Find Out Who, What to Blame for Long SEC Basketball Games

Fans complained all year so digging had to be done

Arkansas Razorbacks guard Johnell Davis passes against the Texas Longhorns at Bud Walton Arena in Fayetteville, Ark. | Nilsen Roman-Hogs on SI Images

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Throughout the season, Arkansas fans have joined those around the SEC complaining about how long basketball games have been and the twice weekly "Where's Waldo" search for where their team of choice is going to begin because other games ran over time.

It's the one topic that can bring Kentucky, Missouri and Razorbacks fans onto the same page. All three are quick to throw the blame on referees taking too much time to review plays, throwing the timing of everything off, but the ultimate question is whether officials are truly at fault or just easy targets already drawing the ire of each individual fan base.

Diving into this to seek out the true culprit was more difficult than expected. It's a simple enough premise: Watch an Arkansas game against an SEC opponent and time out how long various categories of fouls eat up, along with stoppages for review.

However, fittingly enough, a lot of games had to be pulled up to find one in its entirety. Since games keep going over, Arkansas almost always starts on another channel, meaning the DVR recording kicks in four to eight minutes into the game.

It required going all the way back to the win over LSU, six games ago, to find a full recording suitable for measurements. So, that's where the analysis began, and it can be said with confidence the cause of this ongoing problem has been identified.

So, without further ado, it's time to review the suspects and see if the charges fit.

The fouls were broken down into three categories and, although the Tigers and Hogs played a relatively clean game, the numbers suggest how much of an impact fouls can have on run time. Non-shooting fouls alone added nearly seven minutes to the broadcast.

Nearly every time a non-shooting foul took place, it took roughly 29 seconds to get a player onto the sideline, get him the ball and throw it in. Part of this is because players see literally every foul as a mini-timeout and huddle quickly.

What isn't done quickly is getting players into the games during these natural breaks. There is often a player sitting at the scorer's table waiting to come in, but then, just as things are about to get restarted, the horn sounds again here comes someone else to slow things down.

As for one-shot fouls, each of those took an average of 34 seconds to complete. This faces all the same troubles non-shooting fouls pose.

Most assume various rituals such as dribbling slowly a specific amount of times or needing to physically touch every teammate before getting to the line is the cause for the delay, but it's simply a case of the referees not handing the ball over. Once players finally have the ball in hand, they are relatively quick to shoot.

Where everything comes to a nexus point is on two-shot free throws. All the delay tactics show up at once.

Players huddle, the line-up is shuffled through slow check-ins and low-fives are so necessary players do them even if no teammates are not there to physically do it with. Some shooters even wander back behind the three-point line for a mental health break before returning to the line to a referee who is reluctant to hand over the ball.

Just shy of 10 minutes were added to the run time of Arkansas-LSU by way of two-shot fouls, and that's with both teams barely going to the line. They combined for 10 multi-shot free throws at an average of 55 seconds.

The two teams combined for half of what a normal game produces as far as fouls, yet at 1 hour 55 minutes, they barely got in under the allotted time. Had the game not been played so cleanly or had the score been close at the very end, it would have gone over.

There is definitely room to improve efficiency in the foul process, but ultimately, the improvements will be minimal. Besides, fouls have always slowed the game.

So, perhaps fans are right. It's those pesky referees and their poor sight that keeps them from easily seeing what they see on the replay monitor that stretches these things out.

However, in this case, there was only one review and it took place during a break, adding not a single second to Arkansas-LSU.

So, if those aren't the true cause, there has to be something else out there. Turns out there is.

The rules of college basketball say a timeout is either 30 seconds or a minute. However, stop and think about the last time anyone saw a timeout last such a short amount of time.

That's because each time a timeout is called, the network decides to throw things to a break. Now, the typical ESPN break is 2:30, which is 1.5 times longer than a full timeout.

However, the process isn't that clean. Two timeouts were measured just for grins.

For the first, it took over 40 seconds from the moment the timeout was called until the first commercial. When they came out of the break, the analysts spent another 75 seconds promoting upcoming games before the timeout on the floor officially ended and play resumed.

The full timeout session ran 4:25. A second timeout session ran 4:12 with similar issues getting in and out of the break eating up a lot of time.

In a perfect world, analysts would spend 15 seconds throwing it to break and 15 seconds resetting things out of the break for a tight three minute window that keeps ESPN properly funded without beating down viewers with an extra 1:25 of relatively empty content.

Think about how many commercial breaks there are. Not only do timeouts trigger them, but a lot of the fouls do also.

There were 10 commercial breaks during game play of Arkansas-LSU. That means there was an opportunity to shave off over 14 minutes of broadcast time simply by tightening up the production.

A normal person would think something so quantifiable would lead to adjustments by a network struggling so hard to get games on in time. After all, it must be a nuisance to shift games to other channels for a brief period of time.

But look at where those go. They end up on more obscure ESPN channels that traditionally haven't been found in all content packages or they end up on ESPN+. That means odds are high that twice a week ESPN is justifying fans paying a little more with some providers to get the full ESPN package or buying a bundle that includes ESPN+.

The incentive to stop adding so much to the run time of games isn't there at all. It's the opposite.

If those analysts want ESPN to make enough money to keep paying them to cover all of these games, talking a little longer going into a break, showing an extra highlight or two, and then slow walking the promotion of other games coming out of a break is fully in their interest and in the interest of their bosses.

And as much as fans might want to complain, ESPN is fully in its right to do this. They literally fund the SEC.

It's in the league's interest that fans upgrade packages and pay for bundles. Without ESPN, the SEC might be, well, mediocre.

So, while there is truly an entity to be mad at when it comes to all the problems with game lengths, there's not much that can be said. But what can be done is to lay off the referees.

They're not why Arkansas night find itself tipping off against Mississippi State on "The Ocho" one day.

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