That douche Nomar was WOAT at this.



Part of me wants to not get mad about this b/c I'm guessing it's a legit OCD thing with him but it still angered me beyond belief watching this clown every October grandstand between every pitch. And there are a lot of hitters like him. Not this extent maybe but really bad.

Absolutely. So sick of watching Russel Wilson and Alex Smith run around and then throw it out of bounds. Just an awful rule. Don't even understand the rationale, a QB is more vunerable standing in the pocket than rolling out.

Also if they scrapped the rule, qbs would still be welcome to avoid hits by throwing it away. Theyd just be losing yards doing it. No different from sliding to avoid hits really.

the end result is going to be a lot of games decided on sketchy intentional incompletions that kinda were towards someone calls

Meh, you just don't call it unless it's obv. When was the last time you saw intentional grounding called that you didn't think was legit, unless the contentious bit was whether he was out of the pocket or not?

Hurling the ball vaguely in the direction of a teammate carries a substantial interception risk, that would be enough incentive for QBs not to just try to dodge the grounding rule by doing that.

Edit: Also it's hard for intentional grounding calls to literally "decide games", unlike say shady DPI calls where it happens basically every week.

All these touchbacks suck. If the ball sails long and lands out of bounds, touchback to the 25. Has to land in the end zone. Give kickers incentive not to just boot it long. If it does land in the end zone, touchback to the 15 is the guy's option.

Moving the kickoffs up really has made it easier to not watch the kickoffs. Takes the drama out of the last couple plays of the game. Music City Miracle never could have happened.

Maybe the kickoffs should be moved back in the 4Q?

it happens every week because the definition of DPI and various other defensive secondary penalties has been expanded a lot over recent years, and now you are looking to expand the scope of grounding just as much.

the norm will become a qb running out to escape pressure and instead of out of bounds just chuck it hard and low into the ground some distance in front of a receiver, everyone will know there was no legitimate effort to complete a pass and it will be on the refs to judge if he got the ball close enough to fake it

this was a joke right?

i was coming to say ****can the game and just play the last two minutes of each half. would work fine for both football and basketball.

neither game is the actual sport in the final 2 mins anyway.

Other than #Thinman, who #isbadandshouldfeelbad?

Here's one I'd like.

Under 2 minutes (maybe more) if a defensive player attempts to stay on a tackled guy to run clock, snap 15 yard flag. Either that or the clock stops until people are safety unpiled.

Tricky because it involves some interpretation on the ref, and you don't want to encourage people quickly and risk injury, but I really, really hate this tactic.

Getting rid of grounding rules all together would be so much better. You want a sack, ****ing sack the quarterback.

Currently there's way too much open to interpretation. A WR runs the wrong route and the QB can get called for grounding, the ball slips out a guys hand, etc. When you're asking the refs to interpret intent, you're asking too much imo.

This is the same as like half the penalties in the NFL though. For instance the norm is for blockers to engage in some level of holding and then it's up to the refs to decide whether it crossed the line. You're just more used to that.

An expanded grounding rule isn't as bad as that because it only needs to be called when blatant. An outside the pocket grounding rule only called when completely beyond dispute would be preferable to the current total lack of outside the pocket grounding rule.

Something similar happened in Aussie Rules Football like a decade or two ago. In most circumstances when the ball goes out of bounds it gets put back in with a throw-in where both sides have equal chance to gain possession. As a result teams with a lead in the last 5 mins would just smash it out of bounds to waste time, ruining the game. A deliberate out of bounds rule was introduced, making it a foul to knock the ball out of bounds for no purpose other than to put the ball out of play. In other words if you have to knock the ball away from opponents and the only direction to do it is towards the boundary, that's fine. But if you have options and you smash it out of bounds, it's a foul. This is obviously completely subjective, but it only gets called when beyond dispute, so it doesn't matter.

It's the same with the rule in soccer where the keeper can't pick the ball up if it was deliberately passed back to them by a teammate, a rule also introduced to prevent timewasting. The definition of "deliberately" is entirely subjective. If a teammate just hammers the ball away from an attacker and it happens to fall within range of the keeper, it's OK to pick it up.

Both these rules are completely subjective rules introduced to prevent strategies that were ruining the watchability of the game, and both did a fine job without a game ever being decided by one that I can remember.

This sounds like a good idea for making defence more irrelevant than it already is.

These are both mistakes by the offence. Offence makes a mistake = might get penalised is a problem how?

I guess where I think you're wrong is that I don't want to expand "the scope of grounding" in the sense you mean. DPI has been expanded in the same way as roughing the passer ("Personal foul, breathing on the QB, 15 yard penalty, automatic first down"). I want to expand the situations in which the rule applies, but NOT expand the scope in terms of how easily refs pull the trigger in calling it. I'd want it to be blatant to be called, so it wouldn't take over the game the way DPI calls have.

The NFHS high school rule for intentional grounding is a good one. Was the QB under pressure when he threw the ball? If yes, was there an eligible receiver in the area? If not, then intentional grounding. No pocket rule, no pass going beyond the line of scrimmage rule.

It looks weird because the flag is thrown extremely late after a conference between the covering official and the referee.

one man's blatant is another's not even close, just look at the nd/fsu game

its not a bad rule in theory but in practice i expect it would be

1) laying on an offensive player is already delay of game, is it not?
B) you dont need to step out of the box to look at the third base coach, anf the time it takes the catcher to throw ut back and the pitcher to get ready is enough to get your signals. Thats assuming batters are getting signals every pitch.

Punters and place kickers salaries don't count against the salary cap. Really dumb to not have the best kickers in the league because of veteran minimums and some teams needing to clear up cap space

No it doesn't. Dids is talking about the stats here. You don't get a sack if you cause an IG. I guess you get credited with a pressure but I'm not even sure those are official.

But whether or not the guy gets a sack, or an IG is called, has nothing to do with the relevancy of the defense. Because both results are caused by defensive pressure.

I'm not talking about the stats.

I see IG way too subject to interpretation right now. Much easier to just make it black and white- you either sack the guy or you don't. If he's WIMSONy enough to get a throw to nobody off, go him, sack better next time.

It is in theory, but never called and if it is I think that's only a 5 yarder? I'd prefer to see things in place (leaning much more towards clock stopping) than just eliminate the practice all together.

Intentional grounding in the last 2 minutes has to come with a 10 second runoff. Getting to avoid a hit on the QB and stop the clock is a reward, not a punishment since the penalty only gets spotted where the sack would have been with no additional penalty yardage.

It is already. The Bills got a 10 second run-off on an intentional grounding against Minnesota a few weeks back.

Professional Bowling is actually going to try something that belongs in this thread--they are changing the way bowling is scored.

Details here:
http://news.pba.com/post/2014/10/23/...t-WSOB-VI.aspx

Current scoring is 10 frames. You get the number of pins you knock down in a frame, with additional pin count from your next ball if you get a spare and additional count from your next two balls if you get a strike. Not the most intuitive scoring system in the world, but been in place for over a century.

New scoring system: match play. Each frame is scored individually. If you strike and your opponent doesn't, you win the frame. If neither of you strike, but you knock down more pins on your first ball, you win the frame. Otherwise the frame is halved. Whoever wins the most frames wins the match.

Traditional bowling score really does reward stringing strikes and punishes those that don't. New system probably serves to keep things closer/more entertaining, which makes sense if you want to push bowling as a thing people watch on TV.

Seems OK from a spectator point of view, but for a sports that's mostly recreational, I don't like it.