An Experiment

[fiasco]

Had a game the other week where I had a 5-second call on an in-bounds play. As I was running by the bench, coach said "Felt like your count was a little fast."

So, that night, I went home and did an experiment to time my count. I used a stopwatch, started it, and without looking at it, did a 10-second count.

Come to find out, if anything, my count is too slow, by about a second and a half.

So, last Saturday, I recorded a few college basketball games and used my stopwatch to time a few officials' counts. Some officials were taking two whole seconds to make one count. Almost everyone's counts were too slow.

I did the same at a few high school games that I observed this week. Same result. Most officials take between 1.25 to 2 seconds to make one count.

Try it. Take a stopwatch, start it, do a 10-second count as you would during the game, and stop the stopwatch. Look at the result. Whatcha got??? When I did it, I got 13 seconds.