Most sports were invented years ago, Scott Adams(Dilbert) notes, and much has changed since then:
Equipment technology has improved. We have far more knowledge of health risks. Our attention spans have shrunk, and our options for leisure activities have increased. If you were to invent the rules of sports today, from a blank slate, you would do a lot of things differently.
For example, when tennis was invented, serving was just a way to start the rally. One player bunted the ball into the service box and it was on.
Fast-forward to 2014.
Now the pros are 6’8″, their rackets and strings are made from exotic materials, and they are trained to serve at 140 miles per hour. As you might imagine, that creates a lot of double-faults and aces. Both are boring.
To fix tennis, eliminate the serve. That is already happening where I live. A group of folks in my town already play without the serve. Under the no-serve rules either player can start the rally and the point is live on the third hit. You play to 21, win by two, so no more funky tennis scoring with the 15-30-40 ridiculousness. This version of tennis is about twice as fun as playing serve-and-miss while wishing you were getting some exercise.
In 2014 we know a lot about the dangers of concussions. Football wouldn’t be allowed as a youth sport if it were invented today. Soccer players wouldn’t be allowed to head the ball for the same reason. So let’s get rid of football entirely, at least for kids, and make it a penalty to head a soccer ball.
Speaking of soccer, if we invented that game today the goals would be 50% wider to create more scoring and there would be TV timeouts built into the game design so the major networks could more easily monetize with commercials. And the off-side rule has to go; that is just boring. And while we are at it, let’s put up a glass wall around the field so the ball stays in play.
Baseball could be interesting if it were slow-pitch and any ball hit out of the park were ruled an out. I might add another player to the outfield, but the idea is to have lots of hits and lots of defense. In the age of smartphones, no one has the patience to watch nine guys standing around in the grass wondering when something might happen.
Volleyball has one of the most ridiculous rules in sports. The players need to rotate positions after every point. The well-coached teams do a quick, synchronized rotation as soon as the serve is hit to get into the positions they prefer instead of the positions the game rules require. Let’s just lose the player rotation rule.
Golf also needs to be fixed. The main problem is that 18 holes is far too much time commitment and 9 holes seem too little. I hear that 12-hole courses are being built for exactly that reason. That makes sense in 2014.
Another thing that golf needs to lose is the annoying foursome behind you that makes you feel rushed and guilty. I don’t know how to fix that in an economically way, but it sure would improve the game if someone did.
The serve, as the most important shot in the game, peaked about 20 years ago. The ideal height is not 6-8, but 6-2 — Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Samprass. One could even argue the serve isnt dominant enough! Watch Nadal And Djokovic hit 20+ ball rallies for 5 hours on grass. Comparing club players to pros makes no sense. The dominant strategy switches from last to fuck up to first to hit a winner as skill increases.
The offside rules and the goal limitation make football more uncertain and make it possible that poorer teams can win or tie sometimes.
If we had a 10-point shot from half-court and a 20-point shot from 3/4-court in basketball the game would speed up. But, if it was all the same speed, that might get dull. Sports tend to have a lot of accumulated experience of what would make the game better or worse. Scott just had a column to write.
And quidditch needs to lose the snitch.
“Buy… a… clock. It would be a lot fairer than having the game sometimes end after ten minutes and sometimes not end for hours, and the schedule would be a lot more predictable for the spectators, too.”
Cricket should be your go-to example for modifications to make a game more interesting. It has been shortened from a multi-day occurrence (the test match), to a one-day occurrence (the one-day), and then to a match that takes 3–4 hours (the Twenty20). The compression has been for obvious reasons and has occurred primarily by limiting the amount of overs (6 balls bowled) from no limit, to 50 a side, and then to 20 a side, in the test, one day, and Twenty20 respectively.
I would eliminate the off side and icing nonsense in hockey, too.
As to football, you could solve the injury problems by eliminating the pads and helmets. This would force a more tentative tackling and blocking styles and would really open up the game.
Perhaps Adams should stick to video games…
Gamers see rules as a line to challenge. Game strategies are like fads in that they rise in popularity, then fall as new strategies are developed to counter them. Hence, “game”. Sometimes, a unique talent changes the game for a while.
Sports such as football are dying because the institutions built around them are too brittle to adapt to new consumption mediums and patterns.
Americans are fortunate that indigent kids can engage in the American dream and then make a social issue out of the risks inherent in the endeavor. They might otherwise grow up to engage in safe occupations, like welding, diving, construction, public safety, trucking, soldiering, etc.
I pretty much agree with what you say, Eli, but how do you figure that football is “dying”? It’s a religion where I live…
Soccer would be far more dangerous if headers were banned. Every corner kick into the box would result in a bunch of players kicking high at the ball spiking each other in the face.
Americans always have brilliant ideas to improve soccer but they know nothing about the game so those ideas are always terrible.
Also, the idea of eliminating the offside rule in hockey makes me want to henceforth call the zone demarcation as “Chesterton’s blue line”.
The most boring part of professional basketball is the waiting… Waiting until the end of the game when it becomes more critical to have more points on the board. Get rid of the tedious 30 second rule, which is intended to get rid of the waiting. (You might remember the NCAA games of the 1970′s which often devolved into games of keep-away.)
Instead, a pro or college game of basketball would consist of five games to 21 by twos, fouls are one point, first to 21 wins. Winning three minigames out of five wins that contest, but league standings could be influenced by total minigames won.
If you want a game without an offsides rule, there’s Australian rules football. Of course, the field can be over 200 yards long.