around my children even though they were well exposed to swear words at school, in movies, on social media and so on. I wanted to signal to them that such words are to be used with caution and only for certain audiences.
But we all know that the expression, “that is some bullshit” is stronger, sharper and therefore more expressive than “that is some nonsense” or “that is some rubbish.” And we know that when I write of something as a “clusterevent” you’ll only understand that if you think "clusterfuck” to yourself, and the seeming fastidiousness is more of a joke than a effort at good manners.
Marc M — I don't care what names are on Chicago Schools. I think that it would be safest and cheapest to just name them for the neighborhood they are in or the street they are on. I also think that the adults are overthinking the impact of the school's name on the students. I doubt that many of them make any sort of connection of the name to a person or ideals. I also don't see how they would find any person (American or not) that would be an apt model for a diverse and constantly changing student body.
Agreed to a point. The names probably don’t mean much to the children until and unless a teacher brings it up. But they do signal a collective honor bestowed upon an individual, and we do need to be cautious about how such honors reflect our values.
Public schools ought to adopt the collegiate model of naming buildings and departments after major donors. Not only would this provide an extra source of cash but it would also diminish the implication of honor and overall moral merit that makes it so dicey to slap the name of historical figures onto public structures.
Ya gotta see these tweets!
I often run across tweets that are too visual in nature to include in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template for the poll does not allow the use of images). Here are a few good ones I’ve come across recently:
If you didn’t laugh at “marshmallow mateys,” I doubt we could ever be friends.
There’s still time to vote in the conventional Tweet of the Week poll!
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Regarding Willie Wilson. I got gas yesterday and it was only $45. I told my wife it wasn’t even ‘a full Willie Wilson’
Cereals was the only tweet that I really laughed at this week. I was a little surprised, as it may be on the edge of still being acceptable.