Do you recall how, at the beginning of Bowls, Polls, Field Goals, (&c.), I wrote that the reasons why I no longer watch the game that we in the Usa call "football" were "not necessarily limited to" what followed? Here are more of them.
- Showboating is pervasive in "football," to the irritation of nearly everyone. This unsportsmanlike conduct ought to be penalized accordingly, yet neither the NCAA nor the NFL makes any discernible effort at such enforcement.
- In the second half of NFL matchups, the clock stops with two minutes remaining to play and upon the attainment of a first down thereafter. The reason is to facilitate come-from-behind efforts, and thus make the endings of games more dramatic than they would be minus this artificiality. It reminds me of Democrats' approach to economic matters.
- Teams ought not to be allowed to play in domed stadiums, which magnify sound, thus giving the home team an unfair advantage. This is true even when crowd noise is not being used intentionally as a weapon versus the visitor, as it often is, in violation of the spirit of the game.
- Only quarterbacks, running backs, and receivers ever win the Heisman Trophy anymore, and even these recipients are so often undeserving that they could be mistaken for Nobel Peace Prize laureates. The hyperbole associated with it is well-known. Why aren't people similarly obsessed with the Maxwell Award, which is also given to the player who's deemed best?
- The gridiron these days seems to have no more imagination than the Government does. The uniforms of NFL teams all seem to have some combination of blue and silver; thanks in no small part to the influence of totalitarianism lite (see the list of Domanisms) or political correctness, people think that just about the only nicknames now available for a team are ones that invoke either animals or natural phenomena such as storms.
- The Baltimore Ravens are really the Cleveland Browns under an assumed name. They ought to move back to Cleveland to replace the impostors, who ought to move to Indianapolis to replace the Colts, who ought to move back to Baltimore. Since New York also has the Giants, who long antedate the Jets, the latter ought to go to Los Angeles or to some other city that doesn't have a franchise.
- The NFL tries to enforce what it calls parity, by giving the best teams the strongest schedules and the worst teams the weakest ones. This has the desired but undesirable effect of punishing success and rewarding lack of the same—think of it as Affirmative Action for losing teams—and thus making many season win-loss records misleading, and it often does so cumulatively, since schedule strength is based on the previous year's results. In 1999 the Titans went 13-3 before the postseason, but won only three games against opponents that had a winning record: two versus the 14-2 Jaguars and one versus the 13-3 Rams, neither of whom had beaten any winning teams.
- It's not just how many games that you lose in "college football," but when you lose them that's important. 1965 saw Michigan State, Arkansas, and Nebraska all go 10-1; which team finished #1 in the final AP poll? 9-1-1 Alabama. Why? Michigan State, Arkansas, and Nebraska each lost their bowl, whereas Alabama, the highest-ranked non-undefeated team at the conclusion of the regular season, won theirs, and there's an unwritten rule that you can't be voted champion if you end the season with a loss, even if you've had a better year overall than has anyone else. The 1993 season saw a new wrinkle: Florida State and Notre Dame each finished with one loss, but, because Notre Dame's defeat came in the final contest before bowls, Florida State was chosen as "national champion," despite losing to Notre Dame.
- The NFL has twice as many teams as it did 40 years ago. It ought to undo its 1970 merger with the AFL, and allocate to that league the 10 old-AFL teams as well as the five expansion franchises that we’ve seen since then; the NFL would thus have the Giants, Browns, Packers, Bears, '49ers, Steelers, Saints, Vikings, Colts, Falcons, Rams, Lions, Cowboys, Redskins, Eagles, and Cardinals, and the AFL would have everyone else. The league champions would still play another in the Hyperbowle (see the list of Domanisms), just as they did after the 1966-1969 seasons, and as the winners of the American and National League pennants meet in the World Series.
- The "prevent defense" is generally used in a situation where your team leads by more than a touchdown late in the game. It has its basis in the assumption that you can afford to allow your opponent to score so long as it's not a quick score, which would give them time to score again; since the game clock stops when a pass falls incomplete, but not when a completion is made, you should therefore allow them to complete all except deep passes, so that, if they score, they'll have used too much precious time in order to do so. This might be logical if not for the possibility that the team that has just narrowed your lead will execute a successful onside kick, which will give them immediate possession of the ball and good field position. I've seen no statistics on the subject, but the chance of this happening is probably equal to or greater than that of the team's scoring a touchdown in just a few plays. It's bad enough to see your team give up a score for no reason when they have a substantial lead, but some coaches use this defense even when the opponent is within a touchdown or less of victory. In a game that I watched in 1993 or '4, Green Bay, ahead 13-12 with under two minutes to play, began playing the prevent defense; Minnesota went right down the field, and kicked a winning field goal. (I wonder whether the New England Idiots won in the same way versus the St. Louis Lambs in the Hyperbowle, which game I didn't see.) At least the name "prevent defense" seems apt, since prevent (successful) defense is what it often does.
