How Can Donovan McNabb Ever Play Another Down for Andy Reid?

Danny Sports

This is Donovan McNabb’s 10th season as the Philadelphia Eagles starting quarterback. He has led them to three NFC championship games and one Super Bowl. And if I were him, I would refuse to play another game in an Eagle jersey.

I know this has been by far his worst year in his career, but the fact that Andy Reid benched him in a must-win game that was still easily within reach is pathetic, and unless he all of the sudden came down with the flu, he should have finished what he started and tried to keep them in the race.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I think McNabb needs to be replaced, and so does everyone in Philadelphia. But you cannot pull him in the middle of a game that is still winnable, and replace him with a quarterback who looks like he just stormed the beach at Normandy.  Especially on the road against a solid Ravens D.  I know Tony Siragusa put on the Thanksgiving Thirty a few years back but this is a defense that still has several pillars from a squad that put a Super Bowl ring on Trent Dilfer’s finger.

Why not let McNabb play the game out, and if he blew it again (which he would have) then start Kolb fresh out of the gate knowing all week he would be the starter.  The only possible explanation is that Reid had already made the decision to start Kolb on Thanksgiving and didn’t want McNabb to win the game on his own. Then he’d have to bench a ten-year franchise quarterback who just won a game to keep them possibly in the playoff hunt, and start Kolb on Thanksgiving in front of the entire nation.

Either way, Kolb was every bit as painful as McNabb.  But you can’t go back to Donny now, which is why this can of worms shouldn’t have been opened in the middle of a game in the first place.  At least Kolb will get some experience while we officially flush this season down the drain.

Published in:  on November 23, 2008 at 5:13 pm Comments (1)
Tags: , , ,

How Bud Selig’s Stupidity, Ineptness, and All Around Pussy-ness Cost The Phillies

Like every other Phillies fan, conflicting thoughts were going through my head.

“Wow, its raining really hard.”

“If they call this game, will I be happy with a world series title by rainout?”

“Jesus, this is by far the most rain I have ever seen a pro baseball game played in.”

We all knew it was raining too hard to play, but we also knew that Bud Selig would never call the game after the top of the 5th ended. At that moment, the game became “official”, according to the rule book.  The rule book states that if a game is called due to rain after being official, the game is over and the team ahead at the time gets the win. We knew Bud wouldn’t call the game because, in this specific instance, calling the game would give the Phillies the win, and therefore the championship, and lead to the further humiliation of Bud Selig and his quickly fading league. (“but our revenues have never been higher!” let me introduce you to a concept known as “market share”, and to a league that is not only crushing yours, but continues to grow, the NFL.) So, Bud ignored the rule in the best interest of the game. We all understand that decision – baseball doesn’t need another embarrassment. I could probably start the “major league baseball embarrassment of the day blog” and rarely be lacking for material. So, Bud waited until the game was tied, when he could both stop the ridiculousness of playing in a downpour and avoid the travesty of a rain-shortened season deciding game. It was his only move, right?

WRONG.  Shortly after the game, the news came out that Selig had a pregame meeting with club officials from both teams where they decided that no game would end early – it was the world series, it was too important for that. They decided that any game would go the full 9 innings, even if they had to wait for a huge rain delay. I’ll let this Jayson Stark excerpt, copied and pasted below, explain it:

“I’ll tell you what,” the Phillies’ Matt Stairs said. “To have a tie game, sixth inning, that makes Bud Selig and the boys pretty happy, because they didn’t have to make a big decision, to let that game go through a 10-, 12-, 13-hour delay. … So the big man’s happy. He didn’t have to make that decision.”

Ah, but what Matt Stairs didn’t know — what, apparently, none of these players on either team knew — was that Selig had already made his big decision. If the rules weren’t going to permit him to suspend this game, he was going to have to go to Plan B. He was just going to have to impose martial law — or at least Selig’s Law — and, essentially, suspend it anyway. By simply declaring the world’s longest rain delay. Whether that took 24 hours, 48 hours or all the way to Thanksgiving. Selig vowed these teams were not going to finish this game “until we have decent weather conditions.”

I hope to explain to you the significance of this. Bud Selig had already decided the game wouldn’t be “shortened”. He could’ve stopped it at any time and, even though no players or fans had any idea of this, it would not have ended as any other game in the history of baseball would have. It would’ve been finished whenever the weather was better. Thus, there is only one possible way to create an unfair situation here: HAVE THE TEAMS BAT AN UNEQUAL NUMBER OF TIMES IN THE SAME CONDITIONS. There is absolutely no fucking reason the top half of the sixth inning should have been played last night. It was already raining profusely. Bud Selig ALREADY HAD A CONTINGENCY IN PLACE FOR THIS EVENT! The tarp would’ve come on, he would’ve gone to the same press conference with the same umps and team officials, and said “we talked before, this is the world series, we are going to play all 9 innings”. Pat Gillick could’ve said “yes, we agreed to this before hand, if we were on the other end it would be pretty unfair”. And every Phillies fan and player would’ve said OK, we don’t need a cheap title, we’re already going to win anyway (David Price? I am not afraid of you).

Instead, Bud couldn’t really decide which set of rules he liked better. The actual rules, where the game ends? Hell no. The new, improvised rules? Eh, improvising rules is pretty JV, lets avoid those at all costs. I wish I had some sort of explanation as to why the top of the 6th was played, but not the bottom. Bring out that fake dirt stuff and the Phillies would have had the exact same conditions as the Rays just did.

So Bud waited until it was politically good for him to end the game, instead of when it was actually fair for the two teams. I feel like Bud walked into my apartment, stole my laptop, and gave me a quick flick in the nutsack on his way out the door. I just want to say “WHY?” while I try to figure out what just happened. Bud Selig had a plan in place, then ignored that plan because of new circumstances that wouldn’t make him look bad. The cost of Bud’s PR was the fairness of a World Series game. Whether or not the Rays scored a run that inning, to let them bat and not the Phillies is undoubtedly unfair. I’m the commissioner of a fucking fantasy football league and even I know the commish’s purpose: stay out of the way and let the teams decide. We don’t need you, Bud. You’re a big retard who has fucked up time and again in the past.  All we need you to do is stay the fuck out of the way and let the teams play baseball in a fair setting. Do I agree with secretly changing the rules beforehand? It’s certainly not optimal, but in this situation its at least understandable. To then not enforce those new rules, instead reverting to the old rules at a time when it was patently unfair, is inexplicable. You chose the short-term gain, Bud, jumping out to call the game as soon as it was tied, forcing people like me to sort through the facts and call you out on your bullshit. I’m confident I won’t have to do it again anytime soon, though, as you look like you’ll be keeling over any second now. I hope your legacy is that even with the power to unilaterally change the rules of the game at any time, you still could not succeed in providing a fair baseball game at the most important time of the season.

- Warsh

Published in:  on October 28, 2008 at 5:58 pm Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

Justice in the Barry Bonds / Marc Ecko Hall of Fame Debacle

Almost a year ago, fashion designer Marc Ecko purchased Barry Bonds’ record breaking 756th home run ball. The fan who caught the ball in the stands wanted to collect, so he put the ball up for auction. After Ecko won, he put up a poll on his website. Ecko humbly stated that although he bought the ball, everyone has an opinion on it, and the votes of everyone should be heard, so he started this website with a poll. 47% of the people that responded to his poll said the ball should be branded with an asterisk (a la Roger Maris’ 1961 home run record, which got an asterisk for occurring in a longer season than the previous record) and given to the Hall of Fame to display. Besides being one of the five best examples ever of “opening pandora’s box” and “a slippery slope”, this one tiny asterisk in 1961 left millions of Americans with hope that one day, if someone they didn’t like accomplished something, they could discredit it by throwing an asterisk on it. Like, say, a black guy who hit a ton of home runs.

It is impossible to write about this without at least mentioning my personal views on Barry Bonds. To be 100% honest, I don’t care at all about him. I certainly don’t waste time hating him, I assume he did steroids but I know that he certainly wasn’t the only one, and that there are guys who used just as much steroids as Bonds who never took any heat. The treatment he has received has been bigoted and vastly unfair, but I won’t pity someone who is healthy and a millionaire. I will say this: In our world’s long history, when a bunch of people have, on their own accord, all done something wrong, when has it ever been fair to single out just one of these people? For Bonds to be getting treated like he was last year, in his final season (and this year when no team would even sign him), he would’ve had to discover steroids in his home laboratory, mass produce them, sell them to every big leaguer, leave shit in a bag on every doorstep in America, bring back contaminated bananas from Mexico, and kill Mr. Rogers. Some people say steroids ruined baseball. A lot of people say Barry Bonds used steroids, including people who work as federal investigators. But I can definitively tell you that Barry Bonds didn’t ruin baseball. If you do think baseball is ruined, and it isn’t, then maybe the racist fucks who savored any chance they could get to publicly skewer a black guy are to blame. Bonds did something that hundreds of other players have done and has received 99% of the public blame. Instead of being a big pussy like Mark McGwire and retiring into hiding, Bonds has played the last few years on severely injured knees. While playing through pain is hard to fault, of course people in the media said Bonds was just holding on past his prime to break Aaron’s record and make some money.

Fast forward to today. Ecko’s committment to seeing the ball “in Cooperstown eternally” seems to have been a bit of a hyperbole. Although 81% of responses to his poll said the ball should be in Cooperstown, Ecko only offered to loan the ball to the hall of fame, and they offered to take the ball – permanently, which is their policy. This impasse was apparently not settled, and now the most famous baseball in history, the one that broke Hank Aaron’s seemingly unbreakable record, is sitting in a fashion designer’s closet instead of the baseball hall of fame. Many, many Americans have had the financial ability to purchase priceless baseball memorabilia. Instead of selfishly enjoying, say, Babe Ruth’s 714th home run in the comfort of their living room, they realize that irreplaceable baseball history belongs in the hall of fame, so the millions of fans that go to Cooperstown each year can see it. Fans that have been squeezed dry of every last disposable dollar they have by parking, concessions, memorabilia and tickets. It’s not a bad deal for MLB – a family of 4 spends almost 200 dollars to come to the park, eat, and get some merch (actual research took place), and leaves as a walking advertisement for the team. The players get their exorbitant salaries and princely treatment. The fans get nothing but their memories, and one small museum somewhere in New York where the items that made those memories, and that make them seem real again, exist. Now an iconic, polarizing, and irreplaceable baseball is in some guy’s trophy room, even though he pledged to give it to the hall. I don’t even care about the asterisk — If I ran the Hall, I’d display the ball with the asterisk not visible. The baseball that Barry Bonds hit deserves to look just like every other ball in the hall. Ecko’s actions are recorded history, to live on in “marc ecko barry bonds” google searches forever. The baseball – no matter how “monstrous” the man who hit it was – is baseball history, and that only belongs in one place. I think I speak for all of us when I say this to Mr. Ecko: Congratulations that putting a rhino on a pair of jeans was the apex of street cred, now give us back our fucking baseball.

- Warsh

Published in:  on July 1, 2008 at 1:23 pm Comments (1)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

That’s Right Bill, We’re Taking Your 31st Pick Next Year, But You Can Keep the 7th

Danny Sports

Major League Baseball has steroids. Track and field has steroids. For the love of god, professional cycling even has steroids. And the NFL, the only sport actually filled with massive men who everyone assumed was, or should have been juicing, what do they have? A video camera. That’s right, we’re talking Spygate here. What is Spygate you may ask? In 2007 the New England Patriots were found to be filming the defensive signals of the opposing New York Jets. Bill Belichick was fined a league maximum $500,000 and the team was stripped of their first round draft pick in 2008, although they were allowed to keep the seventh overall pick they received from the 49ers. To be fair, the punishment doesn’t exactly fit the crime. What is $500,000 to Belichick, and stripping a team of the second to last pick in the first round of the draft amounts to a slap on the wrist.

Coordinator

Now, just this past week, the NFL held a vote on whether to allow defensive captains to have a headset in their helmet, much like the quarterbacks have had for years. The measure passed easily. My question is, what the hell took so long? And why wasn’t this talked about earlier? All year every football pundit in the world argued either how awful the Patriots were, or that everyone does it and they were simply the first ones to get caught. However, no one brought up the fact that the solution was already in place on the other side of the ball! Why were they still relying on a coach flapping his arms and tipping his hat and then touching his nose to call in plays from the sideline? I understand the league had to wait until the end of the year to implement a new policy, but they should have at least talked about it so fans knew that it was on their radar.

-Ritt

Published in:  on April 4, 2008 at 10:02 am Comments (3)
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Pedro Martinez Cockfighting Video Surfaces – Suspend him Bud!

Warsh Sports

Sometimes, terrible things happen in this world. We all saw the horror that is possible when Mike Vick organized dog fights, leaving tens of dogs dead, maimed, or tortured. Now, something even worse has happened. Pedro Martinez, Cy Young Award winning pitcher and role model to millions of children, has been video taped at a cock fight. We are talking about innocent roosters here people, and if no one will stand for them, I will. I am calling for a least a 100 game suspension for Mr. Martinez, although I would support a suspension up to a length of 6 years. A 100 game suspension is twice as long as the suspension for taking performance enhancing drugs, and I think we can all agree that is the textbook definition of justice. After all, if providing money to facilitate dog fights is worse than unsuspectingly punching a human in the face, or stealing thousands of dollars from said human, than surely the harming of roosters, nature’s most gentle creatures, is more punishable than injecting yourself to be stronger and have tinier balls and a good amount of backne.

cockfight

I call to you, Bud Selig, do not let this egregious act of violence go unpunished. What will it say to a nation of rooster loving children? And, there’s this!

“Martinez and Marichal laugh before releasing the roosters. The two took part as honorary “soltadores,” the word used to describe the person who puts the animal to fight.”

My god. Evil laughter while they send these roosters to slaughter? An “elevated” position that ended up being the reason Vick got hit so hard? Commissioner Selig, you must take a lesson from your way, way more successful brethren in the NFL. How did the NFL get so popular and breeze by baseball as America’s true past time? By suspending their popular, big market lefties for being mean to animals! So make your statement Bud – or will MLB stand idly by as witness to a thousand more murdered roosters?

- Warsh

Published in:  on February 7, 2008 at 3:54 pm Comments (9)
Tags: ,

Final Kevin Hart “Prank” Update – He Was Lying

Warsh Sports

“When I realized that wasn’t going to happen, I made up what I wanted to be reality. I am sorry for disappointing and embarrassing my family, coaches, Fernley High School, the involved universities and reporters covering the story.” – Kevin Hart

Hart was “unable to provide any phone numbers, addresses,” or other contact information for the purported recruiter, Hall said. Link Here.

This would’ve been nice to know before it was taken for news that “Kevin Reilly”, which is the name of Cal’s backup QB, was “the guy” who called him and “duped” him. Wow. I always kept open the possibility he was lying, but it just got more and more illogical as time went on that he would still be lying. To lie to the national news outlets when it was clear you would immediately get busted for it? That’s such a terrible decision that I left it out of the realm of possibilities once it got to that stage. I’m glad I wrote this in my first post on this topic, to make sure everyone learns the lesson: Never underestimate the really, really ridiculous shit a random person will do.

- Warsh

Published in:  on February 6, 2008 at 6:46 pm Comments (1)
Tags: , ,

Kevin Hart – Victim of the Most Evil College Football Recruiting Prank of All Time? part 2

Warsh Sports

EDIT: Ok, so now it is known that Kevin Hart was, in fact, lying. I’m not gonan sit here and ex post facto you, so I’ll leave this up. While it is not totally wrong, it was based on “news” that was “reported”, such as the police involvement and information about “Kevin Reilly”. Kevin Reilly turns out to be the name of the Cal Backup QB, and Hart was unable to even provide a phone number or address to reach this “prankster”. So, while we can all laugh that this is wrong, my comeback will always be “so was ESPN”. You can read the final update here.

This ESPN.com story should clear up any questions:

FERNLEY, Nev. — A third party was allegedly involved in the recruiting gone bad of Fernley High School offensive lineman Kevin Hart, the Lyon County sheriff’s office said.

Hart, in a report taken Saturday by deputies, claims someone calling himself Kevin Riley represented himself as a recruiter — a middle man to big-time college football programs — and led the 6-foot-5, 290-pounder and his family to believe there were scholarship offers available when there were none.

Deputy Dan Lynch said the report alleges a crime of obtaining money under false pretenses, though finding a suspect could be difficult.

Easy answers to questions:

1. A person by the name of “Kevin Reilly” fooled Hart.

2. Hart paid him money to act in the capacity of acting as a middle man between Hart and big time college programs.

3. The police involvement is due to that payment.

The only question I have left is how much did he pay him? It seems that this mysterious person on the phone would have to be an idiot to get caught, so we’ll probably never hear from him again. Read below for the whole story.

- Warsh

Published in:  on at 12:26 pm Comments (5)
Tags: , ,

Kevin Hart – Victim of the Most Evil College Football Recruiting Prank of All Time?

Warsh Sports

EDIT: Ok, so now it is known that Kevin Hart was, in fact, lying. But I’m not one for revisionist history, so ill leave this up. At least, in my defense, the first two quotes that I took as facts were simply incorrect – this won’t be a police matter, and I find it false that the student, town, coach and team look equally “not pretty”. The coach looks bad, the town and team didn’t have anything to do with it, and the kid looks like a complete lunatic. You can read the final update here.

While it obviously doesn’t happen often, sometimes I read something and think to myself “I need to share this with the hundreds of people who find this blog each day while working from their living rooms googling things.” This is undoubtedly one of those cases. I read a simple news story on ESPN.com with wild ramifications, if simple logical thought is applied to the facts in the case. Here they are – a high school senior, Kevin Hart, declared today, on national signing day, that he had chosen to play football at Cal over Oregon. Hart told this to a gym full of reporters, fans, and TV people. National signing day is the much hyped end of the college football recruiting process, the first day a player can “sign” a letter of intent to play at the school that hooked him up the most on his visit. However, in the case of Kevin Hart, there was no offer to accept. Both Cal and Oregon say they never recruited Hart. Which sounds like a case of a kid being an idiot, until we get this quote: “They really sold me,” Hart said, according to USA Today. “Cal Coach [Jeff] Tedford and I talked a lot, and the fact that the head coach did most of the recruiting of me kind of gave me the real personal experience.” Based on this quote, we have 2 possibilities.

1. Kevin Hart made all of this up for attention.

2. People impersonating college coaches pretended to recruit Kevin to these schools, in one of the most ridiculous pranks of all time.

I think we would all assume that number one is very probable. But, shockingly, it doesn’t appear that way. Look at the rest of these quotes:

Quote 1:

Now, it’s a “law enforcement investigation,” said Fernley football coach Mark Hodges, according to the newspaper.

“This is involving law enforcement and may involve other departments, other than the NCAA, that are bigger than local.”

–NOTE that he says “bigger than local”…which I will deduct to mean law enforcement at the State or Federal level. Would a kid making up that he got recruited be a state offense? I’m saying certainly not. People would say “you’re an asshole” and move on – its not a crime to make up shit about yourself. If it was, Rich would be doing consecutive life sentences right now.

Quote 2:

In a blog for the Reno newspaper, reporter Chris Gabel wrote: “I am told the ending is not going to be pretty. Not for the kid, coach, school or town.”

Interesting. So, unless all those entities were involved in a hilarious joke on the local media-as they are the only ones who get embarrassed if hes making it up, thanks to stories like this one – its looking more and more like option number 2 (elaborate prank with Kevin Hart as the victim).

Quote 3:

“Although only in a preliminary stage, the district’s investigation to date has been unable to verify that Kevin Hart was ever offered an athletic scholarship or letter of intent to play football by the University of California, University of Oregon, University of Nevada, Washington University or Oklahoma State University.”

Now, this is where things get ridiculous. Why would this district spokesperson mention three other specific universities unless Kevin Hart thought he got an offer from them? I’m not categorically ruling out that Hart fictionalized all this, simply because hes a random person, and I’ve learned that random people will always be doing ridiculous things, but the evidence simply doesn’t back it up. It really looks like someone or some people impersonated 5 different major college football coaches specifically to mess with this one high school kid. I will be like Geraldo out in those bomb fields with this story, reporting directly from the front lines if anything happens.

- Warsh

Published in:  on February 5, 2008 at 5:53 pm Comments (7)
Tags: ,

Playoffs?

 

Warsh Sports
I would have to say the odds of the Phillies winning the NL East were pretty close to the odds of someone who writes for this blog receiving an offer to write for someplace bigger after about 2 weeks. Easily two of the most astonishing things to happen lately. The Phillies surge/the mets collapse was one thing, but Rich writing for some “official” website? He told me about it a week or so ago, and at no point did I believe him until I read the actual article. Now it seems that the Phils’ “road to the world series” was in fact a circular driveway, depositing the team right back into “we’ll get them next season” mode and the fans right back into “fuck the phillies” mode. Usually when the Phils season ends, which for the past 15 years was the last week of september (but this year, this extra special year, was 4 days after that), everyone just continues following the Eagles, gladly cheering the victories as another NFC East title got closer and closer. This year is some sort of perverse twist on that usual scenario. The Philles are the division champs, the Eagles are sucking. The only problem is this year (if the Phils lose this series…even though I’m positive Jamie Moyer will come up huge in game 3) the Phils will have already blown their title hopes while Donovan hobbles through loss after loss on Sunday. The sports landscape is completely barren. Even college…Nova broke everyone’s hearts a couple years ago (except me…Fuck Nova), and isn’t getting the stud recruits necessary for a title run. The rest of the Philly teams are between “poor” and “well coached but absolutely awful to watch”. Which is why, this morning, I thought about possibly watching the Flyers this year. They were always my favorite sports team when I was younger, and I figure that all it requires is changing the channel from sportscenter in the background while I’m on my computer over to CSN for the game. I think I could get that done. They moved to a strong 1-0 last night in Calgary, clad in their brilliant orange and crisp white unis.

- Warsh

Published in:  on October 5, 2007 at 9:01 am Leave a Comment

And Ronaldinho Has Conjured a Piece of Magic!

Danny Sports

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while… something called school sort of got in the way. Anywho, after finishing my schoolwork I decided it was time for me to make my latest contribution to the Trifecta. This post is going to be about futbol, or for our American readers, about soccer. There are two things you should know before reading this post. First, if you haven’t watched a fair amount of soccer there is a good chance you’re not going to understand the relevancy of anything that I wrote in this post. Secondly, I firmly believe that soccer is the single most important sport in the world. Notice I certainly did not say my favorite; I said the most important. I know America has its superstars but the only one with legitimate global influence is Tiger Woods. You may argue that stars like Lebron and Kobe have some global power but they don’t even compare to players like Ronaldinho and Cristiano Ronaldo (perhaps the most talented athlete on the planet).

However, the reason for writing this post has nothing to do with star power, or the popularity of soccer, it’s all about the rules. Of all the major sports in the world: basketball, baseball, rugby, tennis, etc. soccer is the only one with serious flaws in the basic rules of the game. I believe that with three simple amendments, they could make the game more legitimate and more enjoyable to watch. Here we go.

Rule change #1: The penalty kick

The penalty mark is simply too close to the goal. It’s not fair. At all. What percentage of penalty kicks result in goals? 90%? 95%? I couldn’t find any sort of statistics on this but it has to be somewhere around there. Essentially, as long as a player does not kick the ball over the crossbar or directly at the goalie, they will score. That’s just the way it is in soccer. The goalie guesses a direction and dives. More often than not they are wrong and the goal is scored, or if they even do manage to guess correctly they still usually can’t come up with the save. Absurd. In a game that puts such a premium on scoring just one goal, how can you hand a team a point so easily? If you are a soccer watcher, how many questionable calls have you seen made in the box that gave teams penalty kicks? With only one referee trying to cover a 120 yard field and line judges that are trying to make calls at terrible angles, too many calls are botched.

Watch this video and tell me you disagree. This was a World Cup game! Decided because a referee was not able to get in a good position to make a call. Actually, it may be a foul, but a foul worth giving Italy a game winning penalty kick in the 93rd minute? I think not. By the way, for those who are not soccer fans Italy went on the win the World Cup.

Solution: Move the penalty kick spot back. Way back. Find a spot where the player would make perhaps 65-70% of penalty kicks taken. This brings me to my next problem.

Rule change #2: Get the damn ref some help!

Ok, lets look at this one statistically. An NBA court is 4,700 square feet (take my word for it, I did the math myself). An average sized international soccer pitch is about 67,500 square feet. How many refs are there for a basketball game? 3. How many refs are there for a soccer game? 3 (one on the field and one on each sideline. Please don’t write a comment that there is a fourth official, I know there is but he doesn’t actually do anything while the game is in progress). Does this make any sense?

Solution: Add another referee. (I am also an advocate of adding instant replay on the goal line for questionable goals, but I will not give that its own category). Having a referee in a better position can only help to make the calls more accurate. After all isn’t that what refereeing all boils down to? Getting the calls right.

Rule change #3: The clock.

This one has been a thorn in my side ever since I started complaining to people about the shortcomings of soccer. Have you ever watched the last ten minutes of a soccer game where one goal made the difference? How many times have you seen this happen? Ball goes out of play for a goal kick for the leading team. Goalie walks over to the ball, accidentally kicks it trying to pick it up, walks over to the ball, picks up the ball, walks back onto the field, sets up the ball, calls over another player to talk about their lunch plans for the following day, and then, two minutes later, puts the ball back in play. I’m seriously not exaggerating, except for the lunch part of course. Or what about this scenario: A team is leading by one goal with five minutes to play. There is a soft foul and play is stopped. Instead of getting up and continuing play, the players roll around like they have just been stabbed in the throat. Clearly they are not hurt. The training crew comes on and sprays some sort of nonsense on their “injury”; they get up, and continue to run at full speed. However, a full minute or two has been taken of the clock.

Solution: Stop the damn clock when the ball goes out of play! It works for every other sport. Start the clock at 45 minutes and count down like a normal sport and stop the clock when play stops! Don’t give me that mumbo jumbo about disturbing the flow of the game. The players wouldn’t even know the clock was stopping and restarting, they would still just play. Then, players wouldn’t pretend they were hurt, or stall for time at the end of the game. Several people have responded with, “well, don’t be down by one with ten minutes left.” I’m sorry, this is not a relevant argument. Soccer is a 90 minute game and thus, there should be 90 minutes of play. Then we could also get rid of injury time, perhaps the dumbest thing in all of professional sports. When the game is over, its over. Not at some arbitrary time that the referee decides.

I hope that it doesn’t appear that I am ripping soccer with reckless abandon. I love soccer. I watch whenever there is a good game on. Also, as Clinton was kind enough to remind me, the officiating was “uniquely awful” this past world cup. Soccer is certainly the most beautiful of all the major sports (if you disagree just watch this Cristiano Ronaldo highlight clip). However, when players act hurt, dive, stall, and are given penalty kicks on soft fouls it ruins the world’s most popular sport. FIFA, I implore you! Make these changes! Maybe name one after me? You could call the second referee the “Ritterman Referee”. That has a nice ring to it.

- Dan

Published in:  on September 27, 2007 at 1:55 pm Comments (1)
Tags: , , , ,
« Older Entries