ESPN outlines differences between game basketballs in college hoops

Florida jumped all over No. 16 Alabama on Tuesday night in a key SEC showdown that would lift its NCAA Tournament profile, but the game was so out of hand that the focus of the broadcast crew during the game shifted to a discussion of the game basketballs used in the sport.

There is no real standard ball, though there are some tight parameters that must be adhered to for the ball to be used.

But the topic has become especially important as the postseason approaches, as typically the NCAA uses only one type of ball for postseason play. That can standardize things temporarily, but it may not be what teams have gotten used to throughout the season.

“Speaking of the ball, I was reading the rulebook on the flight yesterday just to have something to do, I guess,” ESPN’s Jimmy Dykes said. “The circumference of the ball can be a maximum of 30 inches or a minimum of 29.5. So we don’t have a standard ball in college basketball. You can have a different size. And there’s three official colors you can have according to the Pantone matching system. You can have Orange 151, Red-Orange 173 or Brown 1535. Why is that?”

Because teams provide their own balls during the season, you can get a reasonably wide range of types of game basketballs used.

Broadcaster Tom Hart dove into that as the discussion played out.

“Well Jimmy, then you’re going to have to have everybody use the same equipment manufacturer,” Hart said. “We’ve got too much money tied up into swooshes and stripes and all that stuff.”

To wit, some schools are sponsored by Nike, some by Reebok, some by Under Armour, etc. Most of those brands have their own logos attached to equipment and, as noted, there are different manufacturers.

So is there a way to get standardized game basketballs? That’s actually exactly the question the broadcast crew wanted to pose, at least bringing more light to the subject.

“Can we not get a standard size ball and a standard color?” Dykes said. “Red, Orange, Brown… what are we doing?”

That’s a question fans may find themselves asking come March Madness, depending on how their team is shooting in a given game.