I’m not clear why there is a gaping hole in my logic. Teams trap in the final two minutes of regulation so they don’t end up with zero points. If they ended up with zero points after losing in overtime, then the trapping would continue through overtime, would it not?
The loser point wouldn’t change that at all, you’re right. What I’m saying is that if they eliminated the shootout (which is what they would HAVE to do in my opinion), then the teams with limited offensive weapons that clog the neutral zone playing for an opponents mistake (trap) would continue this style of play as long as it took thus making a percentage of the games unbearable long for both fans and broadcasters.
A tie is like kissing your sister, yes, but shutting things down after regulation just seems like the most fair option. I grant you that for certain matchups the final two minutes might slow down like it does now but when you get closer to the playoffs, things might get a little more hectic anytime you are playing a team ahead of you in the standings and you need to make up ground. To steal a line about government: It’s the worst system - except for all the rest of them.
Just before I hit send, it occurred to me that the real solution might be to cut about half a dozen teams thus increasing the overall talent in the league. [it really recurred to me, as it’s something I’ve long thought, I just remembered it now]
No idea, I stopped watching/listening to games all the way through when it seemed like it took three hours even for the boring games. Has the pace picked up in the past decade or so?
Well, yeah: there is, quite simply, a lot more action in football. I’m not comparing baseball with football, because they’re very much apples and oranges. But I think it’s appropriate to compare baseball with itself between eras.
Actually, no. I want the Yankees around to hate. But I don’t want them to have such an advantage with respect to money that they can almost automatically be in contention every year.
The place where a casual watcher of soccer usually goes wrong, is in assuming that a hardcore soccer fan would think that making the game more *fun *would somehow *improve *it. It’s like suggesting to a cinephile that a Bergman movie would be better if it had more jokes in it.
I agree with many of the complaints about Football but I think rather than tweak any of the existing rules we simply enforce what we already have with the big change that no-one…no-one is allowed to question or harass the ref. Instant red!
He has absolute protection. His word is final and any approach must be from the captain and be respectful.
That in itself will leave the ref free to enforce existing rules for diving, pushing at corners, time wasting etc. without the fear that every single debatable decision gets reduced to an encircling shouting match.
The game is one big debatable decision after another, deal with it…grow up or fucking go home.
Oh, and do something about the scrum rules, preferable before Brian Moore has a stroke.
Soccer: the penalty kick is too harsh a punishment in most cases. In a low-scoring sport, too many games are affected or even decided by goals from penalties when the fouled player was not especially likely to score or create a goal. The level of punishment is not granular enough. I would prefer either having categories of penalty from regular free kick up to the traditional penalty kick, or simply awarding regular free kicks unless the referee considers that a “clear goal-scoring opportunity” has been denied (referees are already used to ruling on that issue, in the case of so-called professional fouls).
That’s because there is 1/10th the number of football games and as a result the games have become events over the years. There is nothing special about a single baseball game, but a football game is a big deal. Also, with no clock in baseball the game is interminably long. At least with football you know when you’re getting close to the end if that matters to you.
I can see a rationale for both more granularity and less but I’d refer you back to my previous point about the inviolability of the ref. Given more granulation to argue over we will probably not move the game on. However, if we can get to a position of agreeing that the ref has absolute, unquestioned power then I think your idea would be worth considering.
Baseball. I don’t think I like anyone’s suggestions so far except for the person who jokingly commented that the NL should implement the DH. Pitchers hitting is just stupid at this point.
Another one I’m mildly surprised I haven’t seen (maybe I missed it) is using more replay. My least favorite thing about *every *sport is poor officiating, especially the attention hog umpires of MLB. I’m not talking about replay for balls/strikes (although I do think they should use cameras/lasers/robots whatever for that), I just mean on fair/foul, out/safe or homeruns. I’d do something like the NFL, give each manager 1 challenge per game.
Every interleague contest is one less game you play against teams that matter in your division race or wildcard race. League-only play means more chances to gain ground (or lose it) whole games at a time, rather than half games. I want my Cubs playing the Cards and Reds and such as much as possible, not the Royals or Tigers.
A few years ago, Bill James proposed that pitchers should only be able to throw to first base once an inning without picking someone off. Every subsequent unsuccessful throw to the bases would count as a ball. That oughta speed things up. It would make the game substantially more athletic, too.
And, yes, the designated hitter should be prohibited, it’s memory erased from our collective consciousness as thoroughly as the Patriot League.
MLB games have averaged between 2:50 and 3:00 for pretty much the last 15-20 years (and actually in the lower end of that range for the last few). The big problem is, as you note, the pacing: that extra 25 minutes or so vs. the 70s is almost entirely some combination of longer commercial breaks, more pitching changes, longer average time between pitches, and a lot of other stuff that murders the pacing of the game.
Of course, the other big problem is that I’m a Red Sox fan, and the two teams that play the longest games are the Sox and the Yankees (each at a robust 3:05 in 2010, and they’ve been the two slowest in most years out of the past decade). Tampa is fourth longest at 2:58, and the combination of those three teams makes for some excruciatingly long games.
There doesn’t seem to be as much data out there on NFL game lengths, or at least it’s not as well organized - thank you, data-driven baseball internet community! - but the best numbers I can find in roughly two minutes of Google searching are 3:06-3:07. Those also include an ungodly number of TV breaks, of course… but the average Patriots game is shorter than the average Sox-Yanks matchup by a decent bit. YMMV if you’re a fan of the Mariners (2:38 per game in 2010!) or another less torturous team to watch.
Soccer: Cut down on fake injuries…any player off of their feet for greater than, say, 10 seconds has to leave the field for 5 minutes of play without substitution. Give them a count like boxing to get on their feet.
Baseball: A hit/pitch clock. Violations are an automatic ball/strike depending on the offender.
Reduce the number of games drastically, it is ridiculous that the season is so padded that win/loss of even 5 games in a row doesn’t matter, all tension and drama is lost.
Add a computer-generated strike zone overlay for TV and replay viewership, like the NFL does with the down line. Show the world how ridiculously subjective the umpires calls are. Even better, technology exists to create goggles for the umpires with a heads-up-display of the same strike zone, or to take them out of the game completely with a computer-evaluated strike zone.
Basketball: Stop artificially normalizing scores in the 100-120 point range and un-neuter the defensive play. Defense is exciting, watching players effortlessly dunk and draw fouls for getting breathed on is not. Also, enforce travelling.
Tennis: Standardize the racquet and string technology to around 1980s level. The serve and volley game has all but disappeared.