Tonight (and for a while) NFL > MLB

College football is beyond repair.

We were at a friend's house Saturday night, and the WSU-Oregon game was on in the background.

I wasn't really paying attention, but there was some sort of interference penalty near the end of the half that took the refs FOREVER to figure out.

When they finally got to halftime, the espn dude in the studio feigned sleeping, and waking up. It was pretty good.

 

I think that's accurate, Poindexter.
One year the kickoff is just going to go poof. Maybe punt returns, too.
Or kicks just won't be live like they aren't in spring games.
And that's fine if that's what they want, but they ought to be honest about it.

I used to think basketball played badly was easily the worst sport to watch. I think football played half-assed is far worse.

 

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I like it.

Replay has killed the bang bang play at first. Half the time the bang bang play went for you, half the time it went against you.

But you got a result, and we could move to the next batter.

Now, there is a bang bang play, and there is a call. And a delay. And the manager on the short end is waiting to hear if he should challenge it. Sometime it sputters there. Sometimes, it goes to replay.

And none of us are the better for it.

 

I disagree with the thread title. Tonight no baseball is better than Miami-Pittsburgh. (And how weird it is being played just days after Pitt and the U hooked up).

 

As a youth football coach, I despise kickoffs and kickoff returns.

1. I have to use practice time to teach a completely different portion of the game - "Alright. I know we do X for 90 percent of the game, but on this few plays, we have to do Y."

2. We onside kick every time. Because it's not like we can kick it to the end zone. That means it's a 10 second game of smear the bad person, where I'm sending my best players down to kill some non-athletic kid in hopes that we can get the ball. We emphasize a safe style of tackling, and the hits I see on these plays make me cringe.

3. At the level I coach, I absolutely love it when teams "kick it deep" and put the ball in the hands of one of my two best runners in open space. Good luck! ... and it feels cheap when we exploit a nice game.


We play on an 80-yard field. If after every score we just gave it to the other team on the 30, the game would lose absolutely nothing.

 

I loved baseball all my life and romanticize about Vin and Kubek? While watching Yankees Dodgers. But those games were 2:30 not 4 hrs. I just hate that a large part of game is dudes constantly readjusting before every pitch and it’s now walk/k/hr what 40% of time? That’s what I’m disappointed about.

 

My favorite coach said, "Baseball should be played like ragtime music, not fast but with a snap. It's not supposed to be a funeral march."

 

Because I almost never watch baseball on TV (don't have cable, WILL NEVER pay for MLB TV/radio), I was briefly surprised in last night's game when the "intentional walk" took about 3 seconds.

I guess as something that speeds the game along, I should applaud it, but it still seemed weird. And there always was that .001 percent chance of a wild pitch, or a "intentional" ball being close enough to the plate for the batter to swing.

This concludes my comments on baseball's 2019 season. I'll check back in with you all during the 2020 World Series ...

 

Have the number of pitches per game changed much over the years? Does this basically come down to time between pitches?

 

Time between pitches and the sudden explosion of 'bullpen games' that required five thousand trips to the mound.

I don't remember how long Game 6 of the ALCS took but the minute I heard both teams were going bullpen it was easy to sketch in a four-hour block. I watched seven pitches after I got off work and on the seventh the game ended. That alone means it took over four hours, which is absolutely ridiculous for a nine-inning game. In comparison the 1986 NLCS Game 6, the best game of course, took 4:42 and it went 16 innings.

The NHL has done a good job of taking off 15-20 minutes off their game times. Quicker face-offs, less in-period breaks, automatic icing. Little things made a difference that even an overtime or shootout game is going to run about 2:30-2:40.

 

ESPN really got stuck with a stinker of a matchup. There is no way in hell I would have turned it on for even a second if I wasn't a Steelers fan.