The three-point field goal is in!"
That’s the first line of former basketball secretary-rules editor Ed Steitz’s introduction in the 1986-87 NCAA rules book.
The first line of this year’s book is: “After years of study and debate, the Men’s Basketball Rules Committee voted to extend the three-point line to 20 feet, 9 inches.”
OK, so there’s no exclamation point this year, but the change may prove to warrant one as the season progresses.
As was the case 21 years ago when the line was implemented, today’s iteration of the rules committee relied on extensive research and discussion to make its decision. In 2006-07, Division I men’s teams combined to shoot 35 percent from behind the arc and made an average of 6.6 three-pointers on 18.9 attempts per game. Both of the latter figures are all-time highs, and the 35 percent figure equates to about 52 percent for two-pointers. As far back as 10 years ago, the shooting percentage for three-pointers was 33 percent (equal to about 50 percent for two-pointers).
The committee also based moving the line on its desire to improve the “spacing” of the game. Defenders guarding offensive players near the lane will have farther to go to cover a shooter.
C.M. Newton, former rules committee chair and head basketball coach and athletics director at several Division I basketball powers, has been involved in both the three-point line’s creation and its evolution. He said the longer distance won’t dramatically affect today’s game, but it may resurrect one of the casualties of the original arc: the mid-range jumper.
“Why shoot from 15 feet when you can back up to 19 feet and get another point out of it?” said the man who chaired the rules committee when the three-point line was being contemplated in the early 1980s. Newton, who also coached at Alabama and Vanderbilt and was the AD at Kentucky, said the line may have inadvertently eliminated the longer jump shooting that was still inside the three-point arc. “But that might come back with the longer distance,” he said. “Some kids will not be able to maintain a high percentage from farther out.”
Newton said settling on the appropriate distance has been the biggest challenge concerning the three-point line from the beginning. About a dozen conferences experimented with the line at varying distances in the early 1980s before the committee eventually settled on 19 feet, 9 inches.
“I give Ed Steitz a lot of credit – he really believed this would be best for the college game. I was proud of our committee – we finally said we’re just going to do this, and if it proves to be the wrong thing, we can change it,” Newton said.
Turns out it took 21 years for anything to change – about a half inch per year.