That said, the rules you’re proposing, combined, would, unless you changed all the OTHER rules, make Canadian football almost comically high-scoring. Canadian football has a number of other significant rule differences that give the offense big advantages to make up for the 3 down thing. If you added a down and made the field shorter, but didn’t change all other other rules, every game would have a score like 76-59. It’d be Arena Football.
The differences are part of what gives Canadian football its flavour. It also gives the opportunity to make the game more quickly paced, with more changes of possession, though, to be honest, thanks to the incessant commercials, a CFL game is pretty much just as glacial in pace as an NFL or NCAA game.
Of course Canada has college football, but Canadian universities don’t award football scholarships, so the only colleges a Canadian university could compete with would be very low division schools or the Ivy League. I don’t really see why there’s much need for cross-border games.
After all, Canadian universities also play hockey, soccer and other sports where the rules are precisely the same as their NCAA counterparts, but cross-border games are rare exhibition events.
I’m not a huge die-hard baseball fan, and I know whole civilizations have risen and fallen over this very issue, but I can’t help but wonder why this isn’t implemented: machine-assisted or computer-assisted strike/ball calling. Whenever I watch a baseball game, I always see at least a couple of pitches that are clearly and obviously called incorrectly. And the graphics they’ve added in the last couple of years that display pitch movement and location just emphasize the problem: umpires are human, and asking them to judge the position of a spheroid moving at 100 mph to an accuracy of quarter-inches is ludicrous.
We have the technology. We’ve had it for years. Here’s how I imagine it working:
There’s still an umpire behind the plate. And he still gets to define the strike zone. When each batter approaches the plate for the first time in a given game, the plate umpire uses a handheld device to mark the top and bottom of that player’s strike zone – i.e. the line at the midpoint between the batter’s shoulders and the top of his uniform pants, and the line at the hollow below his kneecaps. The batter can even watch the umpire do this if he desires, so he can be sure of what his zone has been adjudged for that game. The stadium’s system stores this information for the rest of the game.
The umpire’s mask has some kind of indicator, or maybe even a heads-up display. It could say ball or strike, or it could even display the location of the pitch. Hell, maybe it’s even 3-D and it displays the path of the ball through (or not through) the pentagonal prism of the strike zone.
The umpire still announces whether it’s a ball or a strike, and may deviate from the computer. But the computer’s decision is also announced in the stadium. So the umpire is still held accountable for disagreeing with a system that records the position of the ball to within a hundredth of an inch, 1000 times over its trajectory.
I know that all MLB stadiums use pitch-tracking technology for quality control of the umpires, but it makes little sense not to give the umpires access to this information in real time.
Yeah yeah, “capricious umpires are a part of the game!!” But they shouldn’t be. The game should be between the two teams.
I’m a die-hard baseball fan who loves the game’s traditions… and I agree.
(I didn’t get into instant replay and computerized officiating, though, because I don’t think of those things as a “rule change,” it’s just a different way of calling the existing rules.)
But, really, we’re at the point now that FOX or whatever network can have a display right on the screen that shows, in real time, whether the pitch is a ball or a strike. It appears to be sensationally accurate. Why can’t this be used in some way? Your suggestions for implementation make sense to me.
NFL – I would let DB’s keep a hand on the receiver throughout the entire play to make it more attractive to play man-to-man instead of zone.
Basketball – I would emphasize foul calls when tiny little guards try and strip the ball from big guys on double teams. I’m sorry just because you’re 5’ 10’’ does not mean you get a free pass to slap the hell out of the 7 footer.
Baseball – I would like computer assisted balls and strikes.
I hate the idea of any other replay because nobody has come up with a good way of dealing with the base runners.
All pro sports – Pay officials lots of money and make it a supremely competitive environment. You should have to work your ass off to make it to the big show as an official, and then you should be rewarded. The moment you have a few bad games you should be worried about being bumped down to college ball. .
NHL Hockey: Get rid of the Intent to Blow rule, the most fucked up rule ever.
NCAA (all sports): For recruiting or other NCAA violations, penalties apply to the school and also to the coach and AD if they skip out to another school.
Can’t be done. There are a lot situations where to play needs to be dead before the ref can manage to blow the whistle. For example, suppose there’s a delayed penalty call and the non-offending team pulls their goalie. The non-offending team then gives the puck away to an opposition player, who one-times the puck into the empty net. The goal doesn’t count even if the ref doesn’t manage to blow the whistle before the puck enters the net, because the play was dead from the moment the player gained control of the puck.
The problem isn’t the rule. The problem is with egomaniac referees who refuse to admit that they are wrong.
While that’s a good example, it’s not really what anyone is complaining about with “intent to blow.” The problem is usually when refs are obviously claiming to have wanted to blow the whistle after they missed a call.
The example you cite could quite easily be written into the rules: “When a delayed penalty has be called, the game shall be considered to have stopped at the moment that the penalized team achieves control of the puck in accordance with the rules of the game, and not when the whistle is blown; any play occurring after the achievment of control by the penalized team shall not count, and the clock shall be reset to the time shown at the moment the penalized team achieves control.” You can do away with “intent to blow” by simply refining specific situations where the sound of the whistle isn’t really what stops the clock.
NFL: ANY play can be challenged, including penalties. The rules as set up now seem to say that there are certain plays that the refs can never get wrong, which is obvious bullshit. By allowing replay at all they’ve already admitted that the refs are fallible, why do they think the refs couldn’t ever possibly blow a holding call or miss a facemask?
College FB and NFL refs are not full time , some people say the NFL refs would be much better if they were full time like other pro sports refs/umpires. Most of them have regular jobs during the week.
Not sure what you’re saying here. Are you suggesting a coach should be able to issue a challenge with a claim that a ref missed what should have been a penalty for the other team?
Sure. Or challenge to get a flag picked up. Coach should be able to challenge anything. There have been plenty of times the refs miss some major thing that could have game-changing implications like blatant pass interference or QB fumbles that are ruled as incomplete passes but by rule must stand because that’s unreviewable. Obviously it would be unwise in most cases to challenge ticky-tacky penalties and showing “indisputable visual evidence” of many such things would be difficult if not possible, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to challenge a holding call if you feel there’s some benefit in doing so. They’d still only get 2 challenges a game, what’s the difference?
In the NFL, penalties shall not be longer than 15 yards. No more throwing it up in the hopes of getting a pass interference call.
All football helmets (H.S., college, pro) should be made of foam-rubber to eliminate helmets being used as weapons. They may look silly at first, but we will get used to them.
No more celebration penalties. Just start a time clock at the moment a touchdown or FG is scored. The team that scores has a certain amount of time to kick the ball off or they get penalized. Dancing or gyrating after a non-scoring play is a delay of game.
I hate to say it because it’s always cliche, but an improvement to U.S. football would be to adopt Canadian field dimensions.
While the Canadian field is famously 110 yards long, it’s also MUCH wider, and had 20-yard-deep end zones.
The wider field and deeper end zones increase scoring, emphasize the importance of speed and mobility, and lead to longer and more fascinating plays from scrimmage.