4 of My Least Favorite Rules in Sports

Starting Field Position in Overtime in College Football.

In College Football, if a game is tied after regulation has been played, they go into Overtime, which is good so that a winner can be determined after each team has played for about 3 hours of real time. Each team gets a chance to attempt to score either a touchdown or a field goal and if they score more then their opponent on their chance, they win the game. What I don’t like is that each team starts at the opponents 25 yard line, which already puts them in position to kick a reasonable field goal – yes at the college level, a 42 yard field goal (you take the current position and add 17 yards because of the end zone and where the holder stands) is longer then at the pro level, but a lot of players can make it, or at least if the team gains just 5 yards for example, now it is a fairly short 37 yard attempt. I think this gives teams too easy of a way out for failing to do anything with their possession.

I would prefer for teams to actually have to gain some real yards to get into field goal range. With offenses the way they are, 25 yards is just too short. I think starting from midfield (the 50) or even “their” 40 yard line would be much better. If the team can gain 30-40 yards, then get stopped, now they can go for a field goal – not just have a field goal attempt handed to them.

5 minute Overtime in Hockey

They play 60 minutes of regulation with many scores of 2-1, 3-2, etc. and then just 5 minutes is supposed to be enough time for a goal? I do like the 4 on 4 skating at least, but I would prefer 10 minutes of OT – for those who say that would take too long, it would fairly often then end the need for the shootout, which takes over 5 minutes itself. On average, you would probably increase game times by about a minute or two.

Personally I would prefer to see a “team” win a game instead of the game being decided in a shootout where there are just goal scorers and goalies, no defense, and no skilled passers, etc. I don’t dislike shootouts so much as I would just prefer the number of them that were required to decide a game to be reduced.

Kickoff field position in pro football.

They changed the rule so that now kickoffs in pro football are at the 35 yard line. With pro quality kickers, this creates many touchbacks and doesn’t allow for many kick returns. Kick returns can be some of the most exciting plays in all of sports. They wanted to reduce returns because of the risk of injury on the plays, but there are some issues with that:

1. There are still kick returns sometimes. If they are thought to be too risky why are they allowed at all? In reality, there is injury risk to any play in football. Just reducing the kickoff returns in a game from say 6 to 2 there can still be a serious injury on one of the two returns in that example!

2. It only protects players who are in on kick returns – not Quarterbacks, most Running Backs, Wide Receivers, and so on. And in effect, you might end up with more injuries happening to those players as offenses almost always start from their own 20 yard line now, instead of for example, starting from the 35 or 50 after a good return!

Dropped 3rd strike in baseball.

This one I really don’t get or like. If you strike out on a pitch that then gets away from the catcher, you can run to first base and if you make it there before you are thrown out by the catcher you are safe at first. Why are batters rewarded for swinging and missing at bad pitches?

Yes, sometimes the pitch may have been OK, but just dropped by the catcher, but often they are bad pitches way down in the dirt or way outside. So if the batter isn’t very good and swings and misses at a pitch that was way out of the zone, he can be rewarded if the catcher drops the ball, and he can get to first base? I guess it just doesn’t seem right that if the batter instead had a 1-0 count for example and he takes the pitch and the catcher drops the ball, the count just goes to 2-0 for example. Baseball seems to be rewarding bad play and good luck on the batters part. Maybe I am missing something here?

So in summary, those are some rules that I think could really be improved upon in some of the major team sports out there. These are my opinion only and I’m sure plenty of people disagree, but there are probably others who feel the way I do as well on some of these points.


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