It's Christmas, and voters on the Scripps Howard basketball poll are in a giving mood.
So after deciding to keep Arkansas in the No. 1 spot, they decided to spread some joy to the game of college basketball.Former coach Abe Lemons started with a gift for the fans.
"As a Christmas gift for basketball, I'd broadcast games without color men, the analysts. They coach too much, and they offer too much advice. Like that Dick Vitale. He wants to put the jump ball back in, and we worked so many years to get it out.
"I'd leave the play-by-play men. They don't have time to get into all that other stuff that the color men do. Taking the color men out would save money and save wear and tear on people."
Former coach Al McGuire, one of those TV analysts, also had a present for fans and TV executives alike:
"One gift would be one game a week with two heavyweight teams with no other college or NBA games against it. An intersectional game, a UCLA-Michigan type game. That's something the game lacks. Then everybody would have a conversational topic - sort of like Monday Night Football. We did that at NBC back in the '70s but there's just so many games on TV now."
Joe O'Brien, executive director of the Basketball Hall of Fame, would like to tinker with the actual rules of the game;
"I have a three-fold gift to give: the international three-point arc (20 feet, six inches); a standardized shot clock of 30 seconds for men and women; and 12-foot baskets."
Outgoing NCAA executive director Dick Schultz, a former coach, has a rules thought as well: "I'd give them back the five-second count," referring to a change this year that eliminated tying up the player with the ball for five seconds if he's dribbling.
Author John Finestein agrees.
"I'd give the game back the five-second call and the 45-second clock as well as moving the three-point line back by two feet."
NBA superscout Marty Blake would like some off-the-court changes by the NCAA.
"The game needs three things. First, the NCAA should allow schools to bring back the third (full-time) assistant coach. Second, coaches should be allowed to teach the kids year-round under some type of restricted program. And third, the NCAA needs to allow kids on scholarship to have jobs in the off-season to earn some kind of spending money."
Now all that would make for a Merry Christmas, indeed.
Others voting in the poll: former Olympian Lynette Woodard, athletic director of Kansas City schools; Hank Nichols, secretary-editor of the NCAA basketball rules committees; Red Auerbach, Boston Celtics president; Ann Meyers, TV analyst and former Olympian; former Cal coach Pete Newell; C.M. Newton, president of USA Basketball and athletic director at Kentucky; former NBA player and now agent Len Elmore and Tom McMillen, former NBA player and congressman, now co-chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness.