Different Rules
 

Why has USA and Europe(FIBA) different rules?
It is the same game but why?:confused:

Circles, rectangles. semi-circles, arcs...those work very well on a basketball floor. But a TRAPEZOID??? I guess they got that from biddy basketball.

OK - without getting into 2700 lines of French bashing, here's what I think is going on. Here in the US, we have very strong feelings regarding what we consider our four "major" sports - baseball, football (no, not the soccer kind), basketball and hockey. While the rest of the world commonly recognizes some kind of European organization as the authority for different sports, we here do not do that. We feel we know the best way to regulate and set rules for these sports (even though we have different "levels") as to how we relate to them in our own backyard and it's not likely we will change. We do realize we have to play by those "other" rules when competing in international play, but we feel we "control" our own leagues and the number of participants is more than enough to support US based governing associations.

Why the difference between the NFHS and NCAA??

Why doesn't Padgett like the French?

It's really very simple. They are simply different organizations that run each. In reality, there's many more than just the three sets of rules in the US (NFHS, NCAA, and NBA). Most states deviate ever so slightly from the NFHS rules, even if they use the fed rules as the baseline and keep 99.9% of the rules the same. Shot clocks, coaching boxes, mercy rules; those are just the main ones.

Iowa even has different rules for boys and girls, based solely on the fact that high school sports in Iowa are run by two different organizations. Now, the differences are minor and most fans aren't even aware of them.

In order to decide on one set of rules, everyone would have to reach a consensus on which rule set to use and who had to give up what parts of their rule books. Giving up authority isn't something we're good at in the US, for good and bad.

You ask that as if he's alone.

Each organization represents a different level of player. I do not expect HS kids to be as knowledgeable or competent as a player at the NCAA level. Nor would I expect the officials and coaches to have the same level of competence at the HS level that they do at the college level. It would be a disaster to have all rules and all philosophies applied to both HS and college games. There is even a reason NCAA Men’s and NCAA Women’s basketball rules are different. You cannot make one size fit all and make that work.

Peace

Dang, Mark, this is well spoken. Did you write this right after you took your meds? :)

This position is very reasonable: basketball isn't the same for 8-11 year old players, 12-15, 16-19 and so on. Yes, it's basically the same game: throw the ball into the basket and defend in order your opponents don't do it. But the skills of the players are different.

FIBA wants that all basketball games played under their authority share the same rules, whether they are pro games in Italy, Croatia, Russia and so on or middle school games in Norway, Burkina Faso and China.

This way of thinking is wrong, IMO (which has nothing to do with different grades of "civilization", of course): simply, middle schoolers don't need some rules that are made for pro games (24 seconds, for example) or they need modified versions of those rules. When they grow up, they'll be able to play faster and better, with greater competence both about play and rules.

That's why coaches at a lower level are allowed to call time-outs (I believe this happens in FED, doesn't it?) while at higher levels they can't. In FIBA players are not allowed to call time-outs, for example, only coaches.

Moreover, having a monolithical rule set forces local organizations to set their own variations to the rules: this happens all the time in Italy, where it is not required to have a shot clock for most middle and high school level games, with the effect that the shot clock rule is different than the one in the book. :( Why FIBA has had a stupid shot clock rule for many years? (The shot clock was reset at the release of the try.) Just because they felt difficult to have a "more-difficult-to-implement" rule in all their world.

At the same time I think that having scores of different rule sets is not a good service to our game, nor having different signals for the same violation or foul (like for NCAA men and women): is Nevada high school basketball so different from Iowa's to justify different rule sets?

Ciao

A different perspective......
 

Back in the mid-60's, several of us fooled around with FIBA rules. We actually joined FIBA for a while, but gave it up as not being worth the money. At that time, anybody could join but you still had to be certified before you supposedly were able to do international games. FIBA at that time was basically a one-man show. A guy named Williams Jones basically ran everything, and did so from the late 40's for over 40 years before he finally retired(or died) iirc. He was based in Berlin and everything flowed from there. The story going around back then was that Jones absolutely hated the USA for some reason. He supposedly had told different people that FIBA would never go to any version of US rules while he was involved with FIBA.

True or not, I've heard almost the same version over the years from different sources. What is true is that FIBA is still very political in it's thinking.

Most of the US goes under NF rules for basketball at the HS level. Officials at the NF level are likely working both boy's and girl's basketball on some level. At the NCAA level, you work one or the other. You do not work both and each committee has their own ideas over what should be used.

Really I do not see the big deal. Every organization should have the right to develop a rules set for their level. Even when you work JH or youth leagues there are rules they make to accommodate the lack of ability for their players and coaches. I work football and there are many rules at the youth level that simply protects the kids from a safety standpoint. Basketball does not always have those same ways of thinking, but there is something very different about working a JH game and a HS varsity game. The player’s level of understanding is so different.

Peace

It's more about autonomy than the need for a seperate set of rules. Except for the shot clock, every level could use the same set of rules and it would work just fine. The rules differences are generally subtle. There is no good reason that the women can't have a 10 second backcourt count, or why the airborne shooter rule can't be the same between NFHS and NCAA.

FIBA, NCAA, NFHS, (and possibly the NBA) could unify their rules quite easily if the wanted to but to do so would make the people involved in most of them redundant and no longer needed. The egos of those in each of those groups are too large for them to go down a path that eliminates thier uniqueness.

This is where it comes down to authority.

High schools in the US are controlled by the individual states, not the federal government. All of their sports are also controlled at the state level. In order to completely mesh, the two states would have to get together and decide which rules to change so they both match perfectly. The problem is, those in each state have set their rules according to their own personal philosophies, institutional goals, and desires of the coaches, athletic directors, administrators, politicians (to a certain extent), etc.
Then, multiply this difficulty by 50 to cover all the states.

I don’t think it's really a problem, though, as the rule variations are subtle and minor. The average fan wouldn't notice them. Things like leaving the bottom space open on free throws verses leaving the top space open. Also, they allow one state to "experiment" with a change. If it's successful, then other states can copy it.

You just answered your own question. Why should the shot clock make a difference? NCAA Men's is changing the 3 point line by next year. If those two rules were changed for HS it would greatly affect the game at the HS level more than it would for the college ranks. They need to stay different to help address issues that only apply to those levels or leagues.

Ego has little or nothing to do with it. The NCAA is a group of colleges that have membership with other colleges across the country. I do not see why they would want to use rules that apply to high schools. You do not see College Professors with the same requirement as an elementary education teacher to gets for tenure.

Peace

I wasn't an official in the mid 60's (still too young :D), but I remember Mr. Jones; and the USA national team at the '72 Olympic Games remembers him very well :mad:. I don't know whether he hated the USA or not, but surely he was as you described him. Now the situation has changed and many rule changes reflect this (shot clock as in the USA, AP, substitutions and so on); however politics is still an important issue in FIBA.

Do you know that until a few years ago a team could not substitute after committing a violation? The rationale :confused: for this was: they could throw the ball OOB just to obtain a substitution. Go figure. ;)

And one illustrative difference would be their different takes on bench decorum. The NFHS has specifically stated that it didn't want to hear profanity coming from their coaches, even if it was directed at their own players. That's supposed to be a "T". Meanwhile, the NCAA has also specifically stated this year that the tightening of bench decorum directed towards coaches does <b>not</b> include foul language aimed at their own players.

Not really. You could easily have one set of rules with a few parameters to be applied at different levels....different lengths of time for quarters/halves and the shot clock, different court dimensions, etc.

There is no good reason for the definitions to be different, the penalties for infractions to be different, or the protocols to be different. Of course you can dispense with elements of the protocols as the level dictates (we already do that with NFHS rules for some types of games anyway).

More like the Men vs. Women in the NCAA....neither one is going to want to cede any amount of control to the other. Likewise for HS using NCAA rules.

Again, it wouldn't be hard to have one set of rules for game play and an appendix to cover the very few things that need to be different (diminsions, timing, POE).

I never said it was not easy. Of course they all "could come together and do that, but that is not going to happen.

You make it sound like everything about Men's and Women's basketball is exactly the same. They clearly are not the same. The expectations of the coaches are not the same. They way the game is played is not the same. The style of play is the same. Why would you expect the rules to be the same? Maybe this is why they do not allow officials to work both games.

Once again the level of difficulty is not the issue. It is not going to happen because they do not want it to. That is not automatically a bad thing.

Peace

And yet, for all the differences, they play by nearly the exact same rules. That's one of the real beauties of the game. No two teams play it exactly the same way. And yet we all play (at least within rule sets) by exactly the same rules. So it should be a simple matter to come together and settle on a single set of rules, perhaps with some parameters as has been stated.

The only exception, I think, would be the NBA. With team owners wanting to showcase their players' talent, and having a financial stake in the league, they are always going to want to tweak something here and there. Both to increase their ROI, and just because they have the money, power, and influence to do it.

But they play with some pretty big difference that affect style of play and the way the game is played. Shot Clock, backcourt count, closely guarded count and the airborne shooter rule just to name a few.

And you do not think that the NCAA has a different financial interest between Men's and Women's basketball? Do you think the NCAA might have a different objective than the NF or each state might have different interests? From an officiating point of view it would be great to have every rule in every sport the exact same. But for the players and coaches it would not make a lot of sense. There are nearly 200 differences between NF and NCAA in college football. And there are over 200 from what I understand from NCAA to the NFL. I think if football officials can handle the enormous differences between levels, I think we can deal with the very few that we have to deal with as basketball officials.

Peace

Perhaps I just don't watch enough women's basketball, but I really don't see that those rules differences make much difference. The amount of time in a game spent in backcourt, closely guarded, or as an airborne shooter is not that significant. Now the shot clock will certainly have a dramatic effect, I'll grant you that. But I'm not aware that there is any difference in the shot clock rules between men and women, other than the duration.

I could be wrong. Perhaps Rocky, or one of our other fine NCAA women's officials would disagree about the extent to which these rules differences affect the game.

But again, I believe that despite the vast difference in styles between the women's and men's game, it's all achieved almost entirely within the same set of rules.

No, I don't think the difference in interests between men's and women's NCAA is anywhere near the differences between NF/NCAA and the NBA. The NCAA comprises several hundred schools, with a very wide range of athlete ability, athletic budget, and various other concerns. Frankly, running an athletic association with that many members and diverse interests, whose teams are only associated with the NCAA, not owners or owned, and getting anything done must be like herding cats. The NBA has what? 30 teams? That's 30 owners, and together those owners own the league, I believe. Sure, they hire a commissioner, and he has significant authority. But realistically those 30 guys, each with multi-hundreds of millions of dollars invested, and with the highest level of talent in the world, have a vastly different collective agenda than the NCAA, men or women. And they can get anything changed that they collectively put their minds to.

And between NF and NCAA the difference is far less. Thus NF rules and mechanics seem to be perpetually chasing the NCAA. And for that matter, the differences in style and ability among the organizations that have adopted NFHS rules (high school leagues, junior high leages, church leagues, rec. leagues, etc.) is probably far greater than the difference between men's and women's NCAA.

You need to watch a little more Women’s basketball, because it is often on a press the team in control of the ball is not always advancing the ball because they do not have 10 seconds to get across. If you have a really good dribbler, you can dribble around without the threat of getting a 5 second call. This all allows for a press to almost be ineffective if you cannot cut off a guard from movement. This is a significant strategy difference.

Whether he agrees or not is really not the issue. I started out in NCAA Women's basketball and it was in my opinion a big difference. And for the record, NCAA Men's had a rule several years ago that allowed the dribbler to not get a closely guarded count and the rule was changed a few years later. It made the guards dominate by just dribbling around and took defense out of many parts of the game.

Basketball across the board is similar. The basics of the game are always going to stay the same. But to think all rules should be across the board the same regardless of age and level in my opinion is not very wise.

What makes you think they want a HS rule that might not put the butts in the seats? Why do you think there is the half-circle under the basket? They do not want defenders hanging out under the basket to prevent dunks and scoring. This is also why there is a 3 second defensive call and other rules that encourage offense. This is why many have accused the NBA as being entertainment rather than pure basketball.

Even NF rules get modified when you start going to younger players in many jurisdictions. It is not like all the NF uses are adopted across the board either. Even if you got everyone in a room and said all the rules would be the same, I bet you would have more changes or modifications to fit an organization's philosophy. And it is also a myth that the NF is chancing NCAA Mechanics. Some CCA mechanics are adopted but I clearly doubt all of them will always be adopted. Hell, Women's basketball took on a bunch of signals that are new this year you likely will never see adopted at NCAA Men's or NF levels.

Peace