Scorecard

GOING LIKE 60

While so much attention in pro basketball has been concentrated on the Spencer Haywood mess, a suggested modification of the game itself—which has just come to the serious interest of some NBA officials—deserves a bright spotlight. The idea is to lengthen the game from 48 minutes of four 12-minute quarters to 60 minutes of four 15-minute quarters. The proposal should be adopted by both leagues, since it is one of those rare propositions that is simple to effect and beneficial to all.

The move would give the fans 12 more minutes of action. An average game now runs well under two hours.

It would help management by producing greater concession and radio-TV revenues.

It would help the coaches, since they would have the opportunity to give all their players a chance to play regularly.

It would help the players for this same reason. Players would have a better chance to develop, a vital consideration now when there are more top players than ever before, and this year's college draft is touted as the best ever in terms of quantity.

But most important, a 60-minute game would help the sport of basketball. The great big men who dominate the game could not then keep up their present pace for 60 minutes. Depth and teamwork would count for more, and, without the one big man going the whole way, more variety and style would be introduced into every game.

ONE RUN FOR CHARLIE O

Some years ago Charles O. Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics, proposed that the World Series be played at night. Now he has won one of his rare victories. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn has ruled that the fourth game of the 1971 Series will be televised in prime evening time unless the Chicago Cubs reach the Series—there are no lights in Wrigley Field.

NBC-TV, which currently televises baseball's Game of the Week, clearly has noted the success that ABC-TV has enjoyed with its Monday night pro football games. They boosted ABC's ratings some 50% over what they had been in 1969. And NBC also was quite happy with its own ratings for the nighttime 1970 All-Star game, which is supposed to have had 56 million viewers.