You can see what type of shot is being hit - the amount and type of spin. Where the sound helps is in determining how well the shot was hit. Something off-center sounds different and clues you in to the fact that the ball might drop short.
You realize football has an offside rule too?
If you got rid of offside in football, you would have a game where all the eligible recievers stood in the end zone waiting for the ball to come to them.
If you got rid of offside in hockey, you would have a game where the forwards would stand around the goal waiting for the puck to be passed up to them.
If you got rid of offside in soccer, you would have a game where the forwards would stand around the goal waiting for the ball to be booted up to them.
There is a reason all these sports have an offside rule.
I’d go for anything that would hasten the end of a basketball game. Last night’s WVU-Kentucky game took over 40 minutes to play the last 3:30. I’d be happier if they just set the clock at ten minutes at the beginning and played the whole damn thing like they do the last few now.
Yes, indeed. Football refs can allow advantage, of course, but they have to decide at once, and can’t then whistle if advantage goes begging. The Rugby advantage law goes back to at least my schooldays, the 1970s.
And there are a lot less of them, specifically because of the tight quarters.
Spectators, especially the most annoying ones, are closer than at many golf courses at the college level of golf. Shooting free throws is tough, but nobody gets quiet when the visiting point guard goes to the line.
Yes, if you are accustomed to the rugby codes, arguing with the officials in other sports can be quite irritating. e.g. the personal abuse of tennis umpires (if they still do that), and the rushing at and surrounding of soccer refs, the offenders should be frog marched off immediately.
I do like what the rare 6th OT would look like…the goalies firing shots back and forth at each other from either end of the ice, hoping for a miracle. 
MLB should have a NBA-style soft salary cap.
This rule has been trialled in the premiership relatively recently, 01 - 05, and was found to be unsuccessful. No idea why, and I don’t recall seeing too many examples of it, but it has been given a run out.
American sports would benefit from the concept of relegation, (although it would be hard to implement.)
For pro sports, it’s not easy: Baseball has something like that, but on an individual rather than team level (players move up and down leagues within the same farm-team system), and the NBA is trying to move in that direction. I think American football is too expensive and intensive to have viable lower leagues that have a prayer of being competitive.
But relegation/promotion would be especially good for college sports (and most especially football). That way, the best teams are always automatically in the same top-tier conference and play the other best teams. The small-program academic schools get to play each other in a competitive game, rather than spending their Saturdays being pasted by a Florida State. Best of all, a school that thinks it’s better than its reputation gets to prove it, and move up if it is.
Never happen, given the amount of money in the system the way it is, and how your average Miami (Florida) alumni feels better about having the Miami football team beat an outclassed small teacher’s college by three touchdowns than they would about a thrilling one-point loss to the eventual national champion.
I must admit I don’t know the hockey offside rule, but I don’t think this proposal would work at all. It seems to me this would result in a “kick and rush” long-ball game, taking a lot of variety away. Why do you think football (soccer) needs this rule?
Agreed. The current advantage rule in football makes very little sense to me, as very often no advantage results and the offending team gets away with a foul.
One of my friends suggested at the time that it was because rugby is predominantly a territorial game, and it can take 5 minutes of sustained, error-free pressure to gain 10 yards on the pitch. In football, territory counts for much less, because you can gain 80 yards on the pitch in a single kick. So moving a free-kick 10 yards forwards only really works as a threat in a fairly small area of pitch, namely the central third of the field about 30-40 yards from goal. Anywhere else on the pitch, a difference on 10 yards makes very little difference and so is no deterrent. I think the consistent use of bookings for dissent that we have now is much more effective, though it could no doubt be more strictly enforced.
Soccer could use some more serious rules, or at least enforcement of them, against faking injuries. That’s one of the most unattractive parts, at least to an American eye: All a guy has to do is get breathed on, and he drops to the field, writhing in agony. If there’s no call, he just hops right back up. How about at least a free kick as a penalty for wasting the refs’ time?
That was Tommy LaSorda’s classic rant. “Mark McGwire can hit a 99 mile an hour Nolan Ryan fastball while 50,000 people are screaming and stomping, but a golfer can’t hit a ball that’s just lying there because one guy coughed?”
Soccer should adopt the rule they have in dog fighting whereby it’s banned in the United States.
I’d like to see some version of the McIntyre Final Eight be applied to other sports, but I realize there may be some confusion with the “highest-ranked loser advances” philosophy.
Agreed. Speaking as primarily a baseball fan, intentional fouling and clock management (stalling) are infuriating, and guarantee I could never love basketball the way I do baseball. I can’t imagine that that’s what whoever came up with fouling penalties had in mind.
As for delays in baseball, there is a 12-second rule (8.04), which is unfortunately never enforced.
Then how about a one stepout per AB rule? It would be harder for the umps to blow off.
But yeah, stand in there and take yer cuts like a man, dammit.
MLB needs the NFL’s salary cap. The disparity between what large and small market teams can spend violates the cardinal rule of sports, a fair playing field.