The other day the FIVB announced that technical timeouts will not be used during Olympic competition. For those who aren’t aware, Article 15.4 of the official FIVB rules state:
“In sets 1-4, two 60-second Technical Time-outs take place after the leading team reaches the 8th and 16th point.”
This is a rule that is used for all FIVB competitions (World League, Grand Prix, World Championships, etc.). Many leagues, however, don’t use technical timeouts. They aren’t used in Sweden or Denmark. The are used in England’s National League, but aren’t used in BUCS, the university competition.
I think the rule was probably put in place for TV to have a couple of fixed break points for advertising. With the introduction of video challenges, though, there are more stoppages in play now.
It will be interesting to see how matches flow in the Olympics and how coaches make timeout decisions (regardless of whether they are actually effective). I know from experience that when you think about timeout timing you do consider the timing of the next technical timeout.
Another “for TV” adjustment
Some of the reporting about eliminating the technical timeouts is to shorten set length, again for TV purposes. I wrote about the idea of trying to adapt the sport for television. To summarize, I’m not a huge fan of that idea. You don’t see other sports do that, do you?
Yes, many sports change the rules to make the game more exciting and entertaining. They do not, however, change the basic structure of the sport.This latter thing is what the FIVB seems to want to do in periodically looking at what I talked about here.
Interestingly, in the FIVB press release about dropping the technical timeouts there is a quote. It’s part of the standard “about” verbiage at the bottom.
The FIVB is committed to making volleyball the number one family sport entertainment in the world
I find this “commitment” very interesting. I’d be interested in knowing how they judge “family sport entertainment”. Is it from a participation perspective? Is it from a spectator perspective?
I hope they have a clear definition.
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