Bolivia man makes time stand still – on
basketball courts
By Dan Spears
Assistant Sports Editor Published: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 6:01 a.m. Last
Modified: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 at 7:34 a.m.
Mike Costabile, of Bolivia, has
developed a system to stop the clock as quickly as possible in basketball
games
The scenario has played out
hundreds of times in basketball games around the world. The score is tight,
time is winding down.
Then it happens. A player is fouled. Or the ball
goes out of bounds. The whistle blows, the clock stops, sometimes with mere
tenths of a second remaining. Fans jump out of their seats or pound a fist into
their couch, thinking, “How can they stop the clock there? How can time
not run out? It’s impossible to stop the clock right there!”
The answers to those questions – and a quick rebuttal to the
proclamation – can be found right here in Southeastern North Carolina, if
you’re willing to do some digging. Precision Time System has changed the
game of basketball, but there is no big neon sign to show its importance.
Instead, go through Bolivia, turn down a country road and onto a long,
gravel driveway through a grove of trees. Then head for Mike Costabile’s
attic, where, amid controlled chaos and hundreds of computer chips and plastic
housings, the latest in basketball technology is spread to the masses.
“You want to watch Precision Time, other than coming here and
getting up close and personal with it, turn the TV set on tonight,”
Costabile said. “Somewhere in the world, that system is used every single
night.”
For two decades, Costabile was a basketball official
himself. First for high schools, then at the college level across the
Southeast, including the Colonial Athletic Association and the Atlantic Coast
Conference. It eventually led to a spot in the NBA rotation.
Then it
happened. The Milwaukee Bucks were at the Philadelphia 76ers. Tight game,
Charles Barkley with the ball. Barkley shoots, Jack Sikma fouls, the whistle
blows, the buzzer sounds – but in what order?
Costabile decided
the foul was before the buzzer and gave Barkley two free throws. He made
both and the Sixers won.
Costabile said there was plenty of bickering
about that game. He believes it eventually led to the NBA not renewing his
contract. But instead of letting the situation become his downfall, he turned
the tables.
“My engineer, John Guerrero, I sat down with him and
some others,” said Costabile, who credits the inspiration to his ham radio
experiences growing up. The Precision Time System was born. Raised in the
Triangle, he relied on friends in that area to build the guts of the product.
Then he became a salesman.
The early going wasn’t easy.
Eventually, the Pacific-10 Conference picked it up for its basketball teams in
1995. Soon, the bandwagon took on members from everywhere.
“I took
it to the NBA,” Costabile said. “The VP of basketball operations
kinda laughed at me. And then, four years later, they bought it.”
That was under Rod Thorn, now the president of the New Jersey Nets. But
Thorn’s successor knows why the NBA eventually changed its mind for
Costabile’s product.
“The value of the product has been
recognized by these leagues and officials,” said Steve Hellmuth, NBA
executive vice president of operations and technology. “The fact that the
guy has a detailed experience and is behind the product.”
Now, the
phone rings off the hook in Costabile’s attic. In one hour on a
mid-February afternoon, the calls come from far and wide: the University of San
Francisco, Kent State, Hartford, the Atlantic 10, the Seattle SuperSonics. On
top of a stack of FedEx boxes sits a backpack full of equipment, headed to
Atlanta for the SEC Tourname
“We calculated like 80,000 basketball
games since it’s been used,” Costabile said. “Just in the NBA,
it’s been 15,000 games since we put it in there.”
The
system’s purpose is to stop the clock as quickly as possible, taking human
error and reaction time out of the equation.
A microphone is placed
next to an official’s whistle. When the whistle blows, a signal is sent to
the computer pack on the official’s belt, which bounces to the main
computer, which is attached to the game clock.
As a backup, the
official timekeeper also has buttons to stop and start the clock, and is
required to continue to push the button to stop the clock when he hears the
whistle. But the whistle is the winner every time.
“I’m not
sure how much time is saved, but you don’t have to depend on reaction time
from the table,” said John Clougherty, a former college official and now
coordinator of officials for both the ACC and CAA.
“We’re
sure of the time. It’s got great value there.”
Costabile says
the official’s whistle is always right and is always willing to put his
money where his mouth is. His whistle stops the clock faster than anyone’s
finger on the stop button.
Science, after all, says the speed of light
beats the speed of sound.
“We’ve eliminated the human
reaction time,” Costabile said. He doesn’t know how it can get any
faster, “unless we go to the Vulcan mind trick.”
As good as
the system is, there are flaws. Clougherty says his officials have
inadvertently stopped the clock by talking into the whistle loudly enough.
Kellum Fipps, head of the Southeastern Basketball Officials Association for the
past 16 seasons, said high schools must be careful to have backup batteries
ready, especially with the number of doubleheaders at that level.
Earlier this season, the system was brought into the spotlight during
the end of the nationally televised Rutgers-Tennessee women’s game, when
the clock was stopped with 0.2 seconds left, despite the whistle not blowing.
Costabile told The Associated Press that the mistake could be
attributed to human error, but his solution to that problem was already in the
works. He’s sent off a new device for a patent, what he calls a “data
center,” which keeps a log of who stopped and started the clock, and when
they did it.
During the confusion that night, Rutgers coach C. Vivian
Stringer can be seen asking, “Who stopped the clock?”
“You wanna know why?” Costabile said. “You want to know
who one of the test sites for (the data center) is? Rutgers.”
He
later added: “If you think about all the stuff that’s gone on in the
NCAA, you don’t hear about Precision Time that much. You heard about the
Tennessee game, and you hear about a battery. And this thing’s been out
since 1995. … All the other games, there’s thousands of them, the
reliability’s pretty good.”
The system is used virtually
everywhere, yet Costabile is continually trying to build a better mousetrap. He
and Hellmuth get together six or seven times a year to discuss improvements
– trying to find a way to stop the clock as soon as the ball goes through
the net is on their list right now.
He’ll head to China this
summer and make sure everything works fine for the Olympics. The Euroleague.
The world championships. The Division II and III national tournaments.
Virtually every conference in Division I basketball.
The Atlantic Sun
Conference, which includes N.C. schools Campbell and Gardner-Webb, is voting in
June to adopt the system.
“None of (our schools) are currently
using it. And we would make that decision to make it conference wide,”
Atlantic Sun assistant commissioner Matt Wilson said.
“I think
there’s only a handful of conferences that don’t have it now. It
seems to be a piece of technology that’s caught on.”
But if
you don’t see it in every NCAA Tournament game you watch over the next
three weeks, don’t panic. It’s not required there. Yet.
“With all the leagues that are using it, and all the value it has,
I would think that the NCAA would see that as a positive,” Clougherty
said. “I don’t know ... why they don’t, in my
opinion.”
Costabile’s system is also growing into the high
school arena. Several states, including North Carolina, use it for their state
championships. Most local schools have it. For every in-state school that buys
one, Precision Time makes a donation to the NCHSAA endowment fund and offers
free maintenance.
“A majority of our schools have it,” Fipps
said. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they all had it in four or
five years. It’s that good of equipment.”
Fifteen years after
seeing that “there was a problem that just needed to be fixed,” the
future of Precision Time is bright. Costabile’s attic can’t hold the
operation, so he’s moving to a bigger building – on the other side of
his driveway.
It’s got a little more space, more room for him to
keep everything in order, and still lets him enjoy time at home with his
fiancée and their dogs on their 15 acres.
Just don’t expect
him to get tired of it any time soon.
“Yeah, it’s been kinda
busy,” he said. “I don’t ever really sit back and look at what
happened, because I’m still in the middle of it.”
Dan Spears:
343-2038
dan.spears@starnewsonline.com
Precision Time
Congratulates The Following Schools For 2008
Precision
Time wishes aSPECIAL Congratulation toUniversity of Kansas Men
and University of Tennessee Women forwinning the NCAA 2008 Championship
Game.
Congratulations to Washington University Men and Howard Payne
University Women for winning the 2008 NCAA Division III Championship
games.
Precision Time sends their Congratulations to Winona State Men
and the Northern Kentucky Women for winning the NCAA Division II 2008
Championship Games.
Precision Time would like to Congratulate 4 of their customers
for making it to the NCAA Women's 2008 Final Four: Univ. of Tennessee, Stanford
University, Univ. of Connecticut and LSU. A special Congratulations to Univ. of
Tennessee Women for winning the NCAA 2008 Women's Championship Games.
Precision Time would like to congratulate 4 of their customers
for making the NCAA Final Four:? Univ. of Memphis, UCLA, UNC-Chapel Hill and
Univ. of Kansas. A Special Congradulations to University of Kansas for winning
the NCAA championship games.
America East Conference and West Coast Conference Join The Precision
Time System Precision Time welcomes these two fine Conferences as they begin
using The Precision Time Systems in 2007
Congratulations to Washington University Men and Howard Payne
University Women for winning the 2008 NCAA Division III Championship
games.