Why different rulesets?
 

This has been bugging me for a while - and it's not limited to softball, it's effectively every sport there is (except soccer).

But why in America do leagues and systems not play by rulesets that have been codified by the international governing body for the sport? I mean, the NBA doesn't play by FIBA rules, the NHL has it's own code. Softball has to be the worst perpetrators, having different rule sets for High School, NCAA, adult amateur etc. We've got NFHS, ASA, NCAA.

Why doesn't every system out there just play by ISF? At their hearts, the rules of the game are the same, but then each ruleset has variations on the semantics of the game.

It just frustrates me from time to time--selfishly because my fed plays ISF so alot of these rulesets are lost on me and the board doesn't give me the help i usually need :D

that would be so nice!

There are different rule sets because there are different governing bodies dealing with different populations. You really can't have the same rule set apply for college women, 10 year-old girls, and 65 year-old men.

NFHS and NCAA has its on set of rules for soccer too.

MTD, Sr.

Basketball was invented in the US. Why doesn't FIBA use USA rules?

Hockey was invented in Canada - why does some international group get to usurp the rules?

If soccer rules don't differ why are the field, ball, and goal sizes different by age? (If they are integrated into the rule book, why were the changes made?) And is there mandatory play in all soccer games?

Do you really want 8 year-old kids playing baseball on a 90' diamond with no pitching limits and no mandatory play?

Do you really want 8 year olds bouncing/rolling the ball to the plate from the international softball pitching distance?

Games are played by players of vastly differing ages and skills. Rules get adjusted to accommodate this.

Not to hijack, and mostly rhetorical...but why

don't the wheels from my old Toyota fit on my newer Honda?

is it that every time I get a new cell phone, I need a new car charger?

aren't umpire plate shoes, sneakers, whatever, consistent in size? (Include Fech umpire pants.)

won't my 8-track tapes play in my blu-ray player? :confused::D

This is exactly what the ASA ruleset does...with specific allowances for different levels of ability based on age and gender.....

You mean like ASA does?

(Edit: Andy beat me to it. That's what I get for replying before reading the whole thread...)

Because in this country there is a mind set that if I don't get what I want, I'm taking my bat and ball and finding other people who WILL do it my way.

Or to quote Sheldon Cooper, "they're having fun wrong" :)

But that's just it - there are allowances which means the rules aren't the same for the different circumstances.

I'm not talking about things like field size, length of game, etc. Clearly you can't have 8 year olds playing on the same field size for the same length as adults. Regulations is one thing. Rules is another.

Rulesets such as HS and NCAA don't need to be different. Take this for example: Strike Zone in ASA,NFHS, ISF is defined as armpits to top of knees, while NCAA defines it as top of batter's sternum, which is actually around 3 inches higher. Softball is one game. The strike zone is the strike zone is the strike zone. Or it should be.

I know I'm being pedantic and arguing for the sake of being contentious, so sorry.

My least favourite is in the fed I work in, which is mostly adult coed rec, I'm working a tournament this weekend that locally their rule is 12" ball for men and 11" ball for women, and the first base coach is responsible for swapping the ball for each batter (!) The local league (thankfully not mine) argues that the 11" ball travels further so women hit more to the same level as men. In my mind all that does is alter the game to suit the players, rather than the players training harder to play within the rules.

Because this is not a communist state seems to be more of a realistic answer. I see teams developing because of upset mom & pops, but not entire organizations.

Boxers vs. Briefs
Plasma vs. LCD
Ford vs. Chevy

You can't see how in certain cases it might be reasonable to have a different penalty for a 13 year old 7th grader than a 22 year hold college senior?

And by the way, your NCAA strike zone is wrong. It isn't the TOP of the batter's sternum, it is the BOTTOM of the sternum. The strike zone is lower in NCAA than other codes, though most umpires tend to call a strike zone that is not as high as what is described in the rules books.

You mean like the American Bar Association? But really, communist? Are you kidding? This country demonstrates a higher level of socialism and communistic attitudes than most countries we've supposedly "saved" from such evils.

Then you haven't been paying attention

That's my point. ASA accommodates for different participants and different levels of play by using different rules within their overarching rule set. You can't expect ASA to have one set of rules for all, as the OP desires. And you can't expect NFHS, NCAA, PONY, etc., to do the same with their respective rules.

All the training in the world won't let females hit the ball as far as males.

Really???

Research Premier Girls Fastpitch

honestly, my initial response before reading anything else below is ... why doesn't ISF use a code from the countries that invented the sport? Why is your default that those who established the game in the first place should change to use the rules of some newcomer (relatively speaking)... it seems to me you're asking the question backward.

As to why there's different rules for different levels - it would not make sense for the rules for adults and kids to match - they have different skillsets and abilities, and safety is a different level of concern for adults and kids. College lands in between adults and kids.

Don't tell NFSA.
Or Dixie.

Wrong.

But anyway, if there were only one code for each game, there'd be only 1 kind of football in the world. You might as well ask why there are separate codes for softball & hardball, when obviously it's the same basic game. Come to think of it, there wouldn't be cricket or stickball either, let alone Finnish and some more exotic versions of baseball.

Maybe what you're asking is, why have rule codes that are so similar to each other as to invite confusion? Like, nobody's going to accidentally slip a football into a baseball game, but someone might accidentally slip a 12" circ. softball into a 16" game, or whistle the ball dead for encroachment as in Fed in a NCAA football game. Is that what you're asking? That they make games distinct enough to avoid gotchas?

It's not so much that as that since we're not going to be playing with them, why bother having the same rules?

Australia & New Zealand were on their way shortly after the introduction of Rugby Union to adopting their own rules variants the same as Canadian & American football developed. But then they started playing internationally and dropped such national rules as the "force down" score.

If basketball teams in the US & Canada played internationally a lot, I'm sure they'd go by one rule set.

Not a chance. The NBA is a business and would only adopt international rules if there was more money in it for them. Come to think of it, NCAA Div I basketball is the same.

Back to softball, the fundamental reason for so many rule sets is the same: money. Fed and ASA (at least for awhile) seemed to be attempting to consolidate rules where they could both agree. I don't know if that effort is still on-going. But, all of the alphabet organizations are basically about making money from team registrations, running tournaments, etc.

Wikipedia article says it was first played there.

Hey genius, just because you throw "American" in front of it doesn't mean you have to be a member of it to belong to a group.

I am not a member of a the ABA. There is no requirement. Nor am I a member of the NYSBA.

No one is required to join. Good analogy though :rolleyes:

If much of their regular schedule was home or away against foreign teams, they would converge on one rule set. It could well be FIBA's adopting NBA rules more than vice versa.

Consider the contrary. If NBA or NCAA 1 teams played, say, 20% of their games against foreign teams, do you really think they'd be willing to handicap themselves by playing half those games under different rules? Same for the foreign teams.

Even for ice hockey, that's true only if you count only games played with a puck. Hockey games on ice (using a ball as in the field game) were recorded long before it was played in Canada.

This is the answer. Different people run these different leagues, and they all have different priorities. There is also no incentive to conform to international rules: at least not an incentive strong enough to override a general libertarian mentality.

I don't understand the need for Federation football rules. For one thing, Federation only allows states to adopt alternate provisions in specific rules. In Texas, we use NCAA rules for football and we can have whatever exceptions we like. Want to add provisions for a coach's ejection that's not in the NCAA rule? No problem; do it. Further, there is 6 man and 8 man football played in other states and each state would be free to adopt the NCAA ruleset for whatever size field or number of players they want. The reason it isn't done (at least with some states) is that there is a perception that the NCAA rules committee won't pay any attention when states voice concerns over rules. But the ability to change those rules makes that point moot. Want to eliminate all blocking below the waist that doesn't occur at the line of scrimmage and involve all linemen? No problem -- just make an exception and write out a rule.

Basketball is the one area where Federation rules are needed for the simple reason that a lot of teams travel across state lines for tournaments. When I first started working basketball in the late '80s, the differences between Fed and NCAA weren't that great. Now, they are, and the NCAA basketball committees have been making really stupid rules changes for almost a decade -- like basically eliminating the player control foul if the offensive player is within 6 miles of the basket. Thus, Federation is needed in basketball.

For US pro leagues, their ruleset has evolved over time from something similar to amateur rulesets early in their history to what they are now. These rules are not solely focused on the competitive aspects of the sport, but for fan enjoyment. Plus, they see themselves as a step above any and all amateur competition, so they put in rules that set themselves apart. There's no doubt about that.

I couldn't care less about international competition of ANY kind, so whoever can write whatever code they want. However, if football ever went international, I suspect they would sit down with the NCAA and NFL books and find a happy medium.

In Fed, states can add whatever provisions they like. They simply risk a seat at the rule writing table. In basketball, for example, many states use a shot clock when there is no provision/allowance for that within the NFHS rules.
Worst case scenario for them, they don't get to vote on rule changes. Kinda like Texas doesn't get to vote on NCAA rule changes.

Well, Andy, I was trying to not be specific, but that was the first thing that came to my mind.

For that matter, why not also point out LL softball, Babe Ruth softball, ASA BASEBALL, etc. and in all cases, it was about money and control.

The ASA was formed on the premise of organizing and bringing a standard to a game that was being played all over the country under different names and rules, many baseball oriented.

The Official Rules of Softball (which were based on what we now know as FP) were pretty standard and used by just about every organization. The book used to be smaller thinner than the NFHS book with minor variations for NCAA, NAIA & NFHS listed on a page. It was pretty standard and because sportsmanship and fair play was a strong suit in the countries culture in the mid-20th century, there was no need for all the chicken shit rules (like the LBR :) ) needed.

The ASA has long acknowledge the right of a local association to set their own rules, no matter how ridiculous some may be :) but that didn't stop others from turning the game into a business (which pretty much forced the ASA down the same road) and in turn splintering a sport that is starting to dwindle especially since being removed from the Olympic games.

Real Reason
 

$$$$$$$. Remember, each organization that has rules needs to publish a rule book. This means all coaches, officials and possibly others need to purchase a rule book. By having a different rule book these organizations sell rule books, either as an individual cost, or as part of a registration fee of some sort. The publishing agency may not make a lot of money off the rule books, or they may a lot of money off the rule books.

Thinking simply about the Michigan High School Athletic Association since this is where I work.

Let's say we have 1000 officials statewide in a sport. We get new rule books every two seasons from the MHSAA. If the MHSAA gets the books for $3 from the NFHS and our registration fee is $12 per sport, then the MHSAA is making $6 off the books in one year (assuming casebook and rulesbook like softball has) and $12 in another year since they don't provide us with the books. The same rule book that the NFHS has sold the MHSAA may cost $2 to actually print, thus the NFHS makes $1 per book sold to the state association.


If there wasn't a financial component to this, you wouldn't see this many different rule codes.



It is no different than the hijack to the thread about car parts. Each manufacturer has slightly different parts because they make the parts (or a related supplier does) and as such, they need to make money off the parts. If all cars used the same basic battery then the companies would make 1 basic battery and very few organizations would make batteries because the scale of production would be more important than the specification of production.

Not exactly a need, but a benefit: People nationwide can benefit from the feedback over a wide area wherein players & officials have faced the same problems, and avoid duplic'n of effort in solving, or at least addressing, them. Like the National Fire Protection Ass'n code.

The fact that many football leagues that aren't even members of a Fed member ass'n adopt Fed rules entirely or as a base show that they do pretty well in the marketplace. Another bit of proof is that not only do they use Fed rules, but they use Fed rules that are either current or 1 season out of date, rather than, say, from a decade or 50 yrs. earlier. (Many adult leagues like to use the previous season's rules from a major governing body so as to benefit from others' experience & rulings.) it's a lot like the benefits from a vaccine: You get the best benefit if there's a huge pool out there using it, while you're free to do something else, and it's best if you're not among the 1st to use it.

No, that's ridiculous, because to the beneficiaries of a sport itself, that's a cost, not a benefit. Softball is not a proprietary game like Monopoly. At best a body can make money off a participant sport by selling or renting equipment or facilities, like their gym, the way Ping Pong is a proprietary set of equipment for playing table tennis, or sell club membership.

The amount of copyrightable material in a rule book for something like softball is negligible as concerns the rules content itself (i.e. not yearbook details). Copyright protects only literary expression, not ideas. I suppose the amendments to a year's softball rules could be treated as a trade secret, but that's laughable.
Which is why today we're all using Apple microcomputers, right?

Beleive what you want.

If it were really a cost, why would the NFHS not use ASA rules for softball, MLB or NCAA rules for baseball, NCAA rules for basketball, ect. The rules of the game really are not that different.

For the reasons given upthread.

What if the profit margin were as you figured--would that be enough revenue to pay for the work of those bodies in preparing the contents of those rule books? How many total copies do you think they sell?

You might as well think public corporations stayed in business to prepare their annual reports!
By that logic, why would even a single governing body ever revise their rules? The difference between one edition of NFHS softball rules and the next must be less than between theirs and ASA's for the same year.

Governing bodies come & go for sports. When women's intercollegiate basketball stopped being played under AIAW and switched to NCAA, do you think it had anything to do with the business of publishing? How about when AAU dropped its presence in men's basketball? "Oh no, these people outcompete us in rule book publishing! We're out of business."