Rules Shmules

Thus far we’ve had quite a ridiculous off-season in the NFL. We have heard nothing except tales of the New England Patriots cheating, Pacman Jones playing with strippers and the discussion about imposing a ridiculous rule where they would regulate the length of a player’s hair. They were seriously considering telling players that they couldn't have long hair coming out of the back of their helmets. Thankfully they didn’t vote that one in, just as they didn’t vote in the “Devin Hester rule.” Yes, the league was actually considering penalizing the kicking team for punting the ball out of bounds to avoid return men from making plays. This makes no sense to me because, as a former kicker/punter myself, we were always taught to angle the ball out of bounds inside the 20 yard line to pin a team deep. This rule would have effectively ended a practice that has been a part of football since its metamorphosis from rugby over 100 years ago.

The NFL is full of rules like the hair rule that, in reality, do nothing but give the league the moniker, the No Fun League. Things like, you can only use white tape when taping your ankles. You can’t write anything on said tape as a tribute, such as a family member’s initials that just passed away or a teammates number who was killed or paralyzed. You must have your socks pulled all the way up to your knees.

All of these rules remind me of the ridiculousness that is high school soccer in this country. In our mandatory rules interpretation meetings, we spend the majority of the time discussing things like the color of tape used on players’ socks. Rule: the tape must be the same color as the sock. We have to sit around and pretend we care and then exactly three guys (who never actually played or coached the game) decide to enforce it. These are the same guys that are out there measuring all the player’s shin guards to make sure they are “age and size appropriate.” I had a referee tell me in my adult men’s league a year ago that my shin guards weren’t big enough. I told him that I got them from the equipment manager of the Chicago Fire, so if they’re good enough for professionals, they are good enough for me.

Here’s another gem: A company called Full 90 invented headgear for soccer amidst all the research that heading a ball causes brain damage. If you ask the people that do these studies they would have you believe that a header is about as dangerous as a 250 pound linebacker making helmet to helmet contact with a 220 pound running back at full speed. I’ve been playing the game just short of 24 years now and I’ve seen no side effects of that sort. Either way, now that these things have been invented, the NFHS has adopted a rule that if more than one player on a team is wearing said headgear, then all players wearing it must have the same color.

Every year they waste our time with this nonsense instead of talking about issues regarding how the game is played and officiated. This past summer at one of these rules meetings we spent over an hour arguing with the IHSA representative about this and other stupid rules they wanted us to enforce. As it turned out, we only had about 15 minutes to discuss things that we legitimately wanted to get interpretations on. I was bored and decided to be the smart ass. In a room full of about 150 high school and college soccer referees, as well as a handful of coaches, I chimed in:

“If one player has blonde hair, do all the players have to have blonde hair?”

Enough of my ranting about the NFHS, I’ll finish up with a happy tale about an NFL rule change that has been a long time coming; they finally removed the “push-out rule.” For those that are unfamiliar, the push out rule states that if a receiver leaves the ground to make a catch and is pushed by a defender so that he lands out of bounds, it is still a complete catch if, in the opinion of the referee, he WOULD have come down in bounds with both feet had he not been pushed. My response has always been: “WHAT!? Why?” The fact is he DIDN’T come down inbounds. You want to reward the team whose quarterback threw a crappy pass and penalize a defender for being in the right position to make a play?

Could it have helped the Browns on this play? Well, it should have. We'd have been in the playoffs if that particular referee had actually followed the rules. The problem is that the rule was discretionary. Would he or wouldn't he? Who knows for sure. But one official got to decide what HE thought and that was the end of it. I never understood that one, but today, thankfully, I longer have to try. If you are out of bounds, you are out of bounds, no matter how you ended up there. Finally, something that makes sense.

Here’s to hoping that our nation’s sports leagues start focusing more on rules that make sense and stop wasting time discussing things like the length of a players hair or the color of the tape they use.