A REAL AUTHORITY : Edward Steitz Is Guardian and Interpreter of Rules in College Basketball

Mr. Rules is his nickname. He’s the world’s leading expert on college basketball rules.

Edward S. Steitz, 67, was the guiding force behind the adoption of the 3-point shot in 1986, the 45-second shot clock in 1985, the elimination of the jump ball except at the start of the game in 1981, and the reinstatement of the dunk in 1976.

“These new rules have had a dramatic affect upon the game,” Steitz said. “They enhance college basketball, add a new dimension, a new excitement.”

Steitz is a firm believer in raising the height of the basket from 10 feet to 11 1/2 or 12 feet and hopes to see that rule adopted some day.

“There is no magic to the 10-foot-high basket,” he said. “When James Naismith invented the game, he tacked two peach baskets to a wood rail around a balcony in the gym where the game was first played. The railing was 10 feet high. It was the only place he could tack the baskets. The basket has been 10 feet high ever since.”

He said: “As editor, national interpreter and guardian of rules for college basketball the past 21 years, the buck stops with me. It is my responsibility to compile all the data and conduct all the studies on proposed rules. We do not change rules without years of research and supporting data to justify a change.”

College basketball’s rules committee consists of Steitz and 12 other members, 6 from Division I and 3 each from Divisions II and III, the membership spread out over all geographic areas of the country. Members are elected to 3-year terms and can be reelected once, serving a maximum of 6 years. The editor, interpreter and guardian remains a member of the rules committee as long as he holds that position.

“We researched the shot clock for 25 years,” he said. “A lot of college people did not want to put it in. As for the 3-point shot, we began collecting data on that issue in 1980.

“Twenty different conferences experimented with the 3-point shot from different distances. Eleven conferences researched it at the same distance as adopted, 19 feet 9 inches from the center of the basket.”

He said basketball had grown to be too much an inside battle, a sport played strictly above the rim.

“People were saying, ‘This is getting to be a game of nothing but big men inside. What about outside shooters?’ People were concerned about opening up the lane.

“Well, the 3-point shot put the good outside shooter back into the game. It increased scoring. We now have a better balanced game.”

Basketball coaches voted 80% in favor of the 3-point shot after its first season in 1986-87.

“The 3-point shot has surpassed my fondest expectations as to adding new dimension to the game,” said the man called Mr. Rules.

Steitz, for 40 years a professor at Springfield College, has been director of athletics at the school since 1956. He was Springfield’s basketball coach from 1956-66, during which time his teams had a 185-87 record.

Springfield College is the birthplace of basketball. The Springfield Chiefs rank as the oldest basketball team in the nation.

Dr. James Naismith, a 19th-Century faculty member at the school, invented basketball, posting its 13 original rules on the gymnasium door, tacking up the two peach baskets to the railing, using a soccer ball and having 18 of his students play the first game Dec. 21, 1891.

“Surprisingly, most of those original rules have held,” Steitz said. “Rule No. 3 didn’t. It read: ‘A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it.’ The game has changed over the years but not as radically as one might think.” There has been an editor, national interpreter and guardian of the rules since the beginning. Naismith, a Presbyterian minister and medical doctor who practiced neither and spent his life as a physical education instructor, was, of course, the first.

Steitz was named assistant rules editor in 1962 and became rules editor, interpreter and guardian in 1968. He is the sixth person since Naismith to hold the prestigious position. He has been a member of the basketball rules committee for 32 years.

“It is a labor of love,” he said. “It takes up a lot of my time, but it is a great honor and a tremendous responsibility.

“A fundamental philosophy of the rules committee is that we must always strive to maintain the delicate balance between offenses and defensive play.”

Steitz was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983. The four walls of his office in the new $4.8-million basketball stadium at Springfield College are covered with awards.

He also is America’s representative, assistant treasurer and member of the rules committee of the International Basketball Assn. Federation (FIBA). He is a member of the executive committee and treasurer of COPABA, the basketball association of North, Central and South America.

Steitz has been president of ABA USA, the governing body for amateur basketball. He was chairman of the U.S. Olympic Basketball Committee for the 1984 games and chairman of the U.S. Olympic official selection committee from 1964 to 1972. He served as secretary of the Basketball Hall of Fame for 17 years.

He was co-founder and president of the basketball federation from 1968 to 1974 and on the U.S. State Department panel on international sports for 8 years.

Mr. Rules has authored or edited 83 books and written hundreds of stories about basketball for magazines and professional journal. He conducted more than 1,000 rules clinics around the world and took the Springfield College basketball team on a global trip in 1965, giving clinics in France, Italy, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.