ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 Basketball TAG: 9701220034
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: JACK BOGACZYK
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
Even Dick Vitale couldn't think college basketball needs another TO, baby.
The clock already stops too much in college hoops. In recent years, 20-second timeouts have been added to full team timeouts and television timeouts in many games and even radio timeouts in others.
``I like the idea of lessening the impact of timeouts, especially at the end of games,'' said Virginia athletic director Terry Holland, a former coach.
It's another of his roles, Holland has been brainstorming about changing the sport. He's chairman of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. In administering the NCAA Tournament, the nine-man group deals with CBS, which this year is paying $188.4 million to televise the event.
CBS wants more commercial time to recoup rights fees. The NCAA doesn't want more stoppages than the minimum of nine in a game - four 21/2-minute TV timeouts each half, and one halftime break. That doesn't even include team-called timeouts.
``CBS obviously needs to sell more product,'' Holland said. ``What we're getting into is whether there's a better way to do business, a more natural way to lessen the impact of clock stoppages on the game.''
The potential answer appeared last week, rather innocuously, on Page 6 of The NCAA News in a summary of the basketball committee's most recent meeting. The committee has alerted the rules committee and National Association of Basketball Coaches to a subject that will continue to be studied, a suggestion that could change the way the game has been played since 1954-55.
Instead of two 20-minute halves, college basketball games could go to four 10-minute quarters.
``It's all hypothetical right now,'' Holland said. ``What we are talking about is finding more natural ways to stop the game rather than what are intrusions. Our feeling was that there was enough here that we should study this.''
It has been done before. For three seasons in the early '50s, college hoops played four 10-minute quarters before returning to 20-minute halves. The game is divided in half now only in college and international hoops.
The basketball committee cannot make the change. That's up to the rules committee, and there is no formal proposal on the subject - yet. However, when the most prestigious committee in college athletics begins talking, a group that rules the event that brings in 85 percent of the NCAA's annual revenue, it's taken seriously.
It also shows how much weight CBS carries with the NCAA.
``This is one way we've been able to come up with something that would deal with the clutter of the end of games,'' Holland said of the four-quarter format. ``You still might have a lot of fouls to stop the clock, but you're not going to have a bunch of full timeouts jammed in there, too.''
One format the committee has considered would be to give each team one timeout per quarter. In a TV game, the home team gets the first timeout, and if it doesn't take it by the six-minute mark, the network ``takes it and it's charged to the team,'' Holland said. The visiting-team timeout comes at the three-minute mark.
In a non-televised game, if a team doesn't take its allotted timeout in a quarter, it evaporates. Holland also pointed out that with breaks between quarters 1-2 and 3-4, perhaps halftime could be shortened a bit, too. In a game of quarters, there would be three natural breaks, instead of one at halftime.
In the hypothetical ``assigned timeout'' situation, a game would have eight timeouts and two quarter breaks. That's 10 assured commercial opportunities for TV (besides halftime), compared with the current eight (four timeouts per half).
In such a format, there would be no ``team'' timeouts as currently exist. In TV games this season, there is the potential for as many as 12 full timeouts per game, plus six 20-second timeouts.
``It seems like it's worth talking about,'' said Holland, even without an eye on CBS.
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Hollandby CNB