Get ready for college basketball to look a lot different...well, the jerseys, at least

The NCAA's longstanding rule prohibiting players from wearing uniforms with the numbers 6, 7, 8 or 9 on them are over. Let's take a look at the strange roots of a strange rule.

If you have even a passing interest in college basketball – which I’m guessing you do, given that you’re here and reading a piece about such a small facet of the sport that minutiae seems like an understatement – chew over these questions for a moment.

When was the last time you saw a player donning a jersey embroidered with the No. 6? How about 7? Or 9? What about 16? 18?

Unless you were alive and cognizant in the spring of 1957 – and if you were, congratulations not only for still being with us, but dedicating some of your precious remaining time on this Earth to this newsletter – you have never seen those numbers worn. It’s not a strange, longstanding coincidence, either. It was by design.

Beginning with the 1957-58 season, college basketball players were forbidden from wearing any digit on their jersey higher than 5, meaning that only 37 of the 101 possible two-digit number combinations between 0 and 99 were actually legally permissible under the NCAA’s thick, always-sensible-and-even-easier-to-understand rule book.

Now, thanks to a series of rules approved last Thursday by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel, that numerical tyranny has been, at long last, toppled. The ninth bullet point on a list of 11 legislative alterations were these simple-yet-beautiful words…

Players will be allowed to wear numbers 0-99

While it’s a simple, long-overdue change, it was one of the quirks of a sport that’s increasingly losing them. Why was that ever the case, though? If a player had worn, say, No. 8 since their earliest days dribbling a ball, why couldn’t they continue to sport it as they moved one step closer to their basketball dreams?

The explanation is straightforward enough. When the rule was implemented back in 1957, it was so that referees could show the jersey number of an offending player in one signal while using a maximum of two hands. So, when five fingers were flashed on the right hand and two on the left, the message was that No. 52, not No. 7, had committed the foul, with the number of fingers on each hand representing a number on the jersey rather than adding both sets up. With only five fingers on the average human hand, five became the natural maximum for a jersey number.

It was codified in Rule 1, Section 22, Article 7, Clause B. 2 of the NCAA rulebook, which specifically stated the 37 numbers that are allowed to be worn, along with the clarification that teams can have a 0 or a 00, but not both.

What made sense at one time eventually seemed archaic, at least to the small sliver of the population that thinks or cares about such things. The rules for the National Federation of State High School Associations, high school sports’ governing body, are virtually identical to what the NCAA’s were, but at the highest, most visible levels of the sport, there was a pronounced difference. While referees in the NBA and WNBA also use hand signals directed at the scorers’ table to indicate who committed a foul or some other malfeasance, players in both leagues can wear any number from 0 to 99.

The rules used to be even odder. For years, players couldn’t wear No. 1 or No. 2, so as not to create any confusion if a referee held up one or two fingers to signal the number of free throws a player was receiving.

“In this day and age, it’s hard to believe that they’re still clinging to a rule based on fingers,” Paul Lukas of the indispensable website Uni Watch told the New York Times in 2015. “I hate to trot out such a shopworn cliche as ‘If we can put a man on the moon,’ but it does seem to apply here.” 

The rule tweak last week was made, in part, out of necessity. A number of programs, including a few of the most accomplished brands in the sport, had retired so many numbers that their current crop of players only had so many options left. Duke, for example, has 13 retired numbers while Michigan State has nine.

It came at a time in which a number of other top sports entities in the United States are loosening the language around uniform numbers. Two years ago, the NFL allowed running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, linebackers and defensive backs to wear single-digit jersey numbers from 1 through 9, a designation that was once limited to just quarterbacks, punters and kickers. Starting this upcoming season, those eight aforementioned position groups can now add 0 to that list of choices. Even if we’re still far away from the dream of interior defensive linemen with only one number across their sizable stomachs, we’re inching toward it.

In basketball, the effect of those limited numerical options was seen over the years, though not necessarily always noticed.

Julius Erving and John Havlicek wore Nos. 6 and 17, respectively, on their way to putting together two of the 50 greatest careers in NBA history, but in college, they were stuck wearing Nos. 32 and 5. It should be noted, though, that Erving wore No. 32 not just at UMass, but at Roosevelt High School in New York and then again with the ABA’s New York Nets. He switched to 6 once he got to the Philadelphia 76ers, as a nod to the legendary Bill Russell.

In the WNBA, Lisa Leslie, one of the top 10 players in league history, wore 33 in college at USC, but was able to star as No. 9 with the Los Angeles Sparks. Tina Thompson wore No. 14 in college, also at USC, before moving on to No. 7 once she reached the professional ranks.

A few modern-day examples are Jaylen Brown (No. 7 with the Celtics, but No. 0 at Cal), Jamal Murray (No. 27 with the Nuggets, No. 23 at Kentucky), RJ Barrett (No. 9 with the Knicks, No. 5 at Duke), Zach LaVine (No. 8 in the NBA, No. 14 at UCLA), Andre Iguodala (No. 9 for most of his NBA career, No. 24 at Arizona) and Kyle Lowry (No. 7 for much of his NBA career, No. 1 at Villanova).

Heading into last season, Kentucky big man Oscar Tshiebwe, the reigning national player of the year, wanted to change his jersey number to 9, reflecting his goal of leading the Wildcats to their ninth national title. The NCAA, however, nixed it. He was just one year too early, though given how Kentucky’s underwhelming season ultimately went, perhaps it was for the best that he was still rocking No. 34.

Perhaps the most maddening recent example was that of Tacko Fall, the 7-foot-6 center who was most recently in the NBA with the Cavaliers in 2022. With both the Cavs and the Celtics, he was No. 99, a poetically fitting number for a player of his immense size. Over his four years at Central Florida, however, he was relegated to wearing No. 24, a number much better suited for a defensive back than one of the tallest men in professional sports.

While the NBA presented a plethora of new jersey possibilities, only a fraction of players take advantage of them. During the 2022-23 season, of the 539 players who recorded a statistic, only 121 had a 6, 7, 8 or 9 on their jersey. Most of those 121 were either international players who didn’t grow up with the same strict uniform confines of American high schools and colleges or they’re fringe players who simply needed a number that wasn’t already taken.

For many players making the transition from the NCAA to the NBA, it’s easier and perhaps better for their marketing plans to keep the number that was attached to them as they garnered regional and even national attention in college. Viewed another way, though, it wasn’t a matter of visual consistency. Instead, their jersey decisions were repressed by a rigid, outdated way of thinking that limited individual expression.

Thankfully, that day is over. All we’re waiting for now is the star player audacious enough to run out of the tunnel and onto the court wearing No. 69.

(Photo: AP)