OT - Upcoming NFL Changes?

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

No more kicking PAT's. Put it in play from the 2 for 1 point, or from the 5 for 2 pts. PAT is about the only time you have to do damn near nothing to score. Make 'em earn it.

Why should a major score confer an opp'ty for an add'l minor score of any kind, by any means?

[Adam]

A solution in search of a problem.

[Andy]

I've also heard a rumor that there is discussion about awarding additional points for a FG based on the distance of the kick.

Anybody have any info about this?

[hbk314]

Originally Posted by Adam

A solution in search of a problem.

Exactly how I feel also.

[Altor]

The Europeans already joke about how American footballs aren't shaped like a ball and rarely get touched by a foot. I've heard the phrase "hand-egg" from more than one person. I can only imagine what they will say when the NFL does away with kickoffs and tries.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Altor

The Europeans already joke about how American footballs aren't shaped like a ball and rarely get touched by a foot. I've heard the phrase "hand-egg" from more than one person. I can only imagine what they will say when the NFL does away with kickoffs and tries.

Telephones and radios still have dials, and telephones are still dialed. I haven't seen basketball players called "cagers" in a while, though, so maybe that one's finally passe -- and how often was basketball ever played in a cage, anyway? (Or was the basket itself the cage, and they were trying to cage the ball?)

[MD Longhorn]

Hey grandson... back in the day they used to have these posts on each end of the field, and if you could kick it between them it was worth 3 points. No, really, I promise. And even more kechny (the slang used in 2035), after a T-Down you only got 6 points and had to kick it through these posts to get the 7th point. No, I'm not filching you - honest truth!

If you can get your head around that, it's even weirder. They used to have people on the field in striped shirts deciding where the play ended and whether someone was cheating or not. And I was one of them.

[Welpe]

"So when were you replaced by robots, grandpa?"

[Welpe]

Originally Posted by Altor

The Europeans already joke about how American footballs aren't shaped like a ball and rarely get touched by a foot. I've heard the phrase "hand-egg" from more than one person. I can only imagine what they will say when the NFL does away with kickoffs and tries.

These would be people ignorant of the etymology of the name of their own game.

They probably also don't realize that the English are responsible for the name soccer.

Regarding the elimination of the try, I guess I'm ambivalent. It's far from a foregone conclusion at any level as far as I'm concerned however Aggie has a point I'm. The kicking game's days appear to be numbered with all of the new kicking rules being implemented to make the game safer.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Adam

A solution in search of a problem.

See, you're thinking of only addressing problems. If there were really a problem with football, the solution would be simple: Don't play it.

Football is discretionary, so it's not a matter of remedies, but one of what can be done to make it more attractive. To look closest to the question at hand, when the 2-pt. conversion was introduced, it was not to address a problem. Or to look at other examples from football, when NCAA abolished the free kick from a fair catch, it was not to address a problem, nor was it doing so the year previous to that, when they abolished the fair catch entirely (nor was the CRU when they did similarly). Yes, frequently rule changes are made or considered to address drawbacks in safety or in ease of administration, or to redress a change in balance that was introduced by some other rule change or a change in play techniques. But the rest of the time it's that they think people will like it better a certain way.

[Robert Goodman]

I've also pointed out here that often rule changes have been sold on the basis of safety, when in reality safety was at best a secondary motiv'n. If they wanted to they could say abolishing the try improves safety by abolishing that many downs in the game!

If you think that's silly, remember the chief tool the NCAA wielded for making football "safer": shortening the season in length & number of games. At the time the NCAA was organized, there were some in it who hoped to taper off football to at most a single annual ceremonial game per pair of institutions within a few years.

[jchamp]

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

Why should a major score confer an opp'ty for an add'l minor score of any kind, by any means?

It's actually a nice scoring mechanism if the minor score is difficult enough and if it is a meaningful amount of the major score. It allows for some variation in strategies to get more points than your opponent. By setting the point values where they are, a touchdown is worth two field goals, BUT it can still be worth more than that, making it the true goal of the game, while making it hard to achieve at lower levels. I

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by jchamp

It's actually a nice scoring mechanism if the minor score is difficult enough and if it is a meaningful amount of the major score. It allows for some variation in strategies to get more points than your opponent.

If it's a nice scoring mechanism, why don't we see anything like it in games that aren't on the same model? Rugby doesn't count, same tradition; speedball doesn't count because deliberately modeled on same.

Tenpin bowling? Not really, because the add'l score isn't a minor one, and can actually equal or exceed the original score. Besides, bowling has a good reason for it: Once you knock down many pins with the 1st ball, you have fewer targets left, so the add'l score is to compensate and hence reward success.

It would be very easy to imagine extra point opp'ties arranged in other sports. In soccer, you score a goal, you're awarded a penalty kick worth 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.5 goal, for instance. The fact that we haven't seen such developments says there's something wrong with the concept, and that it is just a legacy where it does exist.