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SPORTS
Shooting
the lights out
—
Photo by TIM MANDELL
Owen County junior Shea Green shoots a 3-pointer over Williamstown’s
Amber Vance on Jan. 18 at the Region 8 All A Classic at Eminence
High School.
Basketball
Sharp
Shooter
Rebels
fall to Colonels
Frosh
second in district
Smiths
sign with Campbellsville
JV
blasts Colonels
Homecoming
to reunite 95-96 team
Changing
the face of sports
On
the Sidelines
Tim
Mandell
If I ran the sports
world, there would be some changes.
I’d change the things that don’t make sense, or just
annoy me to no end.
Like spiking the ball in football.
That’s my all time least favorite rule in sports.
No rule is ever supposed to benefit a team for screwing up, but
this one does.
In the case of spiking the ball, a quarterback takes one step
back, then throws the ball at his feet.
Legally, this is called an incomplete pass.
That doesn’t make sense.
Sure, it penalizes the offense by forcing them to waste a down
with no yards gained, but in most cases, the only time a team
spikes the ball is when they’re out of timeouts —
or trying to save one final timeout — and need to stop the
clock to get in position to score.
And in most cases, they don’t need that down anyway.
Why should a team that used up all their timeouts get a freebie
chance to stop the clock long enough to get the field goal unit
on the field or be able to huddle up to go for a touchdown?
Spiking the ball at your feet is a legal pass attempt, yet, if
a quarterback is in danger of losing 10 or 15 yards for a sack,
he can’t throw the ball away unless he’s out of the
pocket or the ball happens to land within a few yards of a receiver.
Spiking the ball and intentionally grounding the ball are complete
contradictions of each other.
Intentionally grounding the ball is one of the worst penalized
plays in football, costing a team the down and yards.
Spiking the ball helps a team in a bad situation (needing to stop
the clock), but intentionally grounding the ball hurts a team
in a bad situation (trying to avoid a big loss).
One rule helps the offense in trouble, the other hurts the offense
in trouble.
Spiking the ball is almost as bad as the worst “unwritten
rule” in sports, which is the phantom tag in baseball.
In the phantom tag, the offense has a runner at first and the
batter hits the ball in play on the infield.
The player covering second base (usually the shortstop), catches
the ball at second base and fires to first for the double play.
Only, the shortstop rarely touches second base.
In fact, in most cases, he misses the bag by several feet.
Still, I’ve never seen a Major League Baseball umpire call
the runner safe at second, despite the fact that the fielder never
touched the bag.
Like spiking the ball, this “rule” helps the team
in trouble.
In the case of the phantom tag, by not touching the bag, it allows
the fielder time to get out of the way of the runner coming into
second, while giving them extra leverage to throw out the runner
at first.
Basically, the “rule” robs the batter of getting safely
to first by giving the fielder an unfair advantage.
While the phantom tag is ignored, we have to watch 800 replays
of a close play at first, where everything is slowed down to super
slo-mo to see whether or not the runner beat the throw.
And if they were called safe when they were out (even by a millisecond)
all hell breaks loose.
At the high school level, I would add one much needed rule —
a 45-second shot clock in basketball.
It’s fairly common in high school basketball games, that
if a team has a lead with under five minutes to play, they will
spread the floor and simply pass the ball around and around and
around, until the opponent either fouls them or leaves a player
unguarded underneath the basket for a sure thing layup.
I mean, why shoot the ball, if you don’t have to?
I guess that’s what coaches feel, but it seems so anti-basketball
to reduce your offensive plan to just running out the clock, especially
when there’s so much time left.
I could go on forever about what I don’t like about sports
— celebration penalties, television timeouts, NBA stars
who get special treatment, professional soccer players who writhe
around in pain after a foul, then miraculously make a full recovery
30 seconds later — but I should stop here.
I think there’s a game on TV.
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