Today’s “classic” A&J is from December of last year. A few years back, I heard somewhere, National Public Radio, I think, (How’s that for documentation?) that regular-season college basketball consistently is one of the lower rated sports activities on television. However, when the year-end tournament rolls around, with 60-something participants, it becomes one of televised sports most highly rated events. I guess the old guys who run big-time college football didn’t hear that broadcast. OK, so sports and basketball aren’t your thing. Perhaps you’re already waiting for spring! Well, I have another bonus cartoon for you, from 10 years ago.
‘Think of it as 600 tenths of a second.’
By Jimmy Johnson
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8 responses to “‘Think of it as 600 tenths of a second.’”
I probably watch more regular season games than the ones in March. The noise level at a home game was one of the most awesome things that I experienced while I was in college. Once they hit the tournament, the teams left tend to be more like the NBA, which is totally unwatchable for me. I have never been a fan of the Cinderella story in basketball. If I want to see Cinderella, I’ll watch Disney or the Hallmark Network!
There are several things they’d have to do to get me to watch basketball again – NBA _or_ college:
1. Call the game. One of my sons frequently has a game on when I’m there; I’m afraid I drive him a bit nuts (which, I must say, he thoroughly earned in his youth…..) by calling it. Me, in a typical 30 seconds of play: “Travelling. Travelling. Travelling. Double dribble. Travelling. Travelling. Travelling. Reaching in. Travelling. Travelling.” Well, that’s not the full 30 seconds, but you get my drift. If he’d been called every time he traveled, Michael Jordan might not be remembered now as the 4th-best who ever played (for the record: 3 – Wilt Chamberlain; 2 – Bill Russell; 1 – Meadowlark Lemon)
2. When Dr. Naismith nailed up his peach basket, the average player was about 5’6″; raise the basket a foot.
3. Get rid of the 3-point shot; it serves no purpose except to inflate the score and make people think the game was more exciting than it was.
4. Get rid of the shot clock. You have the ball, you’re up by 1, there’s 1 minute left, and you have to dribble & pass without letting the bad guys get the ball; the freeze game was far and away the most exciting part of b-ball.
5. Make dunking a technical foul again, like it was when I was a kid; it’s stupid.
And to truly increase the interest of the game, cut off the first 3 quarters; they don’t matter (well, except to provide commercial time).
But, that said, it could be worse. Yes, they spend a lot of time waiting for the TV folks to sell you bad beer, but when they are on, they’re moving – I saw an article a few ago that analyzed that year’s Super Bowl; 4 1/2 hours of coverage, and the ball was actually in play for 12 minutes.
Wow! You are old school, aren’t you, Cozmik? Being an Auburn University grad, I’m a little new to basketball myself. It can be a frustrating spectator sport, to be sure.
I believe it was Elayne Boosler who said that if she’s ever told she has only minutes to live, she wants it to be the last five minutes of an NCAA final.
Boosler had some pretty funny stuff on the tube perhaps 20-30 years back (has it been that long?)…though some seemed nsfv.
College basketball ratings are low because it is truly a regional sport; games are of interest to limited set of alumni and friends. The NCAA tournament ratings are big for the same reason the NFL became big: gambling. Come March, every office has a bracket pool even though most participants couldn’t name one player on the teams they select. People watch to see how their bracket is doing.
BTW, I adore Janis’ expression the the second panel of the retro strip!
Good guess emb! My take was much more pessimistic