College Basketball Rule Changes Proposed: Latest Details, Comments and Reaction

In an effort to improve the state of men's college basketball, the sport's rules committee laid out three significant proposals Friday.  

The potential changes relate to the shot clock, timeouts and placement of the restricted area along with an approved experiment regarding fouls, per Greg Johnson of NCAA.org.

NCAA March Madness on Twitter notes that the rules committee has suggested that the shot clock be lessened from 35 seconds to 30 seconds:

Also, the amount of timeouts could go from five to four along with a few additional timeout-related changes geared toward speeding up the pace of play:

Stewart Mandel of Fox Sports believes that could be especially significant in terms of making men's college basketball more palatable:

ESPN.com's Dana O'Neil feels as though the timeout proposal could be just as important as the shot clock as well:

Along with those proposed amendments, the rules committee wants to move the restricted area out an extra foot:

Per Adam Rowe of 247Sports, it has already been determined that men's college basketball will experiment with allowing six fouls per player rather than five during the 2016 postseason:

The rules committee threw in a few lesser proposals, too, including the potential elimination of the five-second closely guarded call:

Although the 2015 NCAA tournament was exciting, men's college basketball was criticized by some due to the downturn in offense and the length of the games.

It is clear that the rules committee is attempting to take steps toward curing those ills, and these rule changes could help if they are ultimately enacted. The NCAA release notes that the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel is scheduled to discuss the changes on June 8. 

What works in the NBA may not work quite as well in college basketball, but the fact that those in power are willing to experiment is encouraging since it is clear that some feel as though the sport needs to evolve.

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