Rule Changes

This past weekend I was at a 21-and-over "Beach Party" with a few friends. The event itself sucked, consisting mostly of 35 to 40 year-old men trying to hit on the young-20s girls we were talking to and then us making awkward jokes about the creeps as they walked away. This happened about eight times. However, the night was not a total loss as it did give me an idea for this post.

One of my buddies usually says some pretty ridiculous stuff after a drink or twelve and this night was no exception. After relieving himself in one of the many blue portable toilets that were set up for the drinkers he returned with this philosophical gem: "What do you think would happen if they crossed Papa John's, Jimmy John's, and Joy Johns?" The rest of us being somewhat inebriated as well, we decided that the only option would be a restaurant called "Papa Jimmy's John" where they make you sit in a bathroom stall and then deliver the food freaky fast to you in there. We all agreed we might be on to something. Needless to say, this idea will probably never come to fruition. The same can be said for the rule changes I am about to propose, but which I am proposing anyway, that I would like to see in the near future.

Football: Eliminate the block in the back penalty

The block in the back penalty is one rule for which I really see no need. You're asking huge, fast guys to brutalize each other most of the game and then to suddenly back off and play touch football when they see another player's back. Ask any football player how hard it is, when the ball is in the open field, to think about not blocking a defender in the back while still clearing a path for the runner. Football is not an easy game, and I'm not recommending the removal of this rule in order to make it so, but try and give me a good reason why we should have the rule. You can't. It's not for health reasons. Being shoved in the back while covered in pads is not nearly as rough on the body as getting tackled from behind  and then laid on top of by a three-hundred pound lineman - which, by the way, is completely legal. Dave actually disagrees with me on this rule change and thought I should leave it out of this post. His words: "The reason the block in the back is illegal is because it is so advantageous that it borders on being unfair." But, as I normally do when he gives advice, I took a page out of The Chris Brown Book of Life and slapped away his suggestion. I don't see how blocking in the back gives the offense an unfair advantage - that would mean that the offense can do something that is prohibited for the defense. But this is not so. Most penalties on offense have a counterpart penalty for the defense (false start vs. offsides, holding on offense and holding on defense, etc.), but blocking in the back has no such defensive counterpart. And after all, defenses are allowed to blitz from the quarterback's blind side where he can't see the blitz coming. Should we make the defense tell the quarterback before the snap where the blitz will come from? "Shit no," you say. I agree.

Another reason to do away with the penalty is because it makes the game less exciting. What is the most breathtaking play in football? The kickoff/punt return for a touchdown. But what's the first thing we do after our team has just taken a kick back for a touchdown (besides possibly wetting ourselves if the game was particularly close)? We scan the field for flags to make sure the play will stand. Roughly half of all kicks returned for touchdowns are called back for questionable block in the back penalties, which leads me to another point: it's a hard fucking penalty to call. Considering the speed of the game, a lot of times it is impossible for the referee to judge whether a block was thrown into a player's side or his back, while other times obvious blocks in the back are outside the referee's field of vision and no flag is thrown. This leads to bad, subjective, largely guessed penalties being called and others that should have been flagged going uncalled.

How 'bout we allow ourselves to get on the same page by taking the penalty out of the rule book? The game would be more fairly officiated and more big plays would occur, creating a more exciting product on the field. We've all been conditioned to believe that the block in the back must be unfair because it is considered illegal, but we've never really thought about WHY it should be illegal. There are a lot of dumb laws out there that nobody has a problem breaking, or with other people breaking, but if you get caught there is still a penalty simply because the action is classified by the government as illegal. Wouldn't we be better off if they were just legalized? If you need any more proof as to why the block in the back penalty is bogus, check out this clip from the 1990 Orange Bowl: Notre Dame vs. Colorado. A bad call (watch around the 40-second mark several times and you'll see it clearly was a block in the side) took away what should have been one of the most exciting single plays in college football history. I rest my case.




WNBA: No female players may be used during quarters one through four

After all, shouldn't they be more worried about periods (hehe...get it?) than quarters? And the seconds left on the oven timer rather than the shot clock?

Golf: Revamping the playoff hole

We've all seen it: an incredible finish to a tournament leads to an improbable playoff and then...the playoff hole is the most boring of the day. One guy slices his drive into the trees and its over. Not exactly an orgasmic finish, is it? Luckily I have a solution. In fact, I have two.

Solution 1: Everyone enjoys golf more when they've been drinking, so why not allow the pros to have some fun too? Here's how it would work: The number of final-day birdies for each player participating in the playoff is tallied up, and their opponent has to take that many shots of whiskey and then wait that many minutes before teeing off on the playoff hole. So if  Phil and Tiger are in a playoff and Phil had eight birdies in the final round while Tiger had only three, Tiger would have to take eight shots and then wait eight minutes to tee off. During these eight minutes the whiskey is kicking in. Phil on the other hand only has to take his three whiskey shots and wait three minutes before he can tee off. Unless he's a complete lightweight he won't even feel anything until he gets to the green. But Tiger would probably be somewhat hammered by the time he hits his first shot and might even be convinced to read out loud some of his text messages to the fans on the tee box (Note: My favorite Tiger text message has to be "No turkey unless it's a club sandwich." I mean, he's got major golf tournaments coming up, about twenty mistresses to hide from his wife in order to keep up his marriage, big decisions to make as to whether he'd rather do the missionary or reverse cowgirl with the porn star tonight, and he's worried about the class of deli meat on his BLT. I'm about 98% sure that text message will be my fantasy football team name this year.)
Things get even more interesting if it's a three-man playoff. In this scenario the two players with the least birdies do basically the same as in the two-man playoff: they give out the same number of shots as birdies scored on the day to each of the other guys. But the guy with the most birdies on the day gets to multiply his birdie total by two, AND he can give this number of shots in any ratio he wants. So if it's Phil, Tiger, and John Daly and Phil has eight birdies, Tiger has three, and John has five, Tiger and John would give out three and five shots, respectively, to the other two guys. But Phil gets to multiply his total by two (8*2=16) and he can give these shots out as he pleases. He can give eight to each, ten to one and six to the other, or, if he wants to, he can screw over Tiger and give him all sixteen. Not that it would matter, of course, as in this playoff format Daly would undoubtedly win one hundred percent of the time, go down as the greatest playoff-hole golfer in history, and might actually finish more sober than after a normal round.


                                                                                                                                                



  
Solution 2: We'll call this second solution "Ragolo" (a shorter version of "Rampage Golf Polo"). A bit more radical than the first solution but it could be even more entertaining. The playoff would involve getting rid of the caddies and replacing them with golf carts, and players would tee off at the exact same time. Then comes the real change: the hole is not won by the player who finishes with the least strokes; in fact, strokes would not even be recorded. Rather, the hole would be a race and the first player to get the ball in the hole wins. The only rules would be that the ball can only be advanced when struck with a legit golf club, and there can be no touching of the other player's ball. Beyond that anything goes: Tearing down the course in a cart at thirty miles an hour, slapping the ball forward like Ralph Lauren? Sure. Tiger ramming Phil with his cart in his quest for the hole (we all know how much Tiger wants the hole)? All the time. I think it'd be great. For a real treat we could combine Ragolo with the drinking element of Solution 1. The possibilities are endless. I'm expecting a call from the PGA within a week.

And now a few tidbits from Dave...

The NBA: Institute soccer's "advantage" rule

Rather than someone on D taking a foul to prevent a fast break opportunity or an easy run out, let the refs use a little bit of discretion to judge if it would be more advantageous for the offense if no foul is called. If so, it’s a play-on. Lebron leads the league in “break away dunks that never were” because players are always taking fouls on him around half court that might phase a normal sized human, but Lebron runs through them like Adrian Peterson through an arm-tackle. Who wouldn't want to see more of this? NOTE: the advantage rule should only be employed in fast break and run-out situations, not the halfcourt.

Football: Not a rule change but something I wish they would do more often: downfield laterals

I know when I play football with my friends, I would rather die than be tackled (or two-hand touched, I’m very brittle). So what do I do nearly every time I touch the ball? I lateral it before I get tackled. I’m not saying college and pro players should do this as cavalierly as I do (in traffic, no looks, behind the back), but it drives me crazy when a RB or WR has one man to beat and lets himself be tackled rather than flipping it to a teammate who’s running alongside him. I honestly think Reggie Bush’s boneheaded flip in the National Championship game set this initiative back 20 years, as his was creative, but clearly not the time or place. (VIDEO: skip to 2 minutes… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cps-L0qJS10 ) Rather, I think Randy Moss knows what I’m talking about. 
(VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjBxuO_vt-U )

So there you have it. If you see any of these rule changes actually take effect, a simple "Thank You" card would be much appreciated. If you want to be really nice and send a gift along with the card, it would be awesome if you could open up your wallets, take out a few dollars, and send the rest to me. And if you happen to be traveling on the highway and see a billboard advertising "Papa Jimmy's John - Next Exit," just keep driving.

Seventeen Years?!?!

Let me preface this by saying I am not a fan of hockey. In my sports viewing life, watching college football and the NBA is analogous to wild sex with Jessica Alba and the WNBA to gouging my eyes out with a plastic fork. Watching hockey, then, is somewhere in the middle, comparable to masturbating with a plastic fork while thinking about wild sex with Jessica Alba: something I do on occasion, but only if I have nothing else on my agenda.

So maybe I was wrong for pooping my pants when I heard about the seventeen-year contract between star player Ilya Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils. Yes, SEVENTEEN years! Apparently the NHL was a bit shocked by this as well, though, disallowing the contract when league mathematicians realized that Kovalchuk would be forty-four by the time the contract expired. To put things in perspective, the length of the contract was longer than the duration between the releases of the last of the original Star Wars movies and the first of the new versions. Seventeen years ago Kevin Durant was four years old; artists such as Ice Cube, A Tribe Called Quest, and LL Cool J had top hits; and Brett Favre was considering retirement. Needless to say, a seventeen-year contract in any sport is ridiculous, especially one as brutal as hockey. So in honor of this, for no particular reason, here are a few of my hopes and dreams for the world of sports for the next seventeen years and predictions on whether or not they will come true.

1. I'll be thirty-eight in seventeen years and I plan on having kids by then. I hope that my kids never, ever have to go through the traumatizing experience of flipping on their favorite sports channel only to find a WNBA game being broadcast. However, I think WNBA games WOULD make a great addition to Comedy Central's evening lineup.

Prediction: The odds of the WNBA lasting another seventeen years are about equal to the chance Charlie Weis gets only a salad on his next visit to Golden Corral (read: very unlikely). Still, I take no chances and say a prayer for this every night. Speaking of Charlie Weis...

2. ...I hope Notre Dame wins a football national championship in the next seventeen years. We won the year before I was born and then promptly started sucking. Since I've been alive we've had one great coach (Lou Holtz) who was robbed by the pollsters of two national championships in my first four years of life, while the others have been a semi-retard (Bob Davie); a fraud who was coach for about 24 hours (George O'Leary); Ty Willingham, who I'm still convinced was simply an accountant who won the "Notre Dame Coaching Experience" grand prize at his church's annual raffle; and Weis, who ate the team's three best players. But things will take a turn for the better under new coach Brian Kelly, right?

Prediction: Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Kelly will bring us back to the top. If that makes sense. I really have no doubt that he's the right man for the job though. He has succeeded at every single coaching stop he's made and will now have his hands on more talent than at any other point in his career. If the players buy in to what he says we could be scary good.

3. I hear Jessica Alba is married, but that can't stop me from wishing. I hope that someday, somewhere, somehow her and I end up at the same party and that she is drunk enough to mistake me for that lucky fuckstick of a husband. I'd even consider giving up my dream of a WNBA-free world in order to make this one come true.

Prediction: I doubt it. But I have a backup plan of inventing one of the machines from Inception and creating a dream that consists only of me, mattresses, two thousand horny Jessicas, and Chipotle. I think that would be pretty cool.

4. I hope that Barry Bonds admits to steroid use and/or his head explodes.

Prediction: These events are pretty much mutually exclusive. There's so much ego trying to push its way out of there that I think explosion is fairly plausible. But the only way he admits to using is if the ego subsides (meaning no combustion) or if he does so after the explosion, but at that point he'll almost certainly be incapable of admitting anything. So I'll play it safe and say there's 75% chance that one or the other happens.

5. I hope the U.S.A. wins the World Cup. Maybe it was the drama of our final round-robin game, maybe it was seeing how much the tournament meant even to the African fans who have so much more to worry about than games or maybe it was something else, but I think for the first time Americans really began to get soccer during this summer's World Cup. If this convinces a few more little guys to decide to play the sport, we should be in good shape. The reason almost every other country has a better good-soccer-player to per-capita ratio than the U.S. is because the best athletes in those countries all grow up wanting to play soccer. Here, soccer has to pick up the leftovers from basketball, football, baseball, maybe even hockey.

Prediction: Can you imagine if all of our best athletes decided to play soccer? I'm pretty positive Lebron would be unstoppable on headers, Rajon Rondo would be a brick wall goalie, Darrelle Revis would make an unbelievable outside back, and Jim Thome...well, nevermind that last one. The point is, if we can carry forward the positive public momentum gained from this year's World Cup, and the young people of America realize just what a great, global sport soccer is, more of our great athletes will play the game and I think we'll be in good shape to contend for a title. We've shown that we can play with the big boys these last few years (in 2009's Confederations Cup we beat new World Cup Champion Spain and were leading Brazil 2-0 before a seismic second-half meltdown). Now we just need the talent held by other nations. Come on down, Lebron 2.0.

So there you have it. If my happiness means anything to you I hope you'll help make my dreams come true. Now if you'll excuse me, I think there's a Jessica Alba movie on. Where the hell did I put those plastic forks...