Letters to the Editor
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I hate to keep bringing this up, but....
Don Banks over at si.com spends a few paragraphs today on Asante Samuel's phantom pass interference and also argues that Champ Bailey fumbled the ball through the end-zone, which would have been a touchback and allowed the Patriots to keep the ball. If he's correct that means Denver owes 14 points to the officials.
I think my money is going to be on the Steelers this weekend.
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Byzantine NFL Rules
Golly, let's not get started. I love, LOVE football, but for god's sakes it is the most idiotic sport ever cobbled together by mankind. But let's talk about the most hilarious situation football gets into:
Pulling out the sticks to measure for the first down. A running or quarter back falls clumsily into a huge pile of huge bodies, and a zebra previously standing 10-15 yards away comes running up and puts his foot down in what can only be called an arbitrary place- sometimes failing to maintain that position as the huge bodies untangle themselves from said huge pile. Then the stick men come in and with a dedication to measurement usually reserved for quantum physicists pull this chain (how taut? it's got a tension meter on it, folks!) to determine whether or not the first down was achieved. That one-atom thick plane extends all the way around the world and directly up into infinity, by the way. The total subjectivity of the spot coupled with the utter certainty of the chain never fails to crack me up. Doesn't the CFL spot the ball at the last yard marker passed? Let's do it that way.
And another thing: When did college football adopt the rule that if you call a time-out, and if the previous play gets overturned on review then you get your time out back? I saw that repeatedly in the bowl season but nobody even mentioned it.
Here's two rules of thumb for sport designers of the future:
1. It should take no more than ten minutes of observation to figure out the objective of and general play of the game. (Well done, Naismith! Shame, Cartwright!)
2. You should be able to have a decent game without officials of any kind.
Perhaps we could have a summit on how to improve the rules of football, and maybe keep the incomprehensible events down to only three or four per game.
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take away the "force-out" rule?
so...if a basketball player is going up for a dunk, and the defender pushes him away from the rim it's a foul, if a baseball player is bearing down on first base and the first baseman pushes him away so he can't touch the base, it's against the rules, but if a defensive back pushes a receiver out of bounds before he can land on the ground, it should be considered a good play?
and, you know, putting a time limit on a reception would *really* take away from the idea of "...if it looks like a catch, or an incompletion, or a fumble, or an interception, then doggone it, it is." meaning, in some random game, you'd get, "well, gee, it *looks* like a catch, but according to our digital clock he only maintained possession for .89 seconds before he took a step, got hit, and fumbled...guess it's not a catch then! He obviously caught it, but rules are rules.."
and, on another point to some commenters: tom brady throws an interception, champ bailey returns it at *least* 99 yards...and all the complaints are centered around the fact that the new england patriots should have somehow gotten the ball at their own 20 because a fumble that went more than 10 yards out of bounds -- and that couldn't possibly have been recovered by anyone wearing a patriots jersey -- could have maybe kind of flown through a small corner of the end zone before going out of bounds? talk about a rule that needs to be fixed -- why should possession change when a guy fumbles at the 1-yard line, the ball rolls into the end zone, and then goes out of bounds. don't you think a team should have to actually, you know, *recover* the fumble before they get possession?
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did I miss something?
I don't keep up with the Winter Olympics-type sports, especially ice-skating. Do I assume correctly, from reading the column today, that Michelle Kwan lost some competition recently, but was declared a winner anyway? (My guess: she didn't make the Olympic team, but was put on the team anyway. Someone let me know if I'm right.)
Oh, and as for the "force-out" rule: getting rid of it would be ridiculous. If a receiver catches the ball in the air, and is going to land with both feet inbounds, it's a catch. If you say otherwise, then why not let defensive backs catch the receivers before they land - anywhere on the field - carry them to the sidelines, and dump them out of bounds? Why not eliminate forward motion? Why not make it legal for a 350 pound defensive lineman to break thru the line, pick up a quarterback, and carry him all the way back to the endzone for a safety?
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A thought on the FIFA rules
While the FIFA rules are certainly less complicated than the NFL rulebook, they're not exactly the model of conciseness and clarity that they're being made out to be: the rulebook is 84 pages long, and seems to contain several un-numbered rules.
Read for yourself:
http://www.fifa.com/documents/fifa/laws/LOTG2005_e.pdf
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More secrecy, not less!
Rugby has thirty men on the field at all times and just one official. (Okay, there are also the two linesmen on the sidelines to mark the ball when it goes out of play and narc out good honest fowards guarding against the temptation of ungentlemanly play by punching cheating opponents in the head when the ref's not looking.)
Often the official is the only person of the 31 on the field who even remotely knows the rules, so when he rules, everyone just shrugs and figures he probably knows best. There's no one with whom to confer and the clock's running, so the game has to continue.
Sure, this is a case of ignorance being bliss, but it works to produce a much more enjoyable game. I think the NFL should adopt this system.
By the way, this column reminded of the great George Will pronouncement on football: "Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings."