Rule changes I'd like to see

[Intergalactic_Gladiator]

@Mean_Mr.Mustard

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.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I had a college roommate who thought that a good rule for basketball would be if a team is behind by a significant bumber of points and a player can bounce the ball of an opponent’s head and get it into the basket, it automatically ties the game.

If they were to insitute that into basketball, I might watch the game.

[YogSothoth]

@RickJay

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.

Alright, I think I will defer to your baseball knowledge. My changes are things that bug me. I still would prefer parks to be identical, but I’ll grant that stats in different parks are probably accounted for in a way that I don’t know about

@RickJay

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.

But wouldn’t it be more exciting if there was a moat? With alligators!

@Mean_Mr.Mustard

Women’s Volleyball: Bikini tops optional.

You mean mandatory

[Rysto]

@YogSosoth

You mean mandatory

Pretty sure that he meant forbidden.

[Tom_Scud]

@RickJay

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.

Denver clearly needs to play inside a pressurized dome.

[Quercus]

@John_DiFool

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.

Well, now we’re looking at 4.6 yards/pass versus 4.2 yards/run (and the 4.2 is too low: we still need to remove sacks from the rushing average). So it’s really not that far off from a game-theory optimum at this point. If you account for the the number of rushes that are in short yardage where the team is only trying to gain one or two yards, then it may well be that teams are pretty darn close to having equal expected values for rushes and passes.
I mean, good work digging up stats and adjusting them intelligently, but the result doesn’t seem to me to be very strong evidence that NFL teams as a whole run too much. It rather seems to show that NFL teams are about the right balance, overall.

[John_DiFool]

Sacks are included in pass yardage in the NFL-run yardage in the colleges tho.

Well averages are one thing, individual team stats are another. Last year yards/pass ranged from 8.0 (Chargers) all the way down to 4.4 (Browns), while run averages were a bit closer (5.2-Titans, Chargers again oddly enough, at 3.3). All I’m trying to say is that the passing game can give you more of an edge, if you do it right (on both sides of the ball), than focusing on the run game will, but that doesn’t preclude someone like the Titans from suceeding their way. No, we won’t see an NFL team throw almost all the time (when they aren’t leading towards the end of the game of course), just like we won’t see baseball parks with 600 foot fences, but I’d love to see someone try both.

[etv78]

Make replay a penalty situation. It’s a “delay of game”, 5yds depending on result. (foward if “D” is wrong, backward if “O” is wrong) no 2 minute warning rule.