I agree with this one, too. The neutal zone should be like the one in Star Trek: nobody is allowed to go into it, ever. 
I think it should also be allowed for DL players to try to draw the OL guys offsides. If you can’t pay attention to the snap count, then you suck and should be cut.
Yes, but then I’ll be enjoying the tropical breezes of Lake Ontario, and won’t care one whit.
Oh no, it would simply make it a much more interesting process. Plus, the match highlights would be hilarious. (I mean, come on, the average footballer is not known for his mental prowess. “David, there’s a slight chance you could die on the field today, but we’re paying you £50,000 a week.” “Duh…okay.”)
No, you can’t be offsides in your own half of the field (ice), so no problem with Havlat outskating the defenders as long as Redden has half-a-brain. If you really want, extend the can’t-be-offsides area to the blue line and you’ll pretty much have the existing rule without the annoying blue-line convention slowing down the game because the puck went a foot over the line.
Matt Stairs, Tim Salmon, Frank Thomas, Carl “I Don’t Believe in No Dinosaurs” Everett. And those are just the current ones (and I didn’t include Giambi.) If you go back a few years, there’s Cecil Fielder, Eddie Murray, Harold Baines, Jose Canseco and David Justice, all of whom were at least in their mid-30s and in the twilight of their careers.
Are there a few guys who are young full-time DHs? Sure.
Football: Whoever scores the TD kicks the PAT. Wouldn’t you watch the PAT much more intently if Moss or Sapp were kicking it than Seabass?
I would keep the kicking games, but I’d make a rule that says that the kicker must be someone that was on the field for the previous play.
Pete Rose '84-'86. I believe there was a little publicity about his managing and betting.
I think the teams that you’re ranked against in the standings should be the teams you play. I don’t like the divisions we have in American sports either. They’re just artificial ways to make more teams seem competitive.
I’d like to see promotion/relegation.
I’d like to see salary caps get dumped.
Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with calling it “soccer”.
Interesting bit of trivia: two of the last three player-managers in baseball are still managing this season.
Joe Torre (currently Yankees, player-manager for the Mets) and Frank Robinson (currently: Nationals, player-manager for the Indians) were the last two before Rose
I think there are major issues with interleague play: only a handful of matchups are interesting to the fans (Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox and one or two others) and it leads to imbalances. I’d prefer they go back to where the teams meet only in the World Series.
It also would be interesting to go back to limited interleague trading. There used to be specific periods where you could trade a player across leagues (the winter was something like the end of the World Series to December, and there was another in the spring).
Don Kessinger was a player-manager for the White Sox between Torre and Rose.
I think this is brilliant.
I’m not sure this is workable with close plays at the plate. If the catcher has to wait until he has the ball to set up, there are going to be a lot fewer putouts at home. As it is, a lot of these plays come down to the runner racing the throw to the plate; if the throw is in time, the catcher has to catch it, tag the runner, and protect the ball. This rule would make a very difficult defensive play all but impossible.
On the other hand, I think catchers who block the plate without the ball and then whine about being run over should be forced to wear the uniforms from A League of Their Own. Stuffing the jersey is optional.
The rule I’d like to see (it was first broached by my dad a few years ago) is applicable to most sports, but it would be especially effective in (American) football and hockey. If a player commits an unsportsmanlike act (a late hit or horse collar tackle, for example) and injures another player, the player who committed the foul is not allowed to return to the field until the injured player does. If the injured guy is out ten minutes, fine; if he’s out for a month, the guilty player sits out that month. This rule would require some kind of league standards to determine when a player is medically eligible to return, but I think it would cut down unnecessary injuries.
I think Dr. Z from Sports Illustrated wants this rule as well, but I don’t think it’s a good rule. I don’t think the severity of the injury should have much impact at all, if any, on a suspension.
For his sucker punch, Todd Bertuzzi deserved to be suspended for a long time. If somebody tomorrow sucker punches a guy in the same way, but the guy happens to not be injured by it, the suspension should still be the same.
But… why? Complete games and no-hitters don’t really matter. And anyway, CGs and no-hitters are overwhelmingly performed by the winning team, who has to face the losing team nine times anyway.
Partially. I mean, for a Giants fan, the only thing more boring than playing the Brewers, say, would be playing the Indians. Who cares? Plus, I like the idea of the two leagues being these seperate rivals, facing each other only in the ultimate contest of the game. A Bay Bridge Series wouldn’t be as neat if we’d already played the A’s twice that year.
As I understand it, if they don’t have the ball, they can’t block or hinder the runner in any way. They must have the ball upon contact with the runner, else the runner is safe.
Here’s one for American football: Have the Superbowl in one of the cities who are in the friggin Superbowl! Why the hell should Green Bay enjoy a Superbowl when both teams in it are from a different time zone?!
Well, duh. You can’t very well tag the guy out if you don’t have the ball. 
Green Bay won’t host a Super Bowl until a) they build a domed stadium (not bloody likely) or b) the NFL changes their rules about cold-weather cities hosting Super Bowls. There was a push to make this change after 9/11 so New York could host one, and Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City was tentatively awarded one, but I think that award was contingent upon having a new stadium with a retractable roof. KC recently withdrew that bid after some stadium financing fell through.
More’s the pity. To me, football is a cold weather sport, and the Super Bowl should be no exception.
I actually like the neutral site Super Bowl. Homefield can be a big advantage in football, and there’s no way to allocate it fairly to one of the two teams playing in the championship.
The NFL’s unofficial-official rule on Super Bowl locations seems to be:
Which means conference championships get played in blizzards, but the super bowl is played in “ideal” conditions.
A less radical, but effective, solution would be to say that the third (I’d rather go to three than two) pickoff attempt is a ball. It would make the tradeoff a reasonably interesting one. Giving the batter a free ball is a significant advantage, but in some cases a daring pitcher might try to fool someone. I’d support that rule.
In hockey, I’d have some pretty radical ideas:
All players wear CSA or UL approved face masks, without any exception. We just eliminated all eye and facial injuries. That was easy, huh?
Contact between your stick and another player’s head or face, assuming that player is on his feet and standing upright, is an automatic minor irrespective of intent. A second such act by the same player is a major penalty and game misconduct. No exceptions, ever.
More than six minutes of penalties in a game is an automatic game misconduct.
I remembered another one of my NFL peeves…any player who gets (2) 15 yard penalties in one game(unsportsmanlike conduct, personal foul blocks, face masks, late hits) is suspended for the rest of the game. In the NBA, two flagrant fouls, or two technical fouls gets you an early shower…but in the NFL you can thug it up all game if you want to give up the yardage.