jotsheet

In time, sports evolve, and hopefully, we as participants figure out the crappy rules and fix them. For the most part, we have successfully followed this path. The major sports flow along fairly well, with the rules (for the most part) barring opportunities for exploiting situations and preventing general fan boredom.

Even so, a few terrible rules remain in sports. Oftentimes, problems with the rules are not the rules per se, but the application of the rules.

The worst rules in football

Defensive pass interference is called so much more often than offensive pass interference that the NFL has essentially manufactured whiny, bitchy receivers such as Randy Moss simply by virtue of the way they referee the games. To make the situation even worse, offensive pass interference is a 15 yard penalty, while defensive pass interference goes the length of the pass—and there was no guarantee the whiny receiver was going to catch the ball anyhow.

Preventing intentional grounding is a great idea, except that the NFL doesn’t prevent intentional grounding. Once the QB scampers out of the “tackle box,” he can toss the ball to the hot dog vendor and not get penalized. This is pathetic.

The worst rules in basketball

For two reasons, jump balls are a terrible rule in basketball. First, a jump ball should not be called simply because the defender placed his hand on the basketball for two-tenths of a second. In no way does this mean that the posession of the ball is under dispute, yet a jump ball is often still called. Second, the alternating possession jump ball is not a jump ball at all. I actually think that using the alternating possession for jump balls (the college rule) is preferable to actually having a jump ball (the NBA rule), but it needs a new name. Hey, maybe it does have a new name: maybe they don’t call it a jump ball in college. But it does make more sense to use the alternating possession to settle jump balls rather than actually jumping, because jump balls happen when possession of the ball is under dispute. Why give the ball de facto to the Rockets over the Nuggets when Earl Boykins ties up Yao Ming?

Probably the worst rule in professional sports, period, is the permissibility in college basketball of calling a timeout while flying out-of-bounds. This is flat-out ridiculous. Thankfully, the NBA has fixed this rule, and a player must have possession and not be careening into the stands to call a timeout. My proposal: a player must have undisputed possession of the ball for at least half a second and have both feet on the floor to call a timeout. (This would also prevent the ridiculous practice of one team calling a timeout in the middle of a scrum on the floor for the ball.)

The worst rules in baseball

Why is it not a strikeout when the catcher drops strike 3? Sure, this is a cute, “quirky” rule, but it still sucks. It makes no sense. And to allow a pitcher to strike out four batters in an inning is, well, retarded. Who came up with this?

The designated hitter needs to go. The DH takes away tons of strategy from the game and is a primary reason why the NL is superior to the AL. Besides that, it encourages AL pitchers to be prima donnas: they can headhunt the other team with 95 mph fastballs and not have to worry about coming to the plate the next inning. MLB needs to encourage guys who make $8 mil/year to take what they dish out.

But ALAS, I have not yet spoken of the worst rule in sports. Actually, this rule doesn’t come from a sport, but a game based on a sport. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to rant about it.

If you’ve played any basketball, you’ve played 21: it’s every-man-for-himself basketball by two’s, with free-throws after scores, played to exactly 21. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel even did a story on the game recently. There are lots of variations on the game, but overall, the rules are pretty simple. However, one very common variation is to play “tips”: if a player misses a shot and another player tips the shot in (jumps and taps/shoots the ball in before touching the ground), the original shooter loses points. The amount of points lost varies, but most often, if the player has <=13, he goes down to 0, otherwise he drops to 13.

Okay. This rule is absofuckinglutely retarded. The worst part of it is that a lot of people play tips on free-throws. First of all, it is mindlessly easy to tip a free-throw—just stand under the basket and wait for the ball. Tipping a shot in the normal course of play is tough because of its unpredictability, because the shooter can try to block it, and because players are often not set up to tip—they’re playing defense.

The other ridiculous part of tips is that a “good” free-throw miss is much easier to tip than a “bad” miss. That is, a Peja Stojakovic miss is very tip-able; a clanking brick from Shaq is near-impossible. So, in effect, this rule encourages poor play; a player has an advantage if he is a piss-poor free-throw shooter. Of course, if a player misses NO free-throws, he’s also at no risk, but that’s pretty unrealistic.

21 is a solid game; it works well for pick-up situations, as players can come and go easily, and no teamwork is required. If you’re tired or lazy, you don’t have to play hard. These are all good things for playground basketball. But this tips thing has to go. It’s absurd. It’s awful. I demand change.

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