I frequently gripe and moan about politics and government in this space, but this week I figured I would turn the dark side on the world of sport.
I love sports. Always have and — undoubtedly — always will. However, each sport has some glaring problems that could be rectified making the sport that much better for us hardcore fans. Let’s take each sport — college and professional — and I’ll present my issues, and if possible, the solution and what affect it would have on the game.
Professional football:
There are two issues I have with the National Football League, but since one has to do with player safety, I will focus on the other: the holding penalty. The holding call in the NFL is THE most ridiculous and convoluted call in the sport.
Frankly, you could call it on every single play. My problem is not the rule but the implementation of the rule. If you research the penalty, it basically shakes out like this: The good teams have very few drive-killing holding penalties, while the teams at the bottom of the league have more.
If nothing else, it looks suspicious. The fact that Tom Brady’s New England Patriots are routinely near the bottom of the league in holding penalties just further adds to speculation and conspiracy theories. Just ask any Jets’ or Bills’ fan what they think about the Patriots and offensive holding.
College football:
To quote former NFL coach Jim Mora, “Playoffs? Playoffs?” The money-grubbing NCAA and Bowl Championship Series officials have completely robbed us of what would be one of the best sport months going by denying us a playoff for so long. The BCS is a complete scam designed to pillage as much money as possible.
The bowl games are just dumb. We, the fans, get maybe two or three good match-ups every season out of a gazillion bowl games. To make matters worse, the BCS has forced possible championship teams to stop playing other good teams and take up playing Sister Mary’s School for the Blind and Crippled, giving us an endless barrage of 62-0 scores and limitless stats for possible Heisman candidates.
The new four-team playoff is a start, but a 16-team playoff like they do in smaller college football is the way to go.
Professional basketball:
I love the NBA. Nowhere can you see the purest form of basketball than in NBA arenas, particularly around playoff time. ESPN has diluted our senses with endless loops of highlights to the point where we dismiss unbelievably athletic and amazing plays as routine.
However, the NBA has a glaring problem: the superstar call. Larry Bird got a ton of them. Magic got more than his share. And his Airness took this to a whole new level. The fact that current superstars Kobe Bryant and LeBron James couldn’t tell you when the last game either of them fouled out of is evidence enough.
The NBA has sort of gotten like the movies. The star of the movie, the supporting actor and some nobody go out to investigate a killing, but who gets killed? The NBA is the same way. Say LeBron, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Ray Allen and Norris Cole are on the floor — who gets the most fouls called on them? It’s an easy question to answer in the NBA; just pick the name you don’t recognize and chances are he will be in foul trouble before the end of the first quarter.
Just let the guys play on a level playing field. Kobe hacks like a coal miner getting paid by the tonnage, yet if you so much as look at him wrong … whistle.
College basketball:
This is an easy one: the charge call. I hate this play. This play is nothing more than some guy less talented attempting to steal a possession, and possibly much worse: getting a real player in foul trouble by flopping on the ground as if he was shot with a 50-caliber sniper rifle.
This call is exacerbated by the fact that apparently referees are so eager to call it that you no longer have to be in the position the rules state. Every single college game, you can witness a real player driving to the hoop getting ready to do what basketball was intended to be when some little, non-athletic guy runs in front of him and flails to the ground. UGH!
And some schools (I won’t mention any names, but you know who they are) specialize in this manipulation of the rules. The rule actually says that you can not slide under a player once he has left the floor but I guarantee that if a player attempted to leap from the free throw line like Jordan, some player on the other team would scamper in after the offensive player left the floor and the refs would still call a charge. Awful, awful rule and more importantly, the refs’ interpretations.
Professional baseball:
The crazy inconsistency of the strike/ball call drives me crazy. It is so bad that it not only changes umpire to umpire, but pitch to pitch; a pitcher can get different calls on the exact same pitch. The funny thing is today with the television technology, they actually track the pitch’s track and show the flight of the ball and point it goes through the “strike zone.”
This only makes the umpires look even more inept.
NASCAR:
The biggest problem with NASCAR is, well, NASCAR. The governing body of the sport is what is wrong. They change the rules whenever it seems to fit their whimsy. They change the rules so often that even someone like myself that has followed the sport since I was knee-high to a grasshopper can’t interpret what is going on anymore.
Lucky dog, wave around and freezing the field are just a few of the dumb rules made up by France and their fellow sport-ruiners. Long gone are the days when you built a car that was faster than the next guy and went out on the track and proved it. Now, no one can pass anyone, particularly the leader, the cars all look the same and all the cars are just riding around in a single-file line.
Way to go guys, somehow you made stock car racing look just like Formula 1.
Now for some quick hits on some other sports.
Boxing: Promoters are the problem so we never get the fights people really want to watch.
Soccer: The whole “extra time” thing. What is that about?
Hockey: OK, I will say it … not enough fights any longer.
Richard Clark is the universal desk chief of Halifax ENC. You can reach him at 910-219-8452 or at Richard.Clark@jdnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at kpaws22.