Commish
Peter F_King wrote a bit on what he'd do if he were commissioner for a day. And it made me wonder what I would change if I could control the NFL. First, here's Peter's list:
1. Expand the regular season to 18 games (and cut two preseason games) - agreed.
2. Pass a bylaw prohibiting playoff expansion - sure, but what if you expand the league? Whatever.
3. Make long field goals more valuable (4 points for a 50+ yarder). This is dumb, because you'd have teams trying to back up at the end of games, and you don't want that. No need to mess with the scoring.
4. Take NFL Sunday Ticket off the dish and put it on digital cable - absolutely.
5. Stop the love affair with Los Angeles. Okay, but it's the biggest TV market in the US. Why in the world would you leave it empty? There are some good ideas out there, like using it as a Super Bowl site or a revolving Monday Night Football venue. But to just walk away from that kind of money seems like idiocy.
6. Put more mikes on players and officials, and put the game on a seven-second delay - mics, yes. Delay, no. It's needless - just choose which feed to broadcast, and tell the guys to watch it.
7. Let players wear the numbers of their choice -- with an asterisk - charity, blah blah. Sure. Whatever.
8. Prohibit the moving of the Saints for five years. Why only five year? Mandate that the city and state have right of first refusal on any sale. Give them an open ended chance to keep the team.
9. Put two computer chips in the football, and make the goal line, in essence, capable of sending a signal when the football touches the plane of the goal line- why not.
10. Make the Super Bowl the best two out of three - hah! A humorous joke! Oh, Peter. What a card.
So what would I do? I'd fix the officiating problem. Right now, the referees are absolutely ruining football.
The solution is not to make them full-time. I would do that, certainly, and have them pass monthly fitness tests. They are far too old and slow for today's game, and spending the rest of the week as CEO of a dildo company does nothing to help their on-field judgment.
And full-timers in other leagues are just as bad. The NBA refs have complex agendas and morality plays that they enact in every game. Try figuring out the strike zone in any baseball game - it changes pitch by pitch.
So, making them full-time is necessary but not sufficient. What we need to do is rip up the rule book.
Tear it up and burn it. It's far, far to complicated. Consider that they don't even publish the thing. You can't buy the official rule book. It's secret.
Ex-players and coaches commenting on the game are often wrong about calls. Refs have to huddle during games to decide not on what happened as much as to decide what their interpretation should be.
And they blow it. All the time.
The Super Bowl was decided entirely by bad officiating calls. The Super Bowl. The game's ultimate showcase with a billion people watching, and they couldn't get it right.
Nobody on or off the field knows what's going on. So I would stop it.
I would simplify the rules to the point where fans, jocks, and refs all knew exactly what was happening. Here's a sample:
1. A runner is up until tackled or touched down.
2. Two feet in for a catch.
3. Blocking - only face-up. No blocks at all unless face-on.
4. All calls must be considered to have an effect on the play. Any violation having no effect on the outcome of the play will not be called.
5. Motion - blah blah. Keep it.
6. Holding - too hard to call. Allow it. That would be more honest than constantly calling it wrong or not calling it when it's happening all over the place. The line, in particular, is too chaotic. Defenders will have to learn to deal with it.
7. Two-hand touch on the QB. It's too hard to keep them healthy, and the game totally depends on them. I know - it's "a dress," but it's necessary.
8. Tuck rule and fumbles - up to the ref. If the ref thinks it's a fumble, it's a fumble. He can still watch it on replay and change his mind, but make it clearly a judgment call, not a rules interpretation.
9. Forward passes are incomplete, laterals are live balls.
10. Pass interference - another one that's absolutely mangled by refs. Here's the rule: do what you want to any receiver inside the first down marker, but no touching after the marker. That means neither the receiver or the defender can touch the other guy at all past the first down marker. Inside that line, anything goes.
11. Dirty play - a judgment call. Any play the ref considers unnecessary or has an intent to harm can cause a flag or ejection.
12. The overriding rule is that if the offense was not obvious enough for a casual fan to notice, it should not be called. No ticky-tack calls will be made.
That's it. Make it simple and only call the obvious stuff.
1. Expand the regular season to 18 games (and cut two preseason games) - agreed.
2. Pass a bylaw prohibiting playoff expansion - sure, but what if you expand the league? Whatever.
3. Make long field goals more valuable (4 points for a 50+ yarder). This is dumb, because you'd have teams trying to back up at the end of games, and you don't want that. No need to mess with the scoring.
4. Take NFL Sunday Ticket off the dish and put it on digital cable - absolutely.
5. Stop the love affair with Los Angeles. Okay, but it's the biggest TV market in the US. Why in the world would you leave it empty? There are some good ideas out there, like using it as a Super Bowl site or a revolving Monday Night Football venue. But to just walk away from that kind of money seems like idiocy.
6. Put more mikes on players and officials, and put the game on a seven-second delay - mics, yes. Delay, no. It's needless - just choose which feed to broadcast, and tell the guys to watch it.
7. Let players wear the numbers of their choice -- with an asterisk - charity, blah blah. Sure. Whatever.
8. Prohibit the moving of the Saints for five years. Why only five year? Mandate that the city and state have right of first refusal on any sale. Give them an open ended chance to keep the team.
9. Put two computer chips in the football, and make the goal line, in essence, capable of sending a signal when the football touches the plane of the goal line- why not.
10. Make the Super Bowl the best two out of three - hah! A humorous joke! Oh, Peter. What a card.
So what would I do? I'd fix the officiating problem. Right now, the referees are absolutely ruining football.
The solution is not to make them full-time. I would do that, certainly, and have them pass monthly fitness tests. They are far too old and slow for today's game, and spending the rest of the week as CEO of a dildo company does nothing to help their on-field judgment.
And full-timers in other leagues are just as bad. The NBA refs have complex agendas and morality plays that they enact in every game. Try figuring out the strike zone in any baseball game - it changes pitch by pitch.
So, making them full-time is necessary but not sufficient. What we need to do is rip up the rule book.
Tear it up and burn it. It's far, far to complicated. Consider that they don't even publish the thing. You can't buy the official rule book. It's secret.
Ex-players and coaches commenting on the game are often wrong about calls. Refs have to huddle during games to decide not on what happened as much as to decide what their interpretation should be.
And they blow it. All the time.
The Super Bowl was decided entirely by bad officiating calls. The Super Bowl. The game's ultimate showcase with a billion people watching, and they couldn't get it right.
Nobody on or off the field knows what's going on. So I would stop it.
I would simplify the rules to the point where fans, jocks, and refs all knew exactly what was happening. Here's a sample:
1. A runner is up until tackled or touched down.
2. Two feet in for a catch.
3. Blocking - only face-up. No blocks at all unless face-on.
4. All calls must be considered to have an effect on the play. Any violation having no effect on the outcome of the play will not be called.
5. Motion - blah blah. Keep it.
6. Holding - too hard to call. Allow it. That would be more honest than constantly calling it wrong or not calling it when it's happening all over the place. The line, in particular, is too chaotic. Defenders will have to learn to deal with it.
7. Two-hand touch on the QB. It's too hard to keep them healthy, and the game totally depends on them. I know - it's "a dress," but it's necessary.
8. Tuck rule and fumbles - up to the ref. If the ref thinks it's a fumble, it's a fumble. He can still watch it on replay and change his mind, but make it clearly a judgment call, not a rules interpretation.
9. Forward passes are incomplete, laterals are live balls.
10. Pass interference - another one that's absolutely mangled by refs. Here's the rule: do what you want to any receiver inside the first down marker, but no touching after the marker. That means neither the receiver or the defender can touch the other guy at all past the first down marker. Inside that line, anything goes.
11. Dirty play - a judgment call. Any play the ref considers unnecessary or has an intent to harm can cause a flag or ejection.
12. The overriding rule is that if the offense was not obvious enough for a casual fan to notice, it should not be called. No ticky-tack calls will be made.
That's it. Make it simple and only call the obvious stuff.
posted by fiduciary at 10:04 AM
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