Why all the grumbling about fouling at the end of the game. They do it because it works sometimes. And the reason it works is because too many guys don't shoot free throws well. make your free throws and you win the game.

The last thing you want to do is substantially change the rules just for the end of the game. It makes a mockery of a great game, which I respectfully submit, the current rules do not. Have any of you people contemplated what would happen if the fouled team was able to decline free throws? You would have more fouls committed than you do now because the losing team down by, let's say 4 with 30 seconds to go, would have no alternative but to go for a steal, only under this new scenario if they couldn't get a steal, they would still have to foul, and the same thing would happen every two seconds or so until the game ended. You would have maybe 10-15 fouls committed in the last 30 seconds. Is that better? Fouls are a part of the game, the only thing I think is reasonable is to enforce the intentional foul rule a little more, but that places too much discretion in the hands of the zebras and that's not really a good thing either. So I'm just gona invoke the old saying about "the devil that ya know".

By the way, NC State fouled Houston exactly twice in the waning minutes of the '83 championship game. I was shocked when I saw the tape.

and obviously Oden got away with one, that was a textbook intentional foul, which was not called, but that was just one of several things which helped ohio st win.

Game 1, 1984 Knicks-Pistons first tround series (best known for miracle Pistons comeback in game 5, with Knicks winning in OT).

Anyway, Game 1 went something like this -- Pistons up 7, 50 seconds to play. Knicks score, Darrell Walker steal, Knicks score, Walker steals again, Knicks score, Rory Sparrow steals and hits two free throws, Knicks win by one.

I still like the game the way it is. It punishes teams that don't make their free throws and rewards those that do. Free throw shooting is not hard. I know, I can do it, so can most people who have ever picked up a basketball, young and old. The double bonus strikes a good balance between making comebacks too easy or too hard. It does what a good rule is supposed to do.

The argument I hate the most is that the team that played better the first 38 minutes is somehow entitled to win. the game is 40 minutes, not 38. And why two straight columns about how free throw shoting is bad. As rules go it is way better and far less disruptive to the game than allowing all those timeouts at the end. I submit that if you take away all those timeouts, most people would stop whining about all the fouls.

Nice column, but as even you pretty much say, a bit of an oversimplification. Is Oden even that good of a college player? It seems like he's no better than some other college centers out there, and the team seems to do just fine when he's off the floor.

Correction: I am sure you meant to write that Georgetown made the finals (not semifinals) in '82 and '85.

Thanks again for a good column

Buffalonian stated: "I am sick of so many cricket fans denigrating baseball out of ignorance."

Just a question, where exactly does one go in this country to hear the complaints of "so many cricket fans."

the fact that the big guys did not foul out actually confirms that the coaches did not get the maximum out of their players.

Boy, when they called that first ticky-tack foul on Hibbert a few seconds into the game, you just knew the center matchup was gonna fizzle. Those refs had no sense of the moment. Put your whistles down for a second and let the big guys play!

I only saw about 3 plays of that women's basketball game, but one of them was the weird play where the Rutgers player wouldn't pick up the ball. The replay clearly showed that she had discontinued her dribble, then lost the ball, without it being touched by the other team. If she had picked it up it would have been a double dribble the same way it's a double dribble for a player to pick up her dribble, then put the ball on the floor and pick it up.

Am I missing something?

King nailed this one. what I hate about situations like this is that they set a precedent that anyone who says offensive things is not entitled to be on the air. Today, you are offended and you get Imus booted, tomorrow, you might be the offender.

Can someone explain why this comment got so much publicity. Radio hosts say bigoted stuff like this all the time and nobody even notices. That this was even reported in the media at all is an exception. if you do notice you write it off as the rantings of an ignorant blowhard. why did this become a frenzy?

I can go home tonite watch the news, feel all messed up inside cause so many innocent people died, then I can turn on a ball game or a hockey game and for the rest of the nite forget about all that's messed up in the world, all without taking a single narcotic. There are few things that can beat that.

It is no doubt a true statement that if someone else in the room at Va. Tech had had a gun that this tragedy would have been minimized. But, so what? That simply does not mean that people should be allowed to carry weapons at will. While less gun control might result in fewer mass killings, it would no doubt reult in more individual shootings. Probably a bad tradeoff