One thing you can say for baseball, the game is basically the same as it was 100 years ago.
The fundamental rules are the same, and the nature of playing the game is more or less the same now as when Mickey Mantle was hitting monster home-runs.
Football, on the other hand, has gone through many major changes in the nature of play, and even with the game’s rules.
Every off-season, the competition committee develops a proposal of rule changes. Some of the changes are minor (whether players can have hair coming out of their helmet) while others have a huge impact on the game (elimination of the “force out rule”). Some of these changes are understandable, even good (I'm perfectly fine with the rule that says you can't lay out a defenseless player who has no chance of making a play, like Ryan Clark did to Wes Welker in 2008 (below) while some of them, like the skirt, er, Brady rule, are just embarrassing.
This year, the competition is seriously considering a change in the rules governing overtime in the NFL, amidst complaints, mostly from the controversy-mongers at ESPN, that the current system is “unfair.”
In 1941, the league adopted a “sudden-death” rule for overtime play in the playoffs. In 1955 this was extended to pre-season games, and finally to all games in 1974. Up until 1994, teams that won the coin toss to open overtime were victorious roughly 50% of the time. Then, the NFL moved kickoffs from the 35 yard line to the 30, a move that benefited offenses by providing more opportunities for kickoff returns and better field position, and the frequency at which teams winning the flip won the game shot up to nearly 60%.
Because of that, some fans and commentators have routinely complained that the rule allows for the game to end without one team ever getting an offensive possession, especially when a star quarterback fails to get on the field in overtime.
The catalyst for the current round of complaining is last season's NFC Championship game, in which Graham Hartley and the Saints won the game on a field goal on the first possession of overtime, preventing everyone's favorite tractor riding prima donna Brett Favre from having a chance to engineer a magical overtime victory to send his team to the Super Bowl.
Never mind that it was an interception of a bone-headed Favre pass at the end of regulation that sent the game to overtime, as opposed to giving Minnesota a chance to win without overtime.
And that is my biggest problem with arguments that the sudden-death rule isn't “fair.”
On one hand, there are numerous chances to make a play in regulation that could make overtime irrelevant altogether. If you don't want to face the possibility that you may lose the overtime coin-flip and then the game without getting your offense on the field, don't let yourself be put in that position.
On the other hand, there's more to football than offense.
It would be one thing if we were talking about a sudden-death rule in baseball, where the fielding team is unable to score runs, and so the home team really would be put at an unfair disadvantage by such a rule. But in football, not only do you have three aspects to a game working together, you have the ability to score on any one of them. Not only can you lose without ever getting your offense on the field, you can win that way too! In fact, it happened just this year, when Arizona's Karlos Dansby returned an Aaron Rodgers fumble for a touchdown to win their Wild Card playoff game.
I understand that not everyone agrees with me on this question, and I also understand that some people simply think some other way of doing things would be more fun to watch.
That's fine, I can't tell you what entertains you.
But the incessant arguments about “fairness” strike me as bunk. And while I'm certain there are plenty of fans who honestly believe that, when it comes to ESPN and the NFL, I strongly suspect the issue isn't fairness so much as it is looking for even more ways to skew the rules to privileged offenses, star quarterbacks in particular.
After all, if the offense has such an unfair advantage, why not roll back the recent rule changes that favor offense, to make the game more fair to defenses at all times?
That no one in the NFL ivory tower is proposing anything like that, or moving kickoffs back to the 35 yard line, makes me deeply suspicious that they're simply trying to make the game fair for everyone.
We get enough Brett Favre and Peyton Manning as it is.
If the NFL wants us to see even more of their poster children, let them film another commercial.
In the meantime, I'll take my overtime just the way it is, thank you very much.
The fundamental rules are the same, and the nature of playing the game is more or less the same now as when Mickey Mantle was hitting monster home-runs.
Football, on the other hand, has gone through many major changes in the nature of play, and even with the game’s rules.
Every off-season, the competition committee develops a proposal of rule changes. Some of the changes are minor (whether players can have hair coming out of their helmet) while others have a huge impact on the game (elimination of the “force out rule”). Some of these changes are understandable, even good (I'm perfectly fine with the rule that says you can't lay out a defenseless player who has no chance of making a play, like Ryan Clark did to Wes Welker in 2008 (below) while some of them, like the skirt, er, Brady rule, are just embarrassing.
This year, the competition is seriously considering a change in the rules governing overtime in the NFL, amidst complaints, mostly from the controversy-mongers at ESPN, that the current system is “unfair.”
In 1941, the league adopted a “sudden-death” rule for overtime play in the playoffs. In 1955 this was extended to pre-season games, and finally to all games in 1974. Up until 1994, teams that won the coin toss to open overtime were victorious roughly 50% of the time. Then, the NFL moved kickoffs from the 35 yard line to the 30, a move that benefited offenses by providing more opportunities for kickoff returns and better field position, and the frequency at which teams winning the flip won the game shot up to nearly 60%.
Because of that, some fans and commentators have routinely complained that the rule allows for the game to end without one team ever getting an offensive possession, especially when a star quarterback fails to get on the field in overtime.
The catalyst for the current round of complaining is last season's NFC Championship game, in which Graham Hartley and the Saints won the game on a field goal on the first possession of overtime, preventing everyone's favorite tractor riding prima donna Brett Favre from having a chance to engineer a magical overtime victory to send his team to the Super Bowl.
Never mind that it was an interception of a bone-headed Favre pass at the end of regulation that sent the game to overtime, as opposed to giving Minnesota a chance to win without overtime.
And that is my biggest problem with arguments that the sudden-death rule isn't “fair.”
On one hand, there are numerous chances to make a play in regulation that could make overtime irrelevant altogether. If you don't want to face the possibility that you may lose the overtime coin-flip and then the game without getting your offense on the field, don't let yourself be put in that position.
On the other hand, there's more to football than offense.
It would be one thing if we were talking about a sudden-death rule in baseball, where the fielding team is unable to score runs, and so the home team really would be put at an unfair disadvantage by such a rule. But in football, not only do you have three aspects to a game working together, you have the ability to score on any one of them. Not only can you lose without ever getting your offense on the field, you can win that way too! In fact, it happened just this year, when Arizona's Karlos Dansby returned an Aaron Rodgers fumble for a touchdown to win their Wild Card playoff game.
I understand that not everyone agrees with me on this question, and I also understand that some people simply think some other way of doing things would be more fun to watch.
That's fine, I can't tell you what entertains you.
But the incessant arguments about “fairness” strike me as bunk. And while I'm certain there are plenty of fans who honestly believe that, when it comes to ESPN and the NFL, I strongly suspect the issue isn't fairness so much as it is looking for even more ways to skew the rules to privileged offenses, star quarterbacks in particular.
After all, if the offense has such an unfair advantage, why not roll back the recent rule changes that favor offense, to make the game more fair to defenses at all times?
That no one in the NFL ivory tower is proposing anything like that, or moving kickoffs back to the 35 yard line, makes me deeply suspicious that they're simply trying to make the game fair for everyone.
We get enough Brett Favre and Peyton Manning as it is.
If the NFL wants us to see even more of their poster children, let them film another commercial.
In the meantime, I'll take my overtime just the way it is, thank you very much.
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