The FIVB seems to always be at it. They have often experimented with changing the set structure to try to get a volleyball match to more predictably fit in to the 2 hour time slot television supposedly favors. Those around at the time will recall something similar attempted early in the rally score era. Obviously, it didn’t go very far as we’re still doing best of 5 matches these days. Technical timeouts are another consideration.
A question I have is whether it’s really worth trying to fit into that 2-hour time slot. Brazilian coach Bernardinho had some thoughts on that subject. Will volleyball suddenly be that much more attractive to broadcasters if the matches were of a consistent length?
I don’t know the answer to that. Evidence from other sports, though, suggests it doesn’t matter as much as some might think. Tennis is essentially the same type of scoring structure as volleyball. Baseball certainly can be all over the place in terms of game lengths.
And these days with streaming – which both FIVB and CEV are very focused on for their events – is TV all that important anymore?
Let’s assume you think it is for the moment, though.
I think if you’re going to confine volleyball to a certain preferred time length for matches you probably need to put it on the clock in some fashion. That said, I don’t think timed games is the way to go. The nice thing about the point goal set-up of the sport is that lopsided games get cut-off fairly quickly. When you’re on the clock things can get out of hand, and as a result become quite boring. I experienced this while in England. A team I coached won a 20-minute timed set by something like 55-10.
Actually, in order to keep underdog teams in those sorts of match-ups fighting to the end they gave credit for not getting totally blown out. A team got 3 points for a win (maybe it was only 2). If the losing team was within 25% of the winning team’s score, they would earn a point. That made for much more interesting play when it came down toward the end of those games as the losing teams were fighting to get/stay above that threshold.
But that’s a side note.
The thought that occurred to me is if we don’t want those kinds of very one-sided situations, but want to retain a time clock we need to think in different terms. I had the idea of teams playing a series of mini sets – say to something like 8 points. The team winning the most sets within the allotted time wins the match.
The reason I say mini sets is because there is more opportunity for upsets, which keeps things interesting. There are a lot of things in terms of line-ups and subs that would have to be worked out, though.
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1 Response to "Trying to please television"
Thanks for giving us an opinion on volleyball.
First of all, for the sake of developing and promoting volleyball in Africa, there should be many meetings in African countries for coaches … Thank you very much