Sports rule changes you want to see

[improbus]

Basketball and Football: Coaches shouldn't be able to call timeouts. I don't think they should have any official part in the game, because they are not actually playing the game.

Football:
1) Eliminate the illegal motion rules, who cares.
2) Eliminate the 6 men on the line of scrimmage rule.
3) Put a bar across the top of the goal posts to force kickers to kick it lower, making closer field goals a riskier choice.
4) Eliminate the eligibility rules for catching passes. If a Left guard can catch it, let him.

Basketball:
1) Eliminate the slide under move to take a charge.
2) Eliminate goal tending after the ball hits the rim (which I think the NBA is going to do)
3) Widen the floor to eliminate the close corner three and give teams more room to operate.
4) College needs to shorten the shot clock to prevent the Wisconsin offense.
5) Eliminate the music during play. During time outs is fine, but not during the game. It tells the crowd, "we don't actually need you to pay attention or be interested, we can make our own noise,". OR go whole hog. Run the NBA like and And1 tournament with a DJ spinning tunes for the entire game. I played in a student-staff basketball game and we had the local hip hop station DJ the game. The in game music was tremendous and the energy from it was non stop.

I'll leave out baseball for the actual baseball fora.

[VottoFan54]

NBA - Allow hand checking

Football in general - Not a rule change, but more offensive pass interference, don't let recievers get away with everything. Loosen up PI rules overall, make the game more balanced by allowing some physicality in the secondary. The NFL is too offense/passing oriented right now.

[New York Red]

Basketball: Eliminate fouling out.

It's the only sport in the world in which a player can be disqualified for normal penalties. Set the limit at six fouls or whatever, then penalize the team by giving two shots and the ball to an opponent when that player picks up another foul. Removing the player from the game, considering how difficult it is to officiate a basketball game with the speed and physicality we see now, is ridiculous.

[Joseph]

Love your football proposals, don't care a bit about basketball so those don't register.

Hockey
1. I'd love to see an elimination of offsides. If a team wants to cherry pick, let em.
2. Two line passes. Enough said.
3. The instigator rule, let em throw.

[jmac]

NBA.....cut out the "advance the ball to midcourt with a timeout". This seems to make the last 2 minutes of an NBA game seem to take 30 minutes.

[VottoFan54]

Originally Posted by Joseph

Love your football proposals, don't care a bit about basketball so those don't register.

Hockey
1. I'd love to see an elimination of offsides. If a team wants to cherry pick, let em.

This sounds interesting, I wonder how it would change strategies. I would think that speedy forwards would be more valuable. I am just speaking from what I see in college hockey, so I might be wrong on how it would affect the NHL.

[Roy Tucker]

Originally Posted by New York Red

Basketball: Eliminate fouling out.

It's the only sport in the world in which a player can be disqualified for normal penalties. Set the limit at six fouls or whatever, then penalize the team by giving two shots and the ball to an opponent when that player picks up another foul. Removing the player from the game, considering how difficult it is to officiate a basketball game with the speed and physicality we see now, is ridiculous.

This x 1000. Let the guys continue to play. 2 shots and the ball is a stiff penalty, but at least they still play.

The NFL pass interference at the spot of the foul is bogus. You get a ticky-tack PI and suddenly its a 40 yard penalty and you're within FG range. College has it right, make it a 15 yarder.

[SunDeck]

I hate it when I stripe one down the fairway and it rolls into a divot. That one needs to be changed.

[improbus]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

This x 1000. Let the guys continue to play. 2 shots and the ball is a stiff penalty, but at least they still play.

The NFL pass interference at the spot of the foul is bogus. You get a ticky-tack PI and suddenly its a 40 yard penalty and you're within FG range. College has it right, make it a 15 yarder.

But, if the QB goes deep what is the deterrent from the defender just destroying the receiver? I don't like the spot foul rule, but I'm not sure how to get around it. If DB's started tackling wideouts 40 yards downfield consistently, is that good for the game? Maybe you have a "Flagrant Pass Interference" which is a spot foul. But...I don't like forcing refs to make more judgment calls.

[Spitball]

Originally Posted by Joseph

Love your football proposals, don't care a bit about basketball so those don't register.

Hockey
1. I'd love to see an elimination of offsides. If a team wants to cherry pick, let em.
2. Two line passes. Enough said

I think these would change the sport way too much...and far from for the better. There would be less need for efficiency and quality of play. These two proposals turn it into more of a pinball game.

[HeatherC1212]

Gymnastics: Make the Olympic teams have six members again. They're going to five member teams for the first time this summer with the London Games and there are way too many good gymnasts from not just the USA but a lot of other countries as well that are going to be left at home. It's sad to me that they're changing this rule for no real apparent reason.

[Yachtzee]

Originally Posted by HeatherC1212

Gymnastics: Make the Olympic teams have six members again. They're going to five member teams for the first time this summer with the London Games and there are way too many good gymnasts from not just the USA but a lot of other countries as well that are going to be left at home. It's sad to me that they're changing this rule for no real apparent reason.

That seems silly. My beef with women's gymnastics is that the sport is set up to favor younger girls who often haven't finished growing and push them to their limits. According to my grandfather, who spend many years treating athletes as an orthopedic surgeon, young athletes performing at that level at such a young age often end up with injuries that affect the growth plates in their skeletal system, which can cause significant problems as they grow older. If anything, I'd like to see them work on modifying the events in ways that give advantage to older athletes who have reached physical maturity. I don't know how you would do that, maybe by having the women's events more resemble the men's, where physical strength is just as important as flexibility. Over the years we've seen more women compete in sports and events traditional considered men's domain. I see no reason why women can't compete on apparati similar to the men's, other than the powers that be like seeing girls do crazy flippy moves on the uneven bars and the balance beam.

[Yachtzee]

I think for Soccer, changes need to be made to make use of technology in the game. I'd like to see full implementation of goal-line technology to determine whether the ball has crossed the goal line on close calls. I think eventually they could come up with something to deal with offsides too, maybe involving RFID chips sewn into uniforms and one placed in the ball so that offsides can be determined with more accuracy.

Another idea I think would be good would be useful in World Cup play to discourage cynical play by giving teams that have accumulated a certain number of yellows a "general yellow card," whereby the next player who commits a yellow card worthy foul automatically gets a red card, regardless of whether they have a prior yellow. While it seems like the various pro leagues have been working to cut down on negative play, it still abounds in the World Cup.

[paintmered]

Originally Posted by Yachtzee

I think for Soccer, changes need to be made to make use of technology in the game. I'd like to see full implementation of goal-line technology to determine whether the ball has crossed the goal line on close calls. I think eventually they could come up with something to deal with offsides too, maybe involving RFID chips sewn into uniforms and one placed in the ball so that offsides can be determined with more accuracy.

Not sure that could be done with RFID. You would need to be able to resolve relative angle between multiple passive antennas (RFID only recognizes proximity) and adaptively move the transmitting antenna up down the pitch with the last defender. And then there's the problem of range, you need to do this at upwards 50 yards. GPS tracking might be a better option, but there's still too much variance in its positioning and isn't dynamic enough for the situation of determining offsides.

It's a tricky problem to solve with current techniques, but it's a fun one to ponder. With unlimited money, you could couple inertial sensors with a GPS receiver. But even then, the problem requires an accuracy of 2-3". Not even that setup can provide that kind of accuracy over 45 minutes.

[ervinsm84]

Wouldn't judging offside in soccer be easier if they just made it like offside in hockey, but still not change the game dramatically? Just make two giant blue lines around 30 yards out from the goal and I think it would be much better