From across the field, or even just glancing quickly, it could be hard to tell if a player is an on-field player standing by the sideline or someone warming up on the side. There’s also situations like goal celebrations that occasionally mix field and bench players. Best to remove any doubt from those situations.
Someone already on the field (usually a defender) will be designated as goalie.
Here’s a good summary of cautionable offences; there’s nothing specific about handballs in there, but a handball violation in certain situations could be interpreted as unsporting behavior (something like very deliberately handling the ball) or persistent infringement (you’ve deliberately handled the ball and committed a bunch of other fouls lately). If you look down at sending-off offences, you’ll see that deliberately handling the ball to deny the opposition a goal-scoring opportunity should be a straight red card.
Consider it a compliment in a soccer thread that I figured you to be English.
I spent middle and high school living in University City and had a couple friends who were the children of UCSD professors. Can’t think of any last names or I’d pick your memories. I actually grew up in Maryland, though, and am near Mission Valley now.
Very cool to find another San Diego soccer geek, although one who’s obviously more well-versed than I. Did you follow the Sockers/Flash (ha!)/Spirit/whatever else?
While I’m sure I’d be just as happy to be Henry in that situation for the same reasons, I’ve heard from a Spanish friend that Aragones was trying to light a fire under his own player’s ass at the time and isn’t actually a racist. But who knows what’s actually going on under the guy’s skull? He apparently hasn’t apologized privately, either, which is a little funky to say the least.
There has been a good deal of speculation, not necessarily idle. Not only does Klinsmann live in LA (County, I guess), but he is intimately familiar with MLS and the national team–he’s something of an unofficial advisor to both US Soccer and MLS and seems to be on a first-name basis with the big wigs at both outfits. He also speaks impeccable English and has an American wife and an American kid. It’s not near impossible; he was asked at a recent press conference what he thought about the possibility of becoming the US national team coach, and he laughed it off and said he wasn’t interested at all–but it seems to me what he was really saying was “Ask me again after we’ve either won or lost this thing and Arena’s out”. The home team’s coach would never actually say “Yeah, I might send in my resume”* while his nation is getting ready to play a quarterfinal game, of course. I think it’s very much in the realm of possibility.
Another man I’d like to see at the helm of this operation is Guus Hiddink; he has a recent history of making soccer nations out of thin air, and if there’s anyplace in the world that needs that it’s this place right here. Russia did the smart move and locked him up for four years already, though. Too bad.
In the heat of the moment, yes. Keep in mind that there are 20 men running around on that field and at a quick glance each half of the group looks pretty much the same within itself. The vests are brightly colored and easy to distinguish from the jerseys; that way a ref (and there’s only one “head” referee, BTW) doesn’t have to distract himself from the play to count heads every thirty seconds.
It was noted in another thread that this happened once, and the goalie could stand on his feet although he couldn’t actively move to make a save; they left him in because at least they’d have a body in front of the net. When a penalty kick was called against that team, they conferred with the referee, who let one of the defenders swap jerseys and gloves with the goalie for the penalty kick; the defender saved the kick and then they switched jerseys and gloves back.
Any player can be a goalie if they’re wearing gloves and a distinctive jersey. If the goalie gets hurt and there are no subs, one of the defenders can take his place.
Basically, an intentional handball is a yellow card according to the FIFA rulebook. If a player reached out to intentionall handle the ball, they should expect a yellow. A handball to stop an obvious scoring opportunity in the penalty area is sometimes given a red card straight out.
Yeah, that would be a perfect way to get back at them. They’re all over him now that the team’s in the quarterfinals, but I understand German fans as a whole were very down on him. What a way to treat your nation’s heroes, huh?
I’m not advocating a change, but rather I’d like to just ask a question I’m curious about after having watched the pointless first 120 minutes of the England-Portugal game. Why are there limited substitutions?
Now, I’ll grant you right up front that the extra time at the end of regulation featured fantastic action, although the 85th through 90th minutes kinda sucked; it looked like everyone was saving up energy for extra time. (With good effect, as I said.)
But then both overtimes looked sluggish. I know I’m missing something; don’t kill me for this. But if there were, say, 25 guys on a team and substitutions were unlimited, wouldn’t the action on the field be much higher intensity throughout the game? One major point I hear a lot is about how soccer (and rugby) have constant action without all the artificial stoppages like in gridiron football. Personally, I think that’s a disingenuous position, as I clearly see teams dogging it to rest while still being counted as “action” because it’s on the clock.
It’s true that the last minute of overtime had Portugal making some quality crossing shot attempts, but the previous 10 minutes at least was basically a snoozefest featuring 20 guys sucking wind. What’s compelling about that?
Is there some logistical reason they limit substitutions? Based on how hockey handles substitutions, I can’t think of a logistical reason why soccer couldn’t. Is it just tradition? Is it an issue of having a limited roster? Is it a matter of team chemistry? Or is it something I’m not thinking of?
I did notice the thread asking about how Brazil’s 2nd team would do in this Cup. (Though I didn’t read it.) I imagine if you put everybody from that team as additions to the existing Brazilian team, and then substituted like a motherfucker all game, it would dramatically increase the energy level and therefore intensity of the game throughout. Or would it not?
Also, how many players does a team dress for the game? 14?
IMHO the reason is mostly that the ability to keep playing well for at least 90 minutes is one of the defining requirements for a good football player. Unlimited substitutions remove that requirement and radically alter the game. In Marathons we would also see much more impressive times if substitutions of runners were allowed, but again the result would be a completely different sport.
Yeah, the primary thing I’ve learned from this thread is that the go-to answer of “It would radically alter the game!” is a common knee-jerk reaction; empty rhetoric at its worst.
In context:
Why don’t gridiron football players play both offense and defense? It would radically alter the game.
Actually, it would do nothing of the sort. It would be the exact same game, but it would reduce the intensity of the action, downgrade the quality of play, shrink the available player pool (because playing two positions well is more difficult than mastering just one,) steepen the learning curve for the players that still qualify, increase the chance of injuries, amplify the negative impact of an injury, and the positions aren’t symmetrically mirrored on both sides of the ball anyway.
I’m holding out hope for a more thoughtful response…
There is nobody more conservative than football fans. If you suggest any kind of change to the existing rules they’re up in arms about how it will change the game irrevocably. It’s like the US constitution, the rules of 1896 or whenever are somehow sacred.
I’m pretty sure I hit on this in this thread or another one recently. The field is fucking huge and it would be impossible for the referee, who also has to watch for foul play and judge goals, offside, etc. not to mention keeping an eye on every player’s uniforms and keeping track of fouls and the official time, to police two teams that could swap out on the fly. It’d be easy to put 12 or 13 players on the field without anyone noticing, or replace an ejected player.
Did you actually read the post? He gave a solid reason.
Most rule change suggestions for soccer (coming from my countrymen in particular) are ridiculous, not to mention patronizing and belittling because they assume that the whole world rotates around each American’s drunken opinion. The game is based on a delicate balance and making a radical change would upset that balance and it would become a different game. That’s happened several times: where do you think American football, Australian football, rugby, ice hockey, field hockey, roller hockey, basketball and indeed soccer itself came from?
That’s an interesting reason. Going further, do they stop the game for substitutions? If not, how do they handle this issue with the current system? If so, then that would be a decent reason for not having unlimited substitutions: unlimited stoppages would kill the flow of the game.
Yes I did, and no he didn’t. He handwaved the battle cry of soccer fans everywhere with the content-free response of “it would radically alter the game,” also adding in a ridiculously falsifiable assertion about how playing 90+ minutes is a defining characteristic of a soccer player. To top that off, he cited an analogy of adding substitutions to an individual contest, which is laughably irrelevant.
Boxing isn’t radically altered when the number of rounds change. It’s merely a change in conditioning requirements that is a secondary characteristic at best. Same with tennis; is the women’s game fundamentally a different sport than the men’s because of the match length? (No, it is a different sport for many reasons, none of which involve match length.) I’ve seen men’s (minor) tournaments where they only played best of three; was that a different sport than the slams? Is a golden goal match a different sport than a game decided in regulation? (Note that shootouts clearly do make it a different sport.)
I say his assertion is easily falsifiable because if 90 some-odd minutes of play were such a defining characteristic, then there would be no substitutions at all, possibly giving injury exceptions. Also, having 30 minutes of overtime is just as much a bastardization of the game as allowing unlimited substitutions would be. How is 120 minutes of play more of a departure from the 90 minute citeria than playing only 60 minutes? If you can explain that to me, then I might consider his reply. Until then, it strikes me as pure noise with no signal.
I DID NOT ADVOCATE A RULE CHANGE.
I’m asking why substitutions are limited. What was the original reasoning? Has it always been three? Have there ever been any professional leagues that did it differently, or tried a different number of substitutions? If so, what was the effect of those games? (Did it radically alter the game, ruin the sport forever, not make much difference?)
Compare substitutions to the DH rule; talk about how it was tried once and one team shamelessly manipulated the clock by substituting every time the other team started to gain momentum; talk about how substitutions are a finely tuned strategic element of the game; give me something that has meaning. (Your example of the difficulty in ensuring only 11 players on the field is a good one; is that the only reason?)
Just don’t fall back on the FALSE sanctity of the sport; if radically altering the game mattered even one whit, you would not be deciding quarterfinal World Cup matches with gimmicky bullshit like shootouts. Tell me, exactly how does that maintain the fundamental spirit of the game again?
Basically, my ulterior motive is wondering about the shootout thing. Why can’t they just play until somebody scores? I’m guessing it’s because the players are too tired. I would think it would alter the game less to allow substitutions and let them play until a legitimate winner emerges than it would to decide the game on a shootout.
Also note that my question earlier in this thread about noting official times of scores was repeatedly met with the same contentless “it would change the game” answers. Clearly it would not change the game AT ALL for the timekeeping ref to jot down the times. As pointed out by Gorilla Man, emphasizing minutes ahead or behind would, in fact, change the game, but it was like pulling teeth trying to get such a thoughtful response out of you guys. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction to the substitution question, eh?
One reason why substitutions should be limited is that the rules should be the same for everybody. Many small amateur or semi-pro clubs have small squads compared with the big clubs in the English Premiership. If unlimited substitution were allowed I can imagine a club like Chelsea or Manchester United being able to afford a squad of fifty or sixty players, and substituting every three or four minutes - that simply isn’t a possibility for the likes of Accrington Stanley or Halifax Town which are usually in financial difficulties.
They do; a team wishing to make a substitution notifies the fourth official, who will indicate to the referee at the next break in play that a substitution is being made, and who is to come off. The referee is supposed to add 30 seconds at the end of the half to compensate for the delay. This very rarely actually happens; basically pretty much all games just carry on for an extra three minutes, regardless of injuries, meteor strikes or rampaging lizards. So yeah, unlimited substitutions would radically alter the flow of the match unless running substitutions could be made. A lot of the rules in football are aimed at preserving the play, rather than having a stop-start contest. This is why referees with a good sense of when to play advantage rather than blow for a foul are appreciated, for example.
In the English league at least, no subs were allowed at all until 1965 or so, and then were only permitted for injuries with a limit of one per match. This rose to two at some point, with tactical subs being allowed. Now it’s three. So yes, the numbers allowed have slowly risen (although I don’t see it going higher), but the original philosophy was definitely that substitutions are a limited thing.
In friendly internationals unlimited substitutions used to be allowed (or whatever the two teams agreed). However, in large part because of Sven Goran-Eriksson’s habit of fielding a completely different team in the second half of such matches (which just ruined the games as a spectacle), FIFA imposed an upper limit of six substitutions. The limit is higher because these friendlies are used to try out different squad formations and tactics.
I think one fairly convincing reason against raising the limit is that it would massively benefit richer teams, whose squads have more strength in depth. Witness Chelsea last season, who can effectively field two complete teams capable of beating just about any Premiership team. They paid £21 million for Shaun Wright-Phillips just to have him sit on the bench for the whole season. Allowing them unlimited substitutions would mean they could effectively replace their entire attack after 60 minutes or so, sending a wave of fresh forwards running at knackered defenders. The deck’s already stacked in the rich teams’ favour enough because of the coverage their strong squads offer them for injuries.
The Times actually went through and had a go at studying the positive or negative effects that managers’ substitutions had (link to story; I can’t find the chart). While it makes no attempt to account for the quality of subs available to a given manager, nor tackle injury-related substitutions, it was still quite interesting to see that most managers make things worse when making substitutions.
Well, the time aspect is one thing; we (well, I :)) just don’t particularly care to see a sporting event that carries on indefinitely. Having the ability to basically substitute the entire team would mean that at the end of the match (assuming it ever occurred), you could have two completely different teams on the pitch to those that started. So again it’s just a matter of who’s got the longest team roster, which doesn’t sound particularly satisfying.
I also think this would be a fairly fundamental change to the nature of the game, in order to address a relatively uncommon occurrence. I’m not trying to argue that the character of the game is a sacrosanct thing (although I do think it should be tinkered with extremely carefully if at all), but I think you’d agree that allowing unlimited substitutes would be pretty transformational in terms of the tactics of the game. You’d start getting specialist free kick takers coming on for set pieces, and instantly going off again. Yellow cards would become more or less meaningless with the ability to simply replace a player at no cost. It would undeniably be a big change in many ways. So do we apply that to all football played, simply to avoid penalty shootouts in the relatively few knockout tournaments that go on? It’s an awfully big shift to address a relatively small problem, and it wouldn’t even necessarily succeed in that goal.
Personally, I don’t really see that penalty shootouts are that big a problem. If two teams have competed for two whole hours and it’s ended in a draw, then they’re obviously pretty evenly matched; but one of them has to go, and that’s that. If there’s nothing to choose between the two sides, then I don’t see that playing until the first goal is much less arbitrary than the shootout. And a shootout is undeniably exciting to watch; who would rather have had the Ukraine/Switzerland snoozefest continue indefinitely? Not me, that’s for sure.
Incidentally, bit of trivia: back when penalty kicks were first introduced back in 1891 to cut down on last-ditch fouling, they were regarded by many as vastly unfair. Corinthians (one of the best teams at the time) ordered their players to miss any kicks awarded in their favour, and had their keeper stand out of the way of the goal when one was awarded against them. Different times, eh?
As already mentioned, substitutions are quite a recent innovation. We had games before they were introduced where a key player (for example a goalkeeper) was injured and the game was ruined as a spectacle and also as a fair contest.
Regarding the number of substitutions, up until recently friendly internationals -where different team formations and players were usually tried out- had virtually unlimited subs, resulting in fractured and messy games. Finally FIFA called a halt to it and limited them to 6 subs.
In my view it did change the game, for the worse too.
Fantastic answers, thanks much. Makes perfect sense, and also quite compelling. I particularly appreciated this bit:
I hadn’t considered the yellow/red card penalty being devalued; that would indeed fundamentally change the game, and I imagine for the worse. The specialization aspect would also be an inevitable result, and would be yet another radical change.
Thanks again to all who responded this morning. Insightful posts about the nuance of sports are like heroin to me. One thing I’d thought of (and subsequently forgot) at the end of the Argentina-Germany match was this:
Penalty kicks are actually fairly obscure in the game, right? Corner kicks, OTOH, seem to be fairly common. Would it be workable to do a corner-kick shootout instead of a penalty kick shootout?
My thought is that corner kicks at least involve the whole team, and reflect a fairly fundamental feature of the game. Not savvy enough with the game to understand the logistics of defining when the “try” ended; maybe as soon as a defender got possession of the ball?
Obviously, I’m not expecting people to jump in and say “wow, great idea, Ellis!” And I’m certainly not advocating this change. But what are your thoughts on this idea? Totally asinine? Neat idea but unworkable? The reasons for whatever reaction you have is what I’m most interested in.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. I dig the “power play” aspect of soccer when you have guys sent off and then you have to play shorthanded for the rest of the game. That’s a cool feature. (And I just realized that substitutions would impact yellow cards, not red.)
I can’t stand NCAA football overtime; I think the mock-shootout is a travesty and ruins the sport. That tends to color my perception of shootouts in general. (For example, I’d hate it if the NHL instituted shootouts in the playoffs.)
But what really, really bugged me about the England-Portugal shootout was that England was playing a man down, and yet suffered virtually no handicap or penalty in the game-deciding shootout. That seemed just fundamentally wrong to me.
Not that they should have only gotten 4 shots to Portugal’s 5, as that would be a much bigger discrepancy than 10 against 11, but still, shouldn’t there be some sort of handicapping? I can’t really think of anything remotely workable, but is my sense of unjustness at England “dodging” a legitimate penalty completely out of left field?
I mention this because corner kick shootouts would incorporate that 10-11 disadvantage…
Could do. Main argument I can think of against it is that it could actually take quite a while to deliver a result; the scoring rate from corners isn’t that huge (I can’t find any stats on this at the moment) so you could easily go a fair old time before either team scores, which detracts from the spectacle somewhat. As you say, defining a “play” would be a bit tricky too, although not insurmountable. Possession isn’t always clear; the ball may (depending on how the attacking team plays it) move in and out of the penalty area more than once; and so forth. You could have a shot clock, I guess; 15 seconds from the kick or something. I do think the main problem would be the amount of time it would take to get a result. Also, it’s relatively rare to have the full teams from both sides contest a corner kick; given the nitpickiness with which refs are expected to penalise shoving in the area these days, officiating the shootout would be a nightmare with 21 players all simultaneously jostling for the ball.
Incidentally, in five-a-side tournaments the number of corners a team gets in normal play is sometimes used as a tie-breaker. Again I don’t know how keen I’d be on introducing that to full matches, because it would again affect how teams play in normal time since corners are so much easier to win than full goals.
Re: penalty handicapping, I tend to think that if a ten-man team have made their way through the match despite being shorthanded, then they’ve been punished enough. Actually, had the shootout gone on to 11 or more shots each (pretty unlikely), Portugal would have had to nominate a player of theirs to leave out of the roster, so that each team has an equal number of penalty-takers. So arguably they gain by being able to choose to drop the weakest penalty-taker. Granted, this is a pretty marginal advantage, but then they failed to beat a 10-man team in an hour of open play, so it’s not particularly like they were in the ascendancy then, either.
Yup. It’s either that, the mayhem method I noted, or the status quo. You have in fact hit on one of the major reasons FIFA doesn’t allow unlimited subs: it’s a time-wasting technique. With only three per team per game, you don’t waste much more time than you would’ve anyway.
What do you think of this treatise?
The game of baseball has too many home runs and too few extra-base hits. I think that’s silly and makes for a boring game. We need to mandate that all stadiums add another 50 feet all around the outfield, shorten the basepath to first base down to 70 feet because everybody makes it to first anyway, then shorten the other basepaths to 80 feet so that we have more triples. For that matter, let’s put a “commit line” on the home stretch, and if the baserunner crosses that line he has to run home–that will create more runs and more plays at the plate. Then we should time pitches so that pitchers can’t take all day putzing around on the mound.
How is that ridiculous? It’s true. It’s not one of the best arguments against unlimited subbing, but that is a defining characteristic of a good starter. In hockey, you have to have unlimited on-the-fly subs because every player is constantly moving and they slam each other around relentlessly. In soccer, endurance is key. Some teams actually do have one player who can basically come in in the last 15 minutes with fresh legs and go all out, and it can add a nice little icing, but he really doesn’t have the job security of the starters (think of pinch hitters vs shortstops) and part of the definition of a world-class player is that he can go for the long haul.
So does any tiebreaker format other than adding more 45-minute periods, which would be ridiculous.
Not really. There are other reasons to make substitutions, like strategic changes. Australia coach Guus Hiddink used that to fantastic effect in an early game against Japan in this Cup; he shifted his formation around with three late substitutions and put in players who then scored goals for a comeback win, not because they were heavy-hitter goal scorers but because the formation change shifted the dynamics of the game such that Japan had to defend a little differently in response and Australia could take advantage of it.
I WAS NOT TALKING TO YOU. READ MY POST AGAIN, BUT TAKE A CHILL PILL FIRST.
(I wasn’t talking about you, either. You’re a well-meaning sports fan and I appreciate your knowledgeability in the sports you’ve been watching for a long time.)
FIFA used to allow the two participating teams in a game to agree on a number of substitutions for non-Cup games. It did ruin the game; substitutions became a time-wasting tactic and it was too hectic and difficult to keep track of the game. Think about how they make wholesale lineup changes every few innings in the All-Star Game, and how lame that would be in a regular-season (or playoff, even worse) game.
I see that Dead Badger has argued this more effectively.
I happen to think shootouts are a viable way to declare a clear winner by testing of the two skills that most severely make or break every team: goal scoring and goalkeeping. Again, if you watched Germany-Argentina you saw one team get absolutely outclassed, by skill and study of the game and not by luck.
Not everybody knows the intricacies of the game well enough to explain the ins and outs of every rule and every proposed rule change. I’m sure you could explain the impact of any proposed rule change in football, for example, but most fans may not be able to give that kind of in-depth analysis. We should feel lucky to have people who really do understand the game well enough on a primarily American board, even though there may not be many.
For American (hockey) fans, this basically means a delayed penalty, where the ref doesn’t blow the whistle until the fouled-against team gets a chance to score.
You mean like David Beckham? Except he doesn’t have the common decency to leave the field afterwards.
Just last night on XM’s World Cup station somebody was talking about how he had teammates in college who had to do this in their state championships back home (somewhere in New England, though he made a point of not saying which state). I can’t speak much to why not to do it, but my two cents is that it’s not as much a direct marker of goal-scoring vs. goalkeeping as penalty kicks, plus if you’ve had players sent off you’re at a distinct disadvantage because corner kicks are often played in “man defense”; with the relatively small frequency of corner kicks in a game, undermanned teams can figure out ways to make it up, but it’d be too much if you had to do one corner kick after the other after the other. Unless you let the teams put in whatever players they want.
I would file it under “neat idea, but not really workable in matches on the level of the World Cup”.
I see where you’re coming from, but just as much as you’d punish teams that had been red-carded, you’d also punish teams with injuries.
Dead Badger, I suspected that the scoring percentage on corner kicks was pretty low, and after having seen a handful of them, I figured that they take so long to set up and execute that if the percentage was indeed low, you could be waiting over an hour to get a result, which would make it unreasonable.
And great point about how the red carded team still might have to face a disadvantage in a penalty kick shootout. As unlikely as it is to be realized, just the fact that it could happen makes it sit better in my mind.
First, great post with many excellent responses to my laundry list of questions. I think this bit I quoted was something you’d like an actual response to.
Note that baseball is not my sport; I do not watch it, and do not even know most of the rules. However, my best answers would be, in order: (Colored for easy skipping, because the answers themselves aren’t really on-topic for the thread.)
Agreed that there are too many home runs and too few extra base hits. My understanding is that the triple is all but extinct. Also, I cannot stand the posing at the plate while batters showboat watching their ball go over the fences. Sometimes it fails to go out, and then they have to hoof it. The initial posing cost them extra bases, so I’d like to see managers hand out sanctions for every instance of plate-posing.
50 extra feet sounds fine to me, but more importantly I’d like to see a standardization leagues-wide making all outfields the same dimensions. While parks like Fenway try to equalize shorter distances with taller walls, I find that to be an unsatisfactory solution.
Shortening the base path to first by even 10 feet (as opposed to your proposed 20) would increase batting averages league-wide, simply because it would be harder to beat the runner to the plate from the infield. Baseball’s primary appeal is that it is unchanging through the ages when it comes to infield dimensions, though the pitcher’s mound has seen subtle height variations. Even still, today in 2006 you can theoretically compare hitters on your team to hitters on teams from 1906, and the comparisons will be meaningful. Since much of the appeal of baseball is its rich history and tradition, this change would serve to undercut a major attraction that the leagues have deliberately fostered and maintained. (Same basic reply for the other base path distances, but for the record anything that increases triples is aces in my book.)
The commit line sounds neat; I’d like to see it tried in the minor leagues to see how well it worked. I have a feeling that a purist would hate it because throwing down a runner between bases is a basic part of the game. Then again, you’d still be able to do it between first, second and third. Actually, I’d kinda like to see it tried between all bases.
As far as I am aware, pitchers are already timed between pitches. (Though that may just be batters must be ready in the box within a certain amount of time between pitches.) But the clock is never enforced. I would absolutely love to see a pitching clock enforced. (First implemented if it’s not already.) Award a ball if the clock runs out. Simple. On second thought, I don’t think there’s a pitch clock because they can throw to first base to try and pick somebody off all day long. I find that annoying, so count that as another reason I’d like to see a pitch clock.
Okay, so there’s my answers. Clearly, I am not a baseball fan. But can you see the difference between those answers and this:
“That would fundamentally change the game. It would be like changing the distance of a marathon from 26 miles to 26 feet.”
The former addresses the questions posed. The latter is nothing but content-free handwaving. Also, note that baseball is unique in American sports in that its rules almost never change. Football and hockey have multiple rule changes – some changing the sport quite dramatically – virtually every season. (Example of NFL rule changes colored for easy skipping.)
The NFL is famous for rule changes, with the league constantly creating rules to help the offense. Defenses always catch up with superior strategy, “gaming” the rules to maximum benefit, and then the league passes another set of rules to help the offense again. This is how its always been, and likely how it always will be.
The last time the league propped up the offense was a few years back when they began emphasizing pass interference. There used to be a prize defensive player known as a “shut-down corner,” meaning you could leave him 1-on-1 against any receiver to completely remove that receiver from the game. Now with the shift in rules emphasis by the league, (thanks to Peyton Manning’s whining like a little bitch after the Patriots raped his receivers in the playoffs one year,) there isn’t a single shut-down corner in the entire league, nor can there be one. (The shutdown guys still play; you just can’t shut down a receiver anymore.)
After a couple seasons, defenses have adapted. It’s no surprise to any savvy fan how much more emphasis you’re seeing put on defensive ends and pass rushing linebackers. The Texans passed on Superman in order to snag a premiere DE. The Giants – who have the best DE tandem in the league – drafted a DE with their first round draft pick despite having a very high-quality third DE already on the roster. The idea is, if you can’t pressure the reciever, pressure the passer. In a few years, look for the league to tinker with blocking rules to give the offensive linemen a leg up.
Given all that, you can see how the idea of being resistant to rule changes is a foreign concept to me. Quickly, the massive overhaul in countless rules in the NHL last year served to improve the action on the ice immensely. Thoughtful change is good for sports. Fanatical devotion to the status quo is not, unless you specifically market the game’s unchanging history as a major selling point. FIFA clearly doesn’t do that, as evidenced by the multiple changes to substitution limits and overtime formats.
I actually had another idea for a last-ditch tiebreaker for advancing out of group play to be inserted just ahead of drawing lots, though drawing lots would still need to be included as the final arbiter. I wouldn’t think this would be ideal for tiebreaking the outcome of a game, but if there was a suggestion to have a game decided by the corner kicks in the game, then I guess this would be at least as legitimate as that:
(I can already here the peanut gallery groaning.)
Instead of corner kicks as a tiebreaker, corner kicks scoring percentage. If nobody scored on a corner kick, then it’s no help. (Thus still needing the lot drawing for the group play tiebreaker.) But you’d have to be careful about getting too many corner kick chances, as that would more than likely dilute your average. Eh? Whaddya think?
Of course, as some of you may remember, the original UFC had the greatest tiebreaking rule every put into existance: no “overtime”, no judges, no nothing. In the event of a tie, both competitors were eliminated and an alternate advanced to the next round. Now that would be a kick-ass change IMO. It would sure light a fire under the asses of two teams locked in a 0-0 tie in the 90th minute, no? hehheh. (This is tongue in cheek, but I seriously did love the UFC for this tie rule. It rocked the house.)
