I disagree. I believe the position of Pitcher is becoming less of an all-around good-at-everything position and more of a specialty position than it was, say, a century ago.
Primarily because of the Designated Hitter rule. In a designated-hitter league, the pitcher doesn’t even have to know how to: swing a bat, slide into base, steal bases, interfere with a potential double-play on his way into second, or any of the other things offensive players in the batting rotation are expected to do. (And, of course, the designated hitter who takes the pitcher’s place in the batting order doesn’t have to know how to catch fly balls, relay the ball to first, etc…)
Yeah, I suppose you are right, tracer. I was thinking of recent pitchers who are also pretty good power hitters such as Mike Hampton and to an extent Jarrod Washburn. But I don’t think they are that common, and the focus of signing a pitcher is still his ERA, not his batting average. There have been great hitting pitchers in the past (Fernando Valenzuela in my lifetime) but they didn’t really change the way people looked at the position, like Ripken, A-Rod, Jeter, and Nomah have for shortstop.
And, lest we forget, Babe Ruth was a damn good pitcher himself. (Of course, he pitched in the Golden Age of Pitching, when the pitcher was allowed to scuff up the ball, spit on it, make gouge marks in it, etc…)
Oh, and regarding the OP:
You’re right, the clock does stop in football an awful lot. And that’s part of what makes the game play-out in the manner it does. In fact, the game clock is more of a nuisance than a timing device. I propose that we get rid of the game clock entirely. Instead of having 15 minutes per quarter, why not have 20 or 25 plays per quarter? That way, a teams 3 precious time-outs will not have to be reserved for use as as clock management tools within the 2-minute warning (which would become something like the 6-play warning).
I dunno…I like the game clock and the need clock management in football. I think it lends a bit of urgency/strategy to the game. Think of the great plays that have been manufactured in the face of the ticking clock…like Elway’s across the field drive with less than a minute less. Good suspense.
The problem with having a set amount of plays per quarter would be that you would see more West Coast offense type stuff and small run plays. That way they would manufacture small-yardage gains in order to use up the amount of plays left and deny them to the other team. The big run play or the long fly route would be far rarer, and then the excitement of the Vikings’ (past) offenses and the Rams’ current offense becomes less useful.
As opposed to what teams do under the current timing rules, where they do small run plays and let the play clock wind down almost to 0, in an attempt to burn up time on the game clock? :rolleyes:
I always thought the purpose of the two-minute warning time-out was to act as a sort of time-buffer (my term) that would minimize or negate the generous/stingy/sloppy timekeeping errors of the previous 28 minutes. This way no one can bitch, “If we had those two seconds we were entitled to in the first quarter, we’d have had enough time to kick that field goal just before the half.” The 2MWTO “absorbs” all those plus-one-second here, and minus-three-seconds there nitpicks.
tracer, while yours is an interesting idea, it would never work with the sport as we know it. I’m assuming that you are stipulating the four down, ten yards for a first down system we use today.
You theoretically have four plays per ten yards. On a typical drive, let’s say a team starts at the 20 (a touchback). Let’s futher say that a team has the lead at the start of the second half and is receiving the ball. They have eighty yards to go, and there are 24 plays left on the “clock”. In those eighty yards, they could use as many as thirty plays! (80/10 x 4 = 32- rounding down for garbage yards) So team 2 could theoretically be completely denied the opportunity to play offense in the second half!
Maybe you just need to adjust the number of plays- it seems like typically, a single team will run 50-75 plays per game, with a total of 100 - 150 for both teams. As an example, take two average teams NO/CAR, week 11 of the 2000 season. By my admittedly rudimentary calculations, I get 113 plays, and this doens’t include special teams play.
Do you mean teams get 25 plays each per half? I don’t even want to get into this.
If you mean that each half means a certain number of plays (by either team) with a more reasonable total than 25, then I can sort of see your point, and it might make for a very interesting thought experiment. It’s fundamentally very similar to playing against the clock, but I think you would have to have a clock anyway, to assign some sort of standard to the time between plays.
Yes, you would definitely still have to keep the play clock in the game, just like you do today, to keep the teams from dragging their feet.
I chose 25 plays per quarter (not per half) as that seemed to be about the number of plays that actually occur in, say, the 1st or 3rd quarter of a typical modern timed NFL game. And, yes, by advancing the ball 80 yards with up to 4 downs allowed for every 10 yards, it is possible for one team on one drive to chew up all 25 of the allotted plays in one quarter – but such a team could do the same thing in a timed football game. Figure up to 40 seconds between plays for the play clock to wind down, then 5 seconds making the play, and assume that each play ends with the ball carrier tackled in-bounds so the game clock doesn’t stop and neither side electing to use any of their time-outs. In 32 such plays, the game clock could advance by up to 32 x 45 sec. = 24 minutes. That’s enough to go from the opening kickoff to inside the two-minute warning at the end of the first half.
My woosh on your plays per quarter being 25- it seems we arrived at about the same conclusions about plays per game, mine being largely redundant. Let’s just say I was, er, checking your work.
Still, as you’ve pointed out, there seems to be very little difference in strategy one way or the other, and I don’t see how keeping “time” by plays (amalagous to baseball’s outs and innings) would in any way improve the drama or gameplay of the contest. The only difference, I guess, is if a team knew it had five plays, it could have a more structured plan as to how to get to the endzone. But that to me would be a loss- I like the frenzy of the two minute drill.
I like the purity of your idea, but maybe I’m missing how it would change the game in any significant way- especially if you maintain the play clock. Please, enlighten me, if you will.
I may be one of the few people who feels this way, but I think it’s kind of neat that one league has the designated hitter and the other league doesn’t. It’s interesting to see when an NL pitcher moves over to the AL and a) Has to pick up a bat for the first time in ages, and b) Will now have to personally face the consequences if he deals out a little too much chin music to the opposing batters. It’s interesting to see how the teams in the World Series adapt to the changes from game to game.
I think Bob Costas is a really smart guy, but I’ll never be able to get on board his crusade to destroy the designated hitter.
If i may be permitted to offer a criticism, i would say that the issue of whether we run a clock or set a particular number of plays in football does not address my original complaint. My main concern was to make football somewhat more interesting by speeding the whole process up. It seems to me that there is no reason why this couldn’t be done by, for example, reducing the amount of time allowed between each play. Huddles would have to be shorter, thus forcing a greater degree of spontaneity on the attacking team in particular.
Another thing that amazes me about NFL is the involvement of the coaching staff during the game, to the extent of actually dictating what pattern to run or what play to make on a particular occasion. These players are professional sportsmen, for Christ’s sake. In every other football code that i’ve ever watched, coaches/managers set out the general tactics, give advice to players waiting to come into the game, and send out instructions regarding changes in positional play etc. But the decisions of how to act on a particular occasion, of whether to take a penalty goal or go for a “try” (the term for a touch-down in rugby), and other minute-to-minute problems, are determined by the player themselves, usually by the captain of the team. And he is not constantly looking to the sideline for advice on what to do. Of course, it is the somewhat sporadic nature of NFL that allows this system to flourish, and in my opinion makes the whole thing seem more like a military exercise than a sport at times.
Now, i realise that those of you who grew up in the US and have watched football all your lives probably think i should just get over it and accept that football is by its very nature a stop-start affair. And you probably like the development of tactics by the coaching staff. Well, fair enough, but i started this thread and i’m going to keep bombarding people with dumb questions and radical proposals.
And one last observation in response to Snooooopy’s defence of the DH. Doesn’t it make a game unfair when one team has 8 batter/fielders and one specialist batter in its batting line-up, and the other team has eight batter/fielders and one fairly crappy batter (i.e. the pitcher) in its line-up? Not only does the pitcher have to bat, thus probably bringing down his team’s average batting ability, but the very fact that he has to bat could also compromise the concentration required to pitch. It seems to me that if you extended the logic to football, it would be just about as fair to have the NFC play under current rules, but make AFC teams use their kicker as part of their offensive line-up. Having two teams play each other in a single game where different rules apply to each team seems fundamentally inequitable here.
Or am i missing something about inter-league play that alleviates this unfairness? Remember, i’m still not an expert on all the intricacies of baseball and football rules in this country.
It is not only American sports that i’m critical of. All sports have dumb rules. Rugby rules change quite frequently, especially at the level of international competition. When, as often happens, the new rules are stupid, i’m as critical of them as anyone.
But i’m in the US now, so it’s time to complain about the sports that i watch over here. I appreciate the good humour and forebearance of my American fellow-dopers in answering my questions and replying to my criticisms.
Well, realize that it’s similar to this in other American sports. In baseball, the first base coach will give advice on when to steal. The third base coach will wave a runner home or not. The manager might signal for a hit and run, or a bunt, or some other such thing. In basketball, the coaches will call for certain plays to be run on a given possession. Realize also that if the quarterback doesn’t like the play called, they can do what’s called an “audible,” which means they change the play at the line of scrimmage.
But in general, I don’t disagree with you here; it might be nice to see some of the players have to make their own play calls more often. Of course, you still need to make A play call, because much of what is involved is timing, and if the receiver breaks left when the quarterback thinks he’s going to break right, you have an incompletion at best or an interception at worst…
Ah, you are missing something. You see, the way this is dealt with in interleague play (and in the World Series) is that in NL ballparks, pitchers bat for BOTH teams, and in AL ballparks, both teams get a DH. Actually, part of the fun of interleague play for me is watching AL pitchers flail helplessly as they try to bat for the first time in years.
The NFL has not always allowed unlimited substitution. According to The Official NFL 1993 Record and Fact Book the rule was adopted in 1943, the same year helmets became mandatory. IIRC before then each side could substitute no more than three players between plays.
As for play-calling by the coach, this also happens a lot in basketball.
Future Hall of Famer point guard John Stockton always look to the bench to get the play.
You may be searching for a solution to a problem that nobody else thinks exist. Personally I don’t think football needs to be any quicker then it already is.
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I think by removing the coach from calling plays you’ll eliminate a part of football that a lot of people love. Part of the sport is the coach coming up with a “battle plan” to use against whatever team he is playing next week. Another thing to remember is that the players aren’t necessarily good at making calls. Troy Aikman for example, an excellent quarterback, was not the kind of quarterback who can change plays based on what he sees the defense doing.
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Well it does sound like you’re trying to change football into a sport more like the ones from back home.
mhendo, sorry for the hijack earlier, I got caught up in tracer’s interesting proposal. You said:
Have you ever seen american football plays written out? It’s worth seeing. For an example, check here (scroll down). These are for some short pass plays. In the NFL, precision (especially on pass plays, but really everywhere) is so important that a yard or two out of position means a busted play. So as a player, you want to know vaguely where everyone will be, but you need to nail your position perfectly.
There are some players with an amazing facility for plays- many quarterbacks fall into this category. But there are a dizzying variety of plays and an equally confounding array of defensive sets, so many players focus to a much greater extent on their duties during a given play.
Many times, QB’s will be given a few choices to pick from at the line after viewing the defensive set and/or any shifts. But that’s about as involved as players can get, with only a few seconds to decide and a whole bunch of guys to coordinate. Better to concentrate on executing, and leave strategy in the hands of the big-picture guys.
Again, though, it’s a matter of taste. I think it’s intriguing that coaching can have such a huge impact on the game. It might be interesting if players called more of their own plays, but I think you would find that sort of team to be at a distinct disadvantage. Heck, most plays are called in from the coordinators in the box- you can just get a better idea of what’s going on from up there than on the field or sideline. This is what makes football so different from other sports- almost like a chess game with human pieces- and is one of the things I like most about it.
nuerotik don’t judge Jarrod Washburn’s hitting ability on the 3 for 3 game he had last year in Denver. It’s not exactly a great sample. He’s 4 for 9 in his career and he plays in the AL. Take away that one game and you’ve got a .167 hitter.
Livan Hernandez and Woody Williams, now those are some good hitting pitchers.
As for play calling in football, coaches weren’t allowed to call plays from the sidelines until the late 1940s or early 1950s. When teams called timeouts, the players stayed on the field and water boys would come out. The coaches drew up the plays and told the quarterbacks what to do, but the players made the calls.
I’m not sure but I believe Paul Brown of Cleveland came up with the idea of sending in plays to the QB by using a substitute player. Of course, you needed unlimited substitution to make this viable.
In Sunday’s (10/14) game between Baltimore and Denver, the Broncos ran 65 plays and Baltimore 58. This doesn’t count kicking plays and plays nullified by penalties.
In a college game, there are more. Last Saturday (10/13) UCLA ran 64 plays and Washington ran 74 plays.
The clock stops more frequently in the college game than in the pro game.
Also note that interleague play is quite new; it only started as part of the regular season in the mid-Nineties. (The World Series and the All-Star Game notwithstanding.) Baseball purists don’t like it – because of the DH, AL and NL baseball are very different games (different strike zones, different demands on the pitcher, more or less slugging). The AL is a sloppy power game; the NL game is more like chess. (I actually like both types, but they’re different.) It also contributed to the Series being the most important goal, not the Pennant. (And anybody who refers to the Pennant championship games as the NLCS or ALCS gets a smack upside the head from me.)
I guess my line of thinking on this is that in your proposal if the opposing team ran the play count down so that there were only 4 plays left for the other team, then that’s that. They get 4 plays.
In the current situation, if the team runs down the clock so that there is, say 30 seconds left when the other team gets the ball, then there are things they can do to make that time last a little longer through proper clock management, like getting out of bounds after each reception and stuff. Your proposition doesn’t allow that.
BobT, no, I don’t really think that Washburn is a great hitter, he hasn’t had enough at-bats to judge either way. To be honest, that 3-3 game was what was in my head when I put him down because a friend and I were arguing about something that involved this somehow a bit earlier. I put him down because I was tired, couldn’t think of anyone else off the top of my head, was too tired to go look it up, and didn’t want illustrate my point with just Hampton. But you are right, Hernandez and Williams are indeed excellent hitting pitchers.
How much money does Lomu make? Every time I’ve seen this guy play, I keep thinking how I’d love to see him play fullback or tight end in the NFL. The guy is a beast.
NFL fans … think of a quicker, nimbler Christian Okoye or Jerome Bettis.
