The Sports Revolution: And-One Penalties

Let me set the scene for you: A quarterback launches a long pass down the sideline toward an emergingly open receiver. The defensive back, sensing what is about to occur, prevents a completion through less than legal means. And yet, even while a flag is being thrown, the receiver makes a tremendous catch anyway. The penalty is declined.

Let me reset the scene for you: After the flag is thrown and the catch is made, our referee announces the penalty while his assistants march off additional yardage. How much exactly? Why, the amount gained on the play, to be precise.

That’s right: Football needs its and-one. A catch made in spite of pass interference shouldn’t render the interference irrelevant. The same penalty should be meted out regardless of the completion of the pass, and thus a 20-yard pass despite PI should become a 40-yard gain.

Pierre has argued this point before, in regards to that officiating shambles of an indoor winter sport. While watching my beloved Ligue canadienne de football this autumn, it has struck me that North American football does an even more piteous job acknowledging degree of difficulty than its indoor companion. Penalties that do not alter the final result of a play are simply declined—overlooked, ignored, erased from the annals of the postgame almanacs.

The Sports Revolution: Fixing the Pro Bowl

Don’t play it.

The Sports Revolution: Speeding Up Baseball

Let me set the scene for you: The Tigers and Rangers play a tight afternoon Game 2 that many do not see the end of, because they have turned instead to a mundane Monday Night Football contest between the Lions and the Bears. Oh my.

Let me reset the scene for you: The Tigers and Rangers play a tight afternoon Game 2 that stays in the afternoon, with nobody turning the channel. They achieve this with one simple alteration of baseball rules: A batter is only permitted one two-strike foul ball before he is called out.

As always, please, control your incredulity. Baseball, as a game, has gotten demonstrably slower over the years — not just because more batters are getting on base, but also because they’re taking longer to do so. Major leaguers averaged 3.81 pitches per plate appearance this season, just down from record numbers in recent years. Contrast that with 1988, the first year that Baseball-Reference tracked the stat, when plate appearances lasted a mere 3.59 pitches.*

The Sports Revolution: Simultaneous Overtime!

Let ESPN’s Brian Griese set the scene for you: “It’s almost like the TD was given; it’s all going to come down to the two-point conversion.”

Let NPI’s Pierre Menard reset the scene for you: “Nothing in college football’s overtime can possibly be described as ‘given.’”

We have spent so much time analyzing the inadequacies of professional football’s overtime logistics that we have overlooked the larger flaws in college’s practice of the extra session(s). We are lucky that Monsieur Griese was describing a game between his alma mater, Michigan, and Illinois—one that Pierre can safely say was, in all aspects, irrelevant and insignificant.

Yes, college football’s overtime, mon ami, is broken. It is too easy to score, and like its professional predecessor, places an unnecessary significance on the initial coin toss. Furthermore, it skews statistics, scores, and the very nature of the sport.

The Sports Revolution: Saving the Division Series

Last year about this time, I laid out my plans for an entire postseason overhaul. This year, while standing by most of those innovative suggestions — the nine-game World Series, in particular — I want to revisit the aspect of the Major League Baseball postseason that I, and every baseball fan I know,* continues to find most troubling.

*I do not know John S.

I speak, of course, of the Division Series.

The Division Series — scourge of the favorite and the underdog alike, a duality best occupied, it seems, by the Minnesota Twins. The Division Series — where a season of tidings of comfort and joy can come crashing down in four days. The Division Series — where baseball’s postseason most trivializes its regular-season and creates fundamental questions regarding the justice of its champion. The Division Series — why does it drop the “League” when the LCS never does?*

*Methinks the answer lay in an aversion to a certain FX television program. Perhaps I’ve anthropomorphized too much. That, or they don’t want to confuse members of the Latter-Day Saints.

The Sports Revolution: To Halve Is To Have Not

Let me say first that, in general, I agree with my colleague’s assessment of the Ryder Cup. There is something so…so sporting about the event that I enjoy it very much, despite its reprehensible underrepresentation of my native land.*

*No love this year for U.S. Open runner-up Gregory Havret, Captain Monty?

But it is not all the sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows that mon frere makes it out to be. No, the Ryder Cup is not perfect. It has one very glaring, to the point of being almost unignorable, flaw: The Half.

The Half is merely golf’s pretentious term for a draw, which is soccer’s pretentious term for a tie. The Ryder Cup embraces ties like no event outside of the World Cup. Every match must end by the 18^th, and the ones that end with neither team having an advantage are, well, halved. But you can’t eat your cake and halve it, too.* You can’t host an event all about winning while expressing no qualms when several of its constitutive parts end in draws.

*Forgive my inversion of the phrase for a larger rhetorical punch.

The Sports Revolution: The Definition of Down

Let me set the scene for you: College football, as is, is a gross miscarriage of justice in all forms, a charlatan that pretends to properly judge the talent of teams and players alike and to prepare them for the NFL and real life.

Let me reset the scene for you: College football is perfect because its major problem has been fixed. That’s right, we change the rules so that you’re not down when your knee hits the ground and nobody touches you.

One of my “esteemed” colleagues has used this space on previous Fridays to lament the trivial woes of the Bowl Championship Series. Let me, in one two-claused sentence, dispossess him of his revolutionary cause. Sports have the meaning we ascribe to them. That is all.

The Sports Revolution: Golf’s Major Playoffs

Let me set the scene for you: It’s the final week of the golf season, except nobody notices because the most important tournaments have already been played.

Let me reset the scene for you: It’s the final week of the golf season, and everybody’s* attention is riveted as the most important tournament wraps up six weeks of must-see golf.

*“Everybody” here does not, of course, mean “everybody,” but rather, you know, anyone somewhat enthused by the adventurous journey of that petite dimpled ball.

This is the third year of the FedEx Cup—golf’s subpar attempt at concocting end-of-season excitement with some absurd form of “playoffs.” There are four tournaments, a point system, and a reduced number of players in the field each week. But in 2007, Tiger Woods won easily because he dominated the whole year, and in 2008, Vijay Singh won easily because he won the first two of the “playoff” tournaments.

Golf’s problem is this: It wants the playoffs to be approached both by the players and its fans with the same level of seriousness and significance as the sport’s major championships, played intermittently throughout the season. But therein lies the rub: The playoffs won’t be taken this seriously while they’re competing with the major titles.

The Sports Revolution: Match Play NASCAR

Let me set the scene for you: it’s Lap 97 of 250 in a NASCAR race, and a whole lot of cars are moving counter-clockwise in an oval, with some stopped getting gas. And nobody is watching on television.

Let me reset the scene for you: it’s Lap 9 of 10 in a NASCAR race, and only two cars are moving clockwise in an oval, and there’s no getting gas or anything. And some people are watching on television.

Some upfront honesty: The appeal of NASCAR has always escaped me. I, too, can drive, and occasionally at high speeds. I can also turn right.

It is possible that NASCAR may never appeal to the high-minded intellectual that I present myself to be. Even my more regional Formula One falls short of my high standards for transcendence in sport. But this does not mean NASCAR can rest on its laurels and deny its need for improvement. There is, in fact, one very obvious way for the sport to become much more competitive, much more interesting, and far more entertaining: NASCAR needs to become a one-on-one event.

The Sports Revolution: Flipping the Diamond

Let me set the scene for you: a prominent base stealer is on first. A left-handed pitcher is on the mound. The baserunner doesn’t try to steal second—as he would if a right-hander were on the mound—because the lefty has an intrinsic advantage in picking him off.

Let me reset the scene for you: a prominent base stealer is on first. A left-handed pitcher is on the mound. The baserunner does go for second—as he would if a right-hander were on the mound—because the lefty no longer has an intrinsic advantage to picking him off.

How? Because the baseball diamond was flipped. With a left-handed pitcher on the mound, third base becomes first base, and vice versa.*