Abstract
It has been assumed that highly excited collective bands, more or less parallel to the yrast line, are important for the gamma deexcitation of rotational nuclei formed in heavy-ion reactions. This paper draws attention to the possibility that the in-band decay of any given state may be spread over a broad spectrum and discusses the implications for the cascade process. A simple model, where bands are generated by coherent matrix motion in the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble, indicates how the spreading width may depend on the fundamental nature of nuclear level structure.