Nobody Asked Me But … Here’s How to Fix Penalties in Football

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by percivalhenry in Nobody Asked Me But ..., Sports

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(Since I’m blogging in London I’m calling it football, not soccer. Sorry, ‘merica).

(photo courtesy Clark Parker/TheTokyoFiles.com)

I was a (very) casual football fan for years but since moving to the U.K. three years ago, I’ve paid much closer attention to the sport. And while most of it is just fine, I’m troubled by the role played by penalties.

Penalties are highly entertaining and, because they’re awarded by the referee, incredibly arbitrary. Many penalties that should be called are not, and many are called that shouldn’t be. Players flop and dive with abandon, hoping to win one. It is not one of the game’s more attractive aspects.

The problem is the disproportionate role penalties can play, given their capricious nature. While an NBA referee will blow some calls, costing a team one or two points, they tend to get evened out in a game where both teams are likely to score in the hundreds. In the English Premier League last year, teams averaged a 2.7 goals a game (that’s a combined 2.7 goals) and more than 60 percent of the matches were decided by one goal (or were draws). In that context, penalties can, and often will, decide the outcome.

Penalties aren’t automatic (just ask Jason Puncheon) but they’re close: players convert on 85 percent of them, on average. That’s better than the NBA’s average free-throw rate.

Here’s how to fix it:

1, Let the punishment fit the crime

Penalty takers are so successful in part because of who takes them: very often the team’s best scorer. There’s no rule specifying who takes the penalty, so naturally the most gifted shooter lines up. This both pads the scoring statistics for strikers (bizarrely, the records don’t distinguish between earned goals and penalties) and undermines the whole logic of the punishment. If the penalty is an attempt to compensate teams for lost scoring opportunity, then shouldn’t the player who lost the chance take the shot? In other words, shouldn’t the punishment fit the crime?

A minimum fix to the problem of penalties would be to require the fouled player to take the shot. If he’s too injured to take it – unlikely, given that he may not have been touched in the first place – then he should come off the field for a substitute. It wouldn’t make a big dent in the success rate, but at least justice will be served. (The same logic applies to free kicks, as well.)

2, Move the penalty mark back two yards

Sports need to adapt to changing conditions, and can’t be too rooted to traditions. If baseball can raise and lower the pitchers mound, football can tinker with the penalty mark. Another two yards will give the keeper a fraction of a second longer to block the shot, and help even the odds. If that doesn’t work, move it back four yards.

3, Stop counting penalties in the scoring statistics

This is more of a philosophical point than remedy, but it would help remind fans (and the wildly celebrating players) that scoring a penalty kick isn’t the same as scoring a goal. A few weeks ago Wayne Rooney scored his 50th goal for England to become the nation’s all-time leader … on a penalty. It shouldn’t count. While the outcome of a walk is the same as a single (going back to baseball), they’re not the same and aren’t treated as such in the stats. Last year, Sergio Aguero of Manchester City won the Golden Boot with 26 goals. Only in the fine print does it say he scored five of them on penalties.

4, Institute retroactive red cards

This isn’t a new idea, but it’s a good one. To crack down on diving, football should institute a tribunal that examines video after the game. If a player is found faking a foul, he should be given a red card for his next match. (Some noble fans argue the game should be paused to assess the foul as they occur. You can sign their petition here). The NBA has a very mild version of this in place to clamp down on flopping. Stiff penalties for diving means there will be less of it, and referees, having more confidence that they’re making the right decisions, will be more likely to call the legitimate fouls. It may not reduce the number of penalties, but it will make them less arbitrary.

Nobody Asked Me But … Here are Three Ways to Improve the NFL

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by percivalhenry in Nobody Asked Me But ..., Sports

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football, London, NFL

The National Football League is a sports and entertainment juggernaut, but it’s far from perfect. Here are three things it could do to improve the product.

1, Let quarterbacks deflate the ball.

Let me be clear here: if Tom Brady and the Patriots knowingly broke the rules, they should be punished. But no one has explained to my satisfaction the purpose of the rule. What harm is there in letting a quarterback adjust the ball so it’s easier to throw? Why not let teams inflate it to their preferred level? If both teams can do it, is any team gaining an advantage? While basketball and soccer teams share possession of the ball and might differ on what the proper pressure should be, a football is overwhelmingly possessed by one team (and a deflated football is probably easier to catch, and therefore intercept, anyway). And unlike other forms of tinkering with sports equipment, like corking bats and using stickum, deflating balls is self regulating: if you lower the pressure by too much, it’s harder to throw. So the amount of variance between balls will always be modest. In sports, the fewer rules, the better, and this one’s unnecessary. Here’s my proposal: let teams try it next preseason. I bet no one would notice a difference.

2, Expand the season to 18 games.

Here’s the catch: Make the season 18 games, but mandate that no player can play more than 16 games a season. To make this work, I’d eliminate the bye week, and expand the roster from 53 to 60. An 18-game season has all sorts of benefits. The NFL gets the two extra games it wants, giving it more product to sell to networks, and each team gets one more home game (which will pay for the additional players). Fans get more games, and they get a new wrinkle in strategy, as coaches must weigh which teams to sit their best players against. Coaches get to see backups play in meaningful situations. Players get more rest (and forced rest, so there can be no accusations of being soft for sitting out a game) and with expanded rosters, there are more jobs. The integrity of the 16-game season is preserved, so individual records are still meaningful. It’s a win-win-win-win. The only hitch: I can’t see teams carrying two kickers and punters, so I might waive the 16-game rule for those positions.

3, Move the Jaguars to London.

This is more of a prediction than recommendation, as it looks like it may happen, but it makes sense and the league should do it. (Disclosure: I live in London). The Jaguars have signed up to play one game in London every year from 2013 through 2017, and while the games are purportedly to build an international fan base (and somehow entice Londoners to games in northeast Florida) it’s clear that the league is laying the groundwork for moving the franchise. Jacksonville’s owner, Shad Khan, already has a foothold in the U.K., owning the Fulham soccer team. The NFL has eyed Europe hungrily for decades, even sponsoring the ill-fated World League of American Football (Amsterdam Admirals, anyone?). They want this to happen. Jacksonville isn’t the smallest NFL market (that would be Green Bay), nor are they worst at drawing fans. But the team is the third NFL franchise in its state, and arguably the sixth most popular football team (trailing the Dolphins, Bucs and three college programs). Weighed against being the sole team in a city of 8.6 million (10 times Jacksonville’s population) and on a continent of 400 million, it seems a no brainer.

There are obstacles. One is the Jaguars stadium lease with the city Jacksonville, which locks them in until 2027 (this article has the details). But if the team and the NFL wanted them to move, I suspect it would happen. Then there’s scheduling. While the flights from the East Coast of the U.S. to London are long (six to eight hours, depending on the direction), it’s similar to a flight Miami to Seattle. The bigger problem is the time zone difference, which is five hours between the East Coast of the U.S. and London, and eight from the West Coast. Making that adjustment eight times a season (or nine, if you adopt my first suggestion) would be brutal for the Jaguars and competitive disadvantage. But here’s how to make it palatable: schedule two road trips of four and five games long. The team would spend the duration in the US, then come back for a four or five game home stand, minimizing the number of transatlantic flights. Visiting teams would only have to make the trip once a year, and it could be done to so it’s the week after a bye or before a Monday game.

Would fans in London turn out? I think so. The NFL is now selling out 90,000 seat Wembley three games a year. They would need to fill it five (or six) more times, which wouldn’t be hard once fans had a home town to support (and the team could eventually move into a smaller stadium of their own). A winning product would help, but the initial novelty would sustain it for a few years. Look at the support for NYC FC, a fledgling soccer team, in New York. It had a fan club before it played a game. I suspect the reaction would be similar for an American sports product going th other way.

But they may not need to sell out to be a success for the league. The NFL last year experimented with a 2:30 p.m. London kickoff, meaning fans on the East Coast could watch the games at 9:30. a.m. Ratings were good, and this year all three games will have the early kick off. Having a full slate of morning games would give the NFL more inventory, which could be sold as a separate TV package (as suggested by ProFootballTalk here).

Ultimately, I think this will happen, even if the Jaguars have to wait until 2027, and a London franchise may be the first of four teams in Europe, enough to create another division and ease some of the travel burden. And the Super Bowl winners can finally claim to be world champions.

The Regular Season Champion

21 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by percivalhenry in Sports

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baseball, football, sports

The 2001 Seattle Mariners may be the best baseball team of my lifetime. Led by Ichiro Suzuki – a veteran from Japan in his MLB rookie year – Edgar Martinez and Bret Boone, they won a record 116 games. But they are a footnote in baseball history because they didn’t win the World Series. They fell in the American League Championship Series, four games to two, to the New York Yankees. (That Yankees team, at the tail end of their dynasty years, eventually lost to Arizona in a dramatic seventh game of the World Series.)

The 2007 New England Patriots may be the best football team of my lifetime. They were the first team ever to go 16-0 in the regular season, but because they lost to the Giants – a 10-6 Wild Card team – in the Super Bowl they’re mostly remembered as team that couldn’t seal the deal.

This year’s World Series will be contested between two Wild Card teams not good enough to win one of their league’s three divisions. The San Francisco finished 88-74, tied for the fourth best record in the National League. The Kansas City Royals, at 89-73, were also fourth in the AL, and nine games back of the Angels. Since 2000, just three World Series champions had the best record in baseball.

In American sports, the championship is the point. We don’t much care how you got there. With the advent of multiple rounds of playoffs, and the introduction of wild card teams, the regular season is now just an extended throat clearing before the main event. It’s only purpose – outside of selling tickets, of course – is to establish seedings for all-important post season tournament. And the seedings rarely matter.

It’s particularly problematic in baseball. Post-season football is pretty much like regular season football – teams play once a week, the same strategies apply – but post-season baseball is a different sport. Teams built to play 162 games now have to win one game at a time. The regular season rewards organizational depth, 5-man rotations and harboring resources. Savvy managers will throw an inferior pitcher to rest a better one, sacrificing one game now to win two or three later. In the post season, pitchers throw with short rest, rotations shrink to three and there’s no value in saving your reliever for tomorrow when there might not be a tomorrow.

Imagine taking the first 10 finishers in the Olympic marathon and having them run a 400 meter sprint. The winner gets the gold medal.

My solution: Give a trophy to the regular season champion.

I’m not suggesting getting rid of the post season. I’m saying let’s acknowledge the accomplishment of finishing the season with the best record. Let’s reward excellence.

Giving out two trophies in a season might seem unorthodox, but that’s standard practice in international soccer. Teams in the English Premier League compete for multiple championships over the course of the season: along with the regular season winner, there’s the Football Association tournament and the League Cup. The best teams also compete in European-wide tournaments. Teams talk about winning multiple trophies, or silverware, and the best teams boast of wining the treble – three trophies in one season (last done by Manchester United in 1998-99).

This will not be an easy adjustment for U.S. sports fans. The National Hockey League gives the President’s Cup to the team with the best record. It you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. (It probably doesn’t help that the Stanley Cup is the most iconic trophy in North American sports).

Another obstacle: Unlike European sports, Americans leagues are broken up into leagues and divisions. You could hand out trophies for the best record in each league (or football conference) but I’d rather not. One trophy for the best record. Ties are broken by run (or point) differential.

So congratulations, you 2002 Oakland A’s, winners of 103 Moneyball games! Your efforts are rewarded. Well done, 2004 St. Louis Cardinals (105) and 1998 Atlanta Braves (106). The 1954 Cleveland Indians, winners of an astonishing 111 games in an 154-games season, finally get their championship banner. The 2009 and 1998 Yankees are double winners (and unfortunately, so are the 2013 and 2007 Red Sox).

And take a bow, 2001 Mariners. The best regular season of all time deserves a trophy.

Ranking Sports: The best National Football League team names

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by percivalhenry in Ranking Sports, Sports

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football, sports rankings

Since my rankings of baseball team names drew so much attention and ~~venomous vitriol~~ constructive criticism, I thought it was time to take another swing at it, this time with NFL team names. As a rule, football team names are more generic and have less local color than those in baseball. But there are a few gems, and one or two stinkers.

Again, this is an aesthetic, not scientific exercise. It represents only my taste. You may – and probably will – disagree with me. That’s cool. I’d love to see how others rank teams.

I’m using the same three basic criterion as I did for baseball:

* Originality. Sort of obvious, but I favor teams that don’t share a nickname with other teams, in any sport. It doesn’t matter to me if a team got its unoriginal name in some novel way; if they’re still called the Tigers or Pirates, it’s a hackneyed name.

* Geographic specificity. Does the name refer to something that’s unique or characteristic to the city or region? Would it be jarring if the team was relocated? (See: Utah Jazz)

* Unmarketability: I don’t like names that are designed to sell jerseys or appeal to teenagers. I like names that feel organic, and emerge from history.

I’m also adding a new criteria: Footballishness. This is hard to pin down (and can sometimes conflict with unmarketability), but a football team name should reflect the gritty, tough nature of the sport. The sweet, whimsical nicknames of baseball won’t cut it in football.

Note that I don’t always give these criterion equal weight. Unusual strength or weakness in one category may swamp the others.

Lastly, you’ll note I’ve only ranked 31 teams. I’ve omitted the Washington Redskins, whose name is so bad that it makes the distinctions between the others meaningless. In the Tour de France, the peaks are ranked by difficulty, with the highest mountain hors categorie – beyond categorization. The Redskins are hors categorie.

In reverse order this time:

31, Jacksonville Jaguars

Everything about the Jaguars seems focus-group tested and ad agency designed. “We need a ferocious animal that starts with a J. What’s available?” Even if Jaguars once prowled northern Florida, it would still be cheesy. It doesn’t help that half of U.S. sportscasters pronounce it “jag-wire.”

30, Arizona Cardinals

Here’s a good example of how a name that’s great in baseball doesn’t necessarily work in football. A cardinal is a pretty, shy bird – about as un-footballish as you can get. Even toughening up their logo didn’t help. It’s definitely unmarketable, and I guess they deserve credit for sticking with it after their moves from Chicago to St. Louis to Phoenix, but it still fails the originality and specificity tests.

29, Atlanta Falcons

Boring, generic and bland. “Falcons” sounds like the name assigned to fictional teams on TV and in movies. Could be from anywhere, playing any sport.

28, Kansas City Chiefs

I wrestled a bit about what to do with the Chiefs. According to my categories, they deserve a low ranking. But they also have the odious appropriation of Native American imagery, so perhaps they should join the Redskins in oblivion. But I think they are clearly not as bad as the Redskins, which is a straight-up racist insult. Chiefs, while goofy and insensitive, doesn’t suggest actual malice and could be easily tweaked to remove the Native American connotation.

27, New York Giants

As a Giants fan since 1986, it pains me to rank them so low. But I must. It’s not original (the baseball team had them beat by decades) and it’s not specific. The giants of Greek mythology do have an interesting origin. According to Hesiod, Chronos, the Titan, castrated his father, Uranus, and the drops of blood that spurt forth were raised by his mother Gaia into giants.

26, Carolina Panthers

Another big, mean cat. Yawn.

25, Detroit Lions

See above. For some reason, there aren’t nearly was many Lions in major U.S. sports as Tigers, Panthers, Cougars or (the worst) Wildcats. Penn State is the only other one I can think of (Columbia doesn’t count. I said major sports).

24, Tennessee Titans

More mythology. The Titans are a bit more interesting than Giants (and I like the nod to classicism in the logo). But aside from the ersatz Parthenon in Nashville, I’m not sure what the connection is between Tennessee and Ancient Greece. The franchise used to be a the Houston Oilers, which was a great name. This is not.

23, New York Jets

The Jets used to be the known as the Titans (not that it would help them here). They changed their name to the Jets when they began playing in Shea Stadium, near LaGuardia Airport, so they’ve got some local connection in their name, but it’s not very specific or unique (Winnipeg Jets, anyone?). Nor is it very footballish. It is a great name for headline writers, though, and fills out the New York troika of Mets, Nets and Jets nicely.

22, Indianapolis Colts

A storied franchise, an uninspired name. It’s equally at home in Indianapolis as it was in Baltimore, which is to say it has no local connection and could fit anywhere. If the name suggests anything besides young horses, it’s the Old West and Colt .45s. Their logo is kind of Old West-ish, too. That doesn’t make much sense in either Baltimore or Indianapolis.

21, St. Louis Rams

Another team that moved without any need to update its name. Never a good sign. Rams are unoriginal and unspecific, but it does have a good footballish quality. “Ram” is a great verb for the sport. I would have had them higher but I remembered that a ram, at the end of the day, is still a sheep.

20, Oakland Raiders

Great colors, great mascot but a mediocre name. If there’s something piratical about Northern California, I’m unaware of it. It does have a nice sound to it, though.

19, Chicago Bears

Heresy! you say. Sacrilege! What could be more footballish than the Chicago Bears? But great tradition is not a great name. There are lots of teams called the Bears (or Bruins), and bears could once be found everywhere in the U.S. As a name, it’s nothing special. (The Bears started life as the Decatur Staleys, which, needless to say, was a GREAT name.)

18, Dallas Cowboys

Despite my loathing of the Cowboys as a team and franchise, I couldn’t figure out how to rank them any lower. It’s really not that bad a name. Not very original, but definitely regionally specific. And not obviously marketable, either. The team gets far more mileage pushing its cheerleaders than its horrible mascot.

17, Cincinnati Bengals

Here’a team I wish I could rank higher. It’s original (even if it’s a derivative of the ubiquitous tiger mascot) and it’s the basis for one of the best helmets in the NFL (a subject for another list). But there are no more tigers in Cincinnati than there are in Detroit, and even if the team has been around for a while (and named after an even older Bengal team), the name does have the whiff of a marketing decision. If the team dropped the tiger motif and went with the Bengalis, they would score much higher in originality.

16, Denver Broncos

Broncos aren’t a huge improvement over Colts, but the name does make more sense in Denver than in Indianapolis. And Broncos are a more rugged version of horse. Like a lot of these names, it’s fine, but unexceptional.

15, Philadelphia Eagles

The connection to Philadelphia’s role in American history helps elevate the Eagles above the other generic flesh-ripping animals, but it’s still not a great name. There are a lot of Eagles out there.

14, Houston Texans

“Texans” is an odd choice for a name, so I sort of like it. It’s hard to imagine a team in any other state doing something similar. (The Columbus Ohioans? The Birmingham Alabamians?) It’s a naked appeal to Texas’s weird sense of state-patriotism (and is another nod to an earlier team), and is obviously local. Still, the Oilers were a great name and it’s too bad they didn’t revive that one.

13, New England Patriots

Definitely local, definitely original. Not obviously footballish (I tend to think of wizened men in powdered wigs like John Adams when I think of New England patriots). They did remedy that in their earlier logo with the burly, 18th century football player who they sadly replaced with the weird logo they use now. The name Patriots does sort of bug me, if only if it implies everyone else is not a patriot. But maybe I’m being too sensitive.

12, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Unlike a lot of pirate-type teams, the Buccaneers have some claim to the name because of Gasparilla, a legendary (and maybe fictional) pirate who raided the West Florida coast. Gasparilla is a big deal in Tampa, so the name is definitely steeped in local tradition. It has a snappy, footballish sound to it, too. I’d probably rank it higher if there weren’t so many pirate-themed names out there. Trivia: “buccaneer” derives from buccan, an Arawak word for the the wooden frame used to smoke meat.

11, San Diego Chargers

This is a great name, even if it’s not obvious what it means. The logo and mascot suggest something to do with electricity (some sort of battery, perhaps?), but a charger is also a medieval warhorse and a Dodge sedan. Charge is a great action verb for football, like ram. Apparently the team’s founder liked the name because it evoked soldiers charging after a bugle is sounded. If only it had something to do with San Diego …

10, Miami Dolphins

The Dolphins tick a lot of boxes for me. But it’s possible the real reason I like the name is it allows the team to use a dolphin wearing a football helmet as their mascot. Which is awesome.

9, Baltimore Ravens

I’m sure plenty of market analysis went into picking this name when the team changed its identity after moving from Cleveland in 1996. But it was an inspired choice, to the extent that it’s a reference to Edgar Allan Poe, who lived and died in Baltimore, and his most famous poem. Will there ever be another NFL team named for 19th century literature? Nevermore.

8, Seattle Seahawks

The last of the flesh-ripping animals (and the fifth bird) on the list. A sea hawk is really an osprey, which would have been a fine choice, too, but it wouldn’t have the nice alliteration of Seattle Seahawks. It’s a good name: original and regionally specific. Bonus points for the great mascot (note to Chiefs: That’s how you do Native American imagery).

7, Cleveland Browns

Is there any team in sports with a less marketable name than the Browns? The team may or may not have been named after coach Paul Brown, but either way, they went confidently in the direction of dull, and haven’t looked back. So they get all sorts of credit from me for being original, historical and unconventional. Should the name be ranked even higher? Sorry, but it’s just too boring.

6, New Orleans Saints

Admittedly very un-footballish, but a fun, interesting, colorful name. It’s a tribute to “The Saints Go Marching In,” the unofficial anthem of New Orleans first popularized by Louis Armstrong. There’s no other name like it in sports (the Angels are closest, I guess). And it works great with the black-and-gold colors and the fleur-de-lis logo. Biggest downside: It turns into Aints a bit too easily.

5, Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings, a name which pays homage to the Scandanavians who migrated to Minnesota, are my favorite Team Named for a European Ethnic Group that Settled in Defined Areas of North America. (Other TNEEGS-DANAs include the Celtics and Knicks). The Vikings are particularly footballish if you focus on the blood-thirsty myth and ignore that most of them were farmers. (Trivia: there’s no evidence that Vikings wore horned helmets.)

4, San Francisco 49ers

We’re at the point in the list where you can make a case for any of these teams to be No. 1. The 49ers are a great name. Local, original and very unmarketable. The abbreviation “Niners” is good, too.

3, Buffalo Bills

The Buffalo Bills are unique in major sports in that the name only makes sense with both the city and mascot together (the only other one like I can think of are the Macon Whoopee – get it? – a minor league hockey team, although I’m sure here are others). They’re also alone in using the name of the city as their mascot, and buffalo are big, shaggy, smelly, powerful animals, ie. perfect for football. Buffalo Bill Cody was from Iowa, and I don’t know if he ever visited Western New York (he got his nickname from slaughtering bison for the railroad) but the name works in just one city.

2, Green Bay Packers

Pretty much everything you want in a football team name. Original, regionally specific – named for the meat packing company that first sponsored them – and definitely footballish. There’s something hard working and honest about Packers- I picture guys in coveralls with blood stains on them – and it’s a pretty good verb, too. They would top this list if it weren’t for the …

1, Pittsburgh Steelers

The Steelers are the 1972 Dolphins of football names: perfect. Few cities’ identities were as linked to one industry as Pittsburgh’s was to steel manufacturing, and to have the team reflect that identity is the ultimate match of city and name. No other team could hope to use the name. Plus it just works so well for football. It’s synonymous with toughness and resiliency, lends itself to puns like “steel curtain” and, of course, is a perfect verb for football. Is it the best name in all of sports? It’s in the running.