His Number is Being Retired?
Trivia brain teasers have some element of trivia in them, but they are not just pure trivia questions.
Joe was at a high school class reunion when he let slip that his college basketball jersey was going to be retired in the near future. Many of his classmates were very aware of Joe's success at college and knew many famous professional players had also attended the school before him. For him to be the 31st player awarded with the honor by the school was a great achievement, but his former high school coach who had dropped by the reunion to see many of his returning students knew Joe was mistaken. Why?
HintHis former coach is now a high school referee.
Hide
Answer
After a foul has occurred, all basketball numbers must be able to be signaled by hand by the referee to the scorer's table. Therefore, the highest legal number allowed is five. (The number 10 would be relayed to the scorer's table with 1 finger raised on his right hand with his left fist closed.) This means that there are only 35 possible legal combinations of jersey numbers (zero is not allowed). With 31 of these numbers retired, the college could not put 5 legal numbers on the floor, let alone field a whole team.
Hide
Comments
scallio   
Feb 20, 2007
| Oh.
(empty air)
I don't know the first thing about basket ball. Learned something new today! |
vlerma
Feb 20, 2007
| I knew of the hand signals for fouls, but had no idea how the jerseys were figured out. Nice job.  |
OldChinaHand
Feb 20, 2007
| This would not be a problem in China and in most of Asia where all nine basic numbers can be signed with one hand.
Good teaser.  |
FatHead
Feb 22, 2007
| Wow, learned something new! |
vikingboy
Feb 24, 2007
| Actually, zero is allowed, many Div. 1 teams use it.
I got hung up on the "jersey retired" vs. "number retired" I was thinking they could honor a jersey by retiring it, but still use the number in a few years.
good one. |
LeafFan4life
Mar 04, 2007
| what? |
saltydavid
Jul 04, 2007
| Too much math for me. |
Back to Top
| |
|
