Don’t they already have this?
Baseball:
get rid of DH
institute replay
limit batter timeouts
Football:
get rid of the extra point. instead, have a forced extra play from scrimmage at the 2 yard line just like a 2 point conversion, but only a forward passed score nets you 2 points, running it in only nets you one.
They experimented with that a few decades back. The catchers figured out how to screw with it within 5 pitches.
If you want tech in baseball, why bother playing the games at all? Just feed to stats and data on both teams into a Cray, add in environmental factors and have it spit out who wins and by how much. That way we don’t even have to bother with the season at all, and ballparks can be turned into something useful, like parking garages for all the drones.
Baseball doesn’t need to be speeded up. MTV and the speed-edit in movies/TV have ruined the game for people under 40. So fuck 'em. 
Well, Mariners games are short because the Mariners can’t hit. I’m not sure the extra 20 minutes saved is worth it when it’s 2:38 of watching your team pop out.
To answer my own question, the average NFL game is indeed about 3:10; college games are longer, for some reason I admit I don’t know. Despite lasting over 3 hours an NFL game only has about 11 minutes of people actually playing football; most of the 60 minutes of “Game time” is bled off between plays.
I don’t really understand why baseball is so heavity criticized for this, but football is not. I’d like baseball games to be a little better paced, but football games are just interminable affairs and nobody seems to mention it, perhaps because so much of the fan experience doesn’t involve watching the game; it’s telling that people around here will go to Bills games despite having little interest in watching the Bills, but lots of interest in eating ribs and drinking beer at the tailgate party.
I actually think that diving and other types of “simulation” in soccer have been significantly curtailed in recent years. At least at the top level, I’m not sure about Olympic soccer and stuff like that. But there have been real efforts to punish diving, and it has been quite effective. At least, players don’t dive now unless they are sure that it will be convincing. Especially in the penalty area - players have become noticeably more cautious about falling to the ground dramatically, for fear of being booked for simulation.
That’s definitely true as far as the UK goes - blatant diving and feigning injury is not a real problem, not tolerated in fact (as Luis Suarez is slowly learning). Diving ‘within the rules’, OTOH, is endemic but it seems the horse has bolted on that one. I’m talking about drawing contact in the penalty area, going down when you could have stayed on your feet. Often this will be a legitimate foul - it’s interesting how this is now seen as intelligent play, whereas years back things would have been different. The game’s changed massively though in terms of refereeing physical contact on the pitch.
I think that Indoor soccer has solved a lot of what I consider the major defects of soccer, namely the excessive size of the playing field and the out of bounds. Basically I like soccer when it’s more like ice hockey, continuous motion.
American pro basketball is fundamentally flawed in that the small-market teams tend to get screwed out of big-name free agents. Everyone wants to go to the warm-weather and/or big-media cities, so my Indiana Pacers, despite residing in a state with a rich basketball tradition and rabid fanbase, will never attract the likes of a LeBron James.
And college basketball is even worse, with schools like Kentucky quite deliberately recruiting high-school players that they know are gonna stay in school for only one year and then go right into the NBA. They’re basically unpaid professional athletes, and they run roughshod over the rest of the NCAA. And again, schools like Indiana, which pride themselves on high graduation rates, get the shaft.
This. I love football, but hate the fact that I’m watching a sport that takes decades off of the players’ lives, and causes them unimaginable amounts of pain.
This particular solution encourages hard fouling. If you can tweak an ankle, you get a power play? Awesome! I suppose if you punish those fouls appropriately (by also sending that person off?) then this could work.
Bumping this one since I figured out how to get a provisional answer to this question (thank you, Baseball Reference, for your export-to-CSV feature):
It would be too much of a nuisance to do this for every team, but the average length of the 142 9-inning Nats games this year was 2:57.
So I don’t think my impression that baseball games are nearly 1/2 hour longer than they used to be is totally off the mark.
True, but I’m not comparing baseball with football. They’re different sports. While it’s true that the nature of football lends itself better to longer game times than baseball, neither you nor I want baseball to be football.
A typical baseball game has a certain amount of action. Spreading that action over 2:30, the average game time 30 years ago, worked out pretty well. That pacing was a feature, not a bug. Spreading it over 2:57 starts getting a little sluggish. Spreading it over 3:30-4:00 as often happens in the World Series, based on my limited and possibly skewed sampling over recent years, is painfully slow.
Baseball
- Reduce the batting rotation to 8 players so pitchers wouldn’t have to hit, but you wouldn’t need a designated hitter.
- Change the infield fly rule so that its not an out if the ball isn’t actually caught. Instead, just stipulate that if the ball is dropped then the play is immediately dead and the batter is allowed to advance to 1st. 99% of the time it wouldn’t make a difference, but it would have prevented that dreadful call in the NL wildcard game.
- Limit regular-season games to 12 innings. If the score is still even after 12 innings, let the game end in a tie. I understand why ties are unpopular, but they would still be rare, and better than having to stay up all night for the game to end.
- Managers and coaches should only be allowed to approach the mound in the middle of an inning when changing pitchers. Also, conferences between pitchers and infielders should be limitd to no more than one per inning.
- The time limits for when pitchers are required to deliver the ball need to be enforced, even if it means implimenting a pitch clock.
(American) Football:
- Games at the college and pro-levels should be 48 minutes long with 12-minute quarters.
- Limit each team to 2 time-outs per half.
- Fair catches on punts and kickoff returns should not be allowed, or only allowed if the receiving team wants to attempt a free kick for a field goal from the spot.
- On punts, players situated behind the kicker should be considered “on side” and be able to play the ball before it is touched by a player on the receiving team. The same as with Canadian football.
- The penalty for illegal procedure or delay of game by the offense should not be a loss of yardage, but a loss of a down. And if it happens on 4th down, tough: you’ve just turned the ball over on downs.
- If the ball is turned over on a conversion attempt, the defense should have the option of getting possession of the ball where it was at the end of the play, rather than having it kicked off. That would reward a team for picking the ball up and running it 70 or 80 yards downfield.
- The play clock should be 35 seconds from the end of the prior play if the game clock has not stopped running, or 20 seconds from when the ball is whistled in play in cases where the game clock stopped at the end of the previous play.
- When the play clock stops as a result of an incomplete pass or the ball being run out of bounds, it should start when the ball is set for the next play, not when it is snapped for the next play.
Basketball:
- NCAA, NBA and FIBA should all use the same shot clock, and it should be set at 30 seconds. The 24 second shot clock doesn’t allow enough time for set plays to develop, but the 35 second NCAA shot clock is a little too long.
- The NBA should reduce the length of games to 40 minutes in line with NCAA and FIBA. That should be enought time for a basketball game at any level. (Will never happen though.)
- All all levels teams should be limited to 2 time-outs per half, and there should be no such thing as a 20 or 30 second time-out.
- The NBA and NCAA should also adopt the FIBA rule requiring all time-outs to be called from the bench.
- The NBA and NCAA should also adopt the FIBA rule regarding goal-tending.
- When the ball is being put back into play following a time out, another time out may not be called before the ball is back play.
- There should be no technical foul for calling an illegal time out. If a team tries to call a time out which isn’t allowed under the rules, then the time-out should simply not be awarded.
Hockey:
- Divide the 3rd period into 2 10-minute half-periods so that each team gets to defend both goals for an equal length of time during the game.
- Intermissions shouldn’t last more than 15 minutes.
- (Applicable to North American competition only) Widen the rink to 30 meters in accordance to intenrnational standards. (Will never happen, since that would require renovating virtually every rink in North America.)
- Go back to 5 on 5 overtime during the regular-season and eliminate shootouts. If neither team scores after 5 minutes of overtime allow the tie to stand. There sould be no distinction in the standings between games won or lost in overtime as opposed to regulation time.
- The size of goalies padds should be limited to about what they were in the 1980s.
- (NHL only) Go back to each zone being equal in width. The distance from the goal line to the back board should be 4 meters, in line with international rules.
- In the playoffs, ties should be determined by a 10 minute sudden-death overtime with each team playing 5 on 5, followed by a 7-minute sudden-death overtime with each team playing 4 on 4, followed by a 3 minute sudden-death overtime with each team playing 3 on 3, followed by an international-style shootout. I agree that a shootout is not an ideal way to end a game, but 80 minutes of play is enough.
- Fighting should result in an automatic game misconduct, and an automatic one-game suspension.
Football/soccer: Lack of video replays. Them being usable would solve so many things, for example the ability for a referee to review and punish dives.
This.
I grew up playing the game devoid of such theatrical BS and enjoyed the game much more before players started learning their craft at the actors studio. It sets a bad example to younger players.
Average MLB: 03:21
Average NFL: 03:06
That’s shorter, not “much longer”.
American Football.
Rule changes only? Allow challenges in the last two minutes of the half. There have been some bullshit calls during heated final minutes.
Overall? Less product placement, advertising, and breast cancer crap.
I’ve no idea where your figures come from, but they’re wrong. The average MLB game has never been this long.
Baseball
Well, for the last couple of days I’ve been hating the ambiguous wording on the infield fly rule. But I could just be bitter.
Oh, and the DH should be banished, and inter league play should be eliminated, and never spoken of again in public.
You forgot the stupid multi-tier playoffs. Why can’t the best record in each league win the pennant?
You are correct that the MLB figure is wrong (I did a quick google and grabbed the first one, should have checked more closely).
Since 2007 it’s been around 2:50, which is shorter than 3:06, but probably not what I would call “much” shorter.