There was also the L.A. Coliseum, where the Dodgers played for four seasons until Dodger Stadium was built. From what I’ve read, it was absolutely miserable as a ballpark.
It is also wrong to believe that NFL fields are standardized. Some fields use grass, others artificial turf and who knows what other surfaces. If you include college ball, the Boise State team has gone so far as to paint the field blue.
While hockey has a standardized size for NHL rinks, the olympic rink size is different.
And OU in their wishbone days had a substantial crown so the options going to the outside were always running downhill.
Legend goes that the line judge on one side could only see the head linesman on the other side starting from the knees.
I was trying to stay relatively sane with examples, but let’s for the sake of argument assume a 7000 foot ballpark to illustrate my point better: would such a thing merely be a difference in parks or would it fundamentally change the game as to detract from it? My stance is that if a park is a few feet different, it may as well be 1000 ft. It doesn’t make the competition as equal as possible
You say a good team is going to win regardless even if there are differences, so why can’t I say that same premise, but use it to support the argument that parks should be the same then to not give bad teams any hinderances?
Alright, I didn’t know that it was so prevalent. However, I have one quibble: aren’t those adjusted stats simply arguments for statheads? They aren’t official. MLB doesn’t give out Golden Gloves, Cy Youngs, or MVPs or adjust playoff rankings based on park-specific stats. They have one official stat, whether you are playing the majority of time in a “good” park or a “bad” park. Baseball fans may argue about how a person would do in a specific era or park, but officially, MLB doesn’t take those into consideration.
Wouldn’t we simply eventually adjust all courts to the one that provides the most interesting game? I mean, that seems to be the goal of what you’re suggesting. What team would agree to make their court uninteresting and keep it that way for the duration of the arena? As far as baseball goes, I realize that park sizes and city space and budgets preclude major adjustments, but it wouldn’t be a major cost to add, for example, nets to stop all potential homeruns and allow balls to roll back into play, or dig a moat in the outfield filled with water
All sports are arbitrary though, that’s not really an argument against standarized parks. As to the why not, it’s because I don’t think it’s fair and detracts from the competition of the game
I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I feel dimensions of the playing arena is a core part of the game. It may not seem as apparent to people, but that’s only because the parks are so big.
The point is if all courts/fields are the same exact dimension you will never know if you have a problem.
Hell, eliminating yet another player on each side (to 3 on 3) after c. the first 10 minutes would be preferable to the shootout.
And while I’m still on hockey…make it so a regulation win is 3 points, OT win 2 points for the winner, 1 for the loser-but a game which eventually remains tied is just 1 point each. Note this is more or less the opposite of how it is now, where OT games are 3 points, vs. regulation which is only 2, which is as backasswards as you can get.
I think this is demonstratably true (as it also is in hockey). I watched an old 70’s Canadiens game on one of the classic channels a few years back, and the ice looked HUGE. Note that the old Boston Garden’s hockey layout was smaller than regulation, due to lack of space.
No, I don’t in fact (nor is it based on video games). Proof is that passing plays are typically going to give you more yards per play than a run will (1.9 yards more this year: 6.1 to 4.2). Even if you adjust for sacks and ints, this is still true (and the latter are at historical lows-exactly one per team per game this season, minus .5 per game drop from the 70’s). At this point someone will now rush in and declare, “You have to run to establish the passing game!”, despite the lack of evidence to support said assertion. And in fact all too often offenses will telegraph their upcoming play anyway (shotgun formation for example)-seems like they don’t care much that the defense can accurately guess whether it is a run or a pass (as the old Oakland Raiders used to say, “We don’t take what the defense gives us, we take what we want.”).
If a team just basically decided to go all-out on the passing attack (say with one token running back to receive the occasional handoff or flip, but usually screens or floaters in the flat), they’d be able to exploit matchups pretty mercilessly, forcing the opposition to play their 5th and 6th best defensive backs most of the time. Again, the fact that nobody, outside of some occasional impermanent experiments in this vein, has really dedicated themselves to doing so means nothing. Nor does the ability of some teams to win off of a good running game (and even then you’ll probably find a Pro Bowl QB running the offense, if they’re Super Bowl contenders).
RickJay’s mostly cogent objections aside, I’d still like to see a huge baseball park with distant fences-Lord that would be fun to watch.
I think the game would be similar to baseball in the dead ball era. There would be an emphasis on speed. Home runs would inside-the-park only and relatively rare. Fewer runs would be scored, and there would be more stolen bases, sacrifice bunts and hit-and-run plays. Pitchers wouldn’t have to worry about giving up homers, so they wouldn’t have to throw as hard all the time - they could save their best stuff for when runners were in scoring position. This would result in more complete games (and less use of relief pitchers in general).
Those awards are based on no statistics at all. They’re voted on. Lots of players have won awards with statistics that were superficially inferior to other players.
Statistics are what they are. They’re not FOR anyone; they’re simply facts. They come and go in interest, are redefined and mixed in different ways; for a number of years, nobody thought to record how often people were caught stealing, which one would think is a rather important thing to know. Some statistics still do not actually make any sense; a batter who reaches base as the result of an error is counted in the statistics as having made an out, even though there was no out made at all.
Again, MLB takes very few statistics into consideration for anything. The major awards are not based on statistics and, in fact, are not even handed out by MLB. The only award I can think of based on stats is the Rolaids Relief Men of the Year Awards, which nobody cares about. The odd statistical achievement is celebrated but it’s a pretty uncommon thing, when you think about it.
A moat?
Okay, you were joshing. But it doesn’t matter what you do with the fences; the parks will not play the same no matter what. Having Toronto fence dimensions in Denver will make Denver an even more preposterous home run festival than it already is; by standardizing the dimensions you would not be making them the same at all, but would instead be making them even more different in terms of how the results would go.
Your argument seems to hinge on it being unfair, but I don’t understand what’s unfair about it. Again, really extreme dimensional differences are not allowed. There ARE rules. The parks have to meet reasonable standards; you can’t have an outfield fence 260 feet from home plate, or a backstop eight feet behind the ump. I would understand an argument of unfairness if some parks were so bizarre that it changed the way the game has to be played, and presented the home team with an advantage of familiarity, but there isn’t any such park.
That’s actually a rule? It’s only a matter of time before something like this happens.
When a team wins in regulation, the winner gets two points and the loser gets nothing. If a team wins in overtime, the winner gets two points and the loser gets one. So there’s no point in scoring on yourself to force a “three-point game”.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. There could be a case where forcing a three-way tie at the end of the season works in a team’s favour when they’d lose a two-way tie. But it’s incredibly unlikely.
This is comically ignorant. Let me know if you’d like to know why.
Rugby union: stop penalising rooking.
Rugby league: bring back competitive scrums.
Just curious, what are the final numbers after accounting for sacks and INTs?
I agree that NFL coaches are pathologically averse to going against conservative conventional wisdom. But I’m not sure this is the best example: I’m no football expert, but I think there lots of examples of teams dedicated to being pass-first. There have been all kinds of Spread-Offenses, West-Coast Offenses, etc. etc.
And the current NFL is a passing league
Of course, teams that are leading in the second half tend to run the ball in order to be conservative and use up clock, which tends to skew the ratio away from the pass for successful teams.
To go to one of your specific points, I’d bet, just as a guess, that in the NFL more plays are run with one- or zero-back sets than two (and of course I can’t remember seeing a three-back set in NFL in my lifetime).
Again, it might take someone who knows more about football than me to lay out the benefits of running plays beyond the average yards per play (any takers?), but I tend to think a significant number of teams really have examined the benefits and chosen to run for good reasons. (As opposed to, say, punting in enemy territory.)
Agreed. I mean, is there anyone who would really rather watch a ball sail over the fence instead of a close play at the plate for an inside-the-park home run?
Since, unlike some other people, you did not respond with snark and condescension, you’re the one who get the courtesy of a reply.
For 2009, like I said there just about 1 INT per team game, and 2.2 sacks, for an average of -6.42 yards per sack. If I assume fumble rates are the same, and I further assume an INT costs the offensive team an average of -50 yards (that factors in the lost punt opportunity (about -35) as well as return yards on the INT
(-15: note many INTs are returned for TDs)). Factoring that all together, I get 4.6 yards/attempt, which is still higher than the run average.
All good points, and yes some teams have indeed, off and on, run offenses in the manner I described above. A lot of these teams which innovated in this way became Super Bowl winners (starting with Bill Walsh’s Niners in the '80’s). It is true that you do want to run more with the lead, so that skews the pass/run ratios. My main thesis is that you win in the NFL mainly with the pass, not with the run; I just get all irked when they decide to run the ball on 2nd and 8, gain 3 yards, and thus basically waste a down doing so. At that point I merely wondered what would happen if someone decided to go all-out with the pass, and eschewed these pointless run attempts.
Quick and dirty check of the last [del]10[/del] 11 Super Bowl winners (decided to throw in the 1999 Rams for the hell of it), ranked first by league finish in yards per run offense/defense, followed by yards per pass off/def:
[RRR how do you format a list like this? Why does this board software ignore spaces?]
[ul]
[li]Saints 7/27 2/13[/li][li]Steelers 29/2 21/1[/li][li]Giants 3/7 24/10[/li][li]Colts 17/32 2/13[/li][li]Steelers 15/1 2/3[/li][li]Pats 18/11 7/9[/li][li]Pats 30/6 15/1[/li][li]Bucs 27/8 21/1[/li][li]Pats 23/21 15/19[/li][li]Ravens 7/1 25/6[/li][li]Rams 2/6 1/5[/li][/ul]
Average finish:
Offensive yards per run: 16.2
Defensive yards per run: 11.1
Offensive yards per pass: 12.3
Defensive yards per pass: 7.3
While yes some teams primarily won with a good running game (Giants and Ravens), note that a number of Super Bowl winners had very weak running games. But it’s that last number which is the most telling. Since the defense has to be able to deal with any type of opposition offense (vs. doing their own thing), those whose pass D is weak will eventually run against an opponent in the playoffs who will light them up with the pass, usually losing in the process. The data thus shows that you have to be able to primarily shut down the pass more than the run; the first of those 3 Patroits winners were right at the mean BTW (the rank of course is the median)
If I went back and adjusted for interceptions and sacks, I’d be willing to bet the correlation between a strong passing game (and a strong defense vs. same) and winning would be even stronger. So yes, go ahead and try to win with the run-but your pass defense had better be top-notch.
Waffling already?
Basketball: Hoops raised to 11 feet.
Basketball: A field goal from half-court is worth 10 points. Just think of the exciting finishes to games you thought were in the bag. 
Baseball: If an ump sees a player leaving a base early, or missing a base, he calls him out once he gets to the next base; no more bullcrap appeal play.
Hockey: Revoke the rule that requires a minimum of three skaters. Three penalties within a minute? A five-on-two situation.
Women’s Volleyball: Bikini tops optional.
mmm
This is a really good idea.