4 ms·

The whole point of sports is not about perfectly enforcing the rules. I remember an article a while back on here about speed walking, and how a staggering major

by shpx 12y ago

The whole point of sports is not about perfectly enforcing the rules. I remember an article a while back on here about speed walking, and how a staggering majority of speed walkers actually violate the main rule of speed walking (you can't have both feet off the ground), and while that rule could easily be enforced with cameras it isn't because it would just ruin the sport. It seems to me like the easiest thing to do would be change the rules, bringing the strike zone back to what it was. It'll most likely cause outrage, but ironically you'd be going back to the way things were before. It all comes back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly follow some set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining.

jacquesm 12y ago
> It all comes back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly follow some set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining. The participants or the audience? I'm trying hard to imagine a world where the rules of chess are changed to turn it into a more spectator friendly sport.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I imagine time limits on moves are partly because of spectators.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    I think those are mostly to make sure a game will actually progress rather than that one party can force a losing game to a standstill.
- blowski 12y ago
  In a sense, the rules of chess are frequently changed - speed chess, chess-boxing, Cheshire Cat chess, etc.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    I would consider those 'variations' rather than rule changes.
    - blowski 12y ago
      In baseball, the rules were not being 'changed' they were just being applied inconsistently because of human limitations. The umpire (or is it referee in baseball) is just another player - human and error-prone. When 'he' (is there a 'she'?) becomes a faultless, indisputable 'it', then that part of the game is lost. Even in chess, these problems exist. Think of Bobby Fischer moaning about the cameras in 1972.
- hyperpape 12y ago
  This isn't precisely the same, but there are many proposals to change the rules of tournament chess to try to limit the number of draws.
blowski 12y ago
I agree completely. The football World Cup in Brazil this year showed something similar with the 'goal line technology'. When Benzema scored against Honduras, in previous years, arguments would have persisted for years about whether the ball crossed the line. Now it was over within seconds. Similar story in tennis, cricket, athletics, and a lot of other sports. Moaning about bad decisions is part of the fun. When you can't do it, the sport does get a bit more boring.
- fgp 12y ago
  I agree partially. Refereeing mistakes are part of the fun of soccer and other sports, but it is not so funny when the team you support ends up losing a game or a championship because of them.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    In football it's fairly simple, the rule used to be "you have scored a goal when you have shot the ball far enough into the net that an old half-blind referee can see that it's in the net". Sure there are mistakes with that rule, but the whole game is about subjective calls from the ref, so saying that a cup would hinge on a few millimeters is just silly. The ref could still have missed six penalties for the other team. GLT removes the obvious mistakes, which is good because they are controversial and it's bad PR for the sport, but football will always be about subjective calls.
    - toyg 12y ago
      > the whole game is about subjective calls from the ref No it's not. The referee is just the shortest practical path to enforce a set of rules, which are the real essence of the sport. This is why people play just fine in parks without referees. Refs are there to enforce the rules; if the same set of rules can be better enforced by other means, referees should be replaced. Subjective referee calls are a plague on the sport, and they are a prime cause for the dismal amount of corruption in it. The sooner we can get rid of them (or at least reduce their role), the better.
lostcolony 12y ago
Interesting. I neither knew that speed walking had rules, nor that it was ever practiced in the sort of contexts where enforcement would be necessary.

by shpx 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

> It all comes back to the fact that the reason for sports is not to perfectly follow some set of bizarre rules, its just to be entertaining. The participants or the audience? I'm trying hard to imagine a world where the rules of chess are changed to turn it into a more spectator friendly sport.

maxerickson 12y ago
I imagine time limits on moves are partly because of spectators.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I think those are mostly to make sure a game will actually progress rather than that one party can force a losing game to a standstill.
blowski 12y ago
In a sense, the rules of chess are frequently changed - speed chess, chess-boxing, Cheshire Cat chess, etc.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I would consider those 'variations' rather than rule changes.
  - blowski 12y ago
    In baseball, the rules were not being 'changed' they were just being applied inconsistently because of human limitations. The umpire (or is it referee in baseball) is just another player - human and error-prone. When 'he' (is there a 'she'?) becomes a faultless, indisputable 'it', then that part of the game is lost. Even in chess, these problems exist. Think of Bobby Fischer moaning about the cameras in 1972.
hyperpape 12y ago
This isn't precisely the same, but there are many proposals to change the rules of tournament chess to try to limit the number of draws.

blowski 12y ago

I agree completely. The football World Cup in Brazil this year showed something similar with the 'goal line technology'. When Benzema scored against Honduras, in previous years, arguments would have persisted for years about whether the ball crossed the line. Now it was over within seconds. Similar story in tennis, cricket, athletics, and a lot of other sports. Moaning about bad decisions is part of the fun. When you can't do it, the sport does get a bit more boring.

fgp 12y ago
I agree partially. Refereeing mistakes are part of the fun of soccer and other sports, but it is not so funny when the team you support ends up losing a game or a championship because of them.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  In football it's fairly simple, the rule used to be "you have scored a goal when you have shot the ball far enough into the net that an old half-blind referee can see that it's in the net". Sure there are mistakes with that rule, but the whole game is about subjective calls from the ref, so saying that a cup would hinge on a few millimeters is just silly. The ref could still have missed six penalties for the other team. GLT removes the obvious mistakes, which is good because they are controversial and it's bad PR for the sport, but football will always be about subjective calls.
  - toyg 12y ago
    > the whole game is about subjective calls from the ref No it's not. The referee is just the shortest practical path to enforce a set of rules, which are the real essence of the sport. This is why people play just fine in parks without referees. Refs are there to enforce the rules; if the same set of rules can be better enforced by other means, referees should be replaced. Subjective referee calls are a plague on the sport, and they are a prime cause for the dismal amount of corruption in it. The sooner we can get rid of them (or at least reduce their role), the better.

lostcolony 12y ago

Interesting. I neither knew that speed walking had rules, nor that it was ever practiced in the sort of contexts where enforcement would be necessary.