The Beautiful Game's Flaw

[This is the fifth in an unplanned series called The Volunteer Commissioner, in which I fix broken sports. In previous installments I singlehandedly fixed pick-up basketball, women’s softball, and men’s lacrosse. You’re welcome. Unfortunately, swimming is unfixable.]

Soccer, obviously, isn’t broken. According to ESPN, 147 zantillion people on 64 planets spread over 9 galaxies will watch every single minute of the 2010 World Cup. (And if they’re not watching in further galaxies, I’m sure they can hear those damn horns). Nothing this popular needs the help of the Volunteer Commissioner.

But that never stopped me before.

If you’re a fan of the beautiful game, you probably assume I’m an uncouth, red-necked, barbaric, gun-toting, beer-swilling, pot-bellied ugly American who wants higher scoring games because I'm aesthetically incapable of allowing a sport to slowly reveal its beauty. Well that’s not true. I don’t own a gun.

But my complaint is not the lack of scoring. That’s not to say I wouldn’t mind the occasional slugfest. I love a pitching duel in baseball, where two hurlers trade wits and skills for three hours backed by graceful and acrobatic fielders. But not every frickin’ game. Would it kill these guys to throw out a 6-5 score once in a while?

But still, I’ve learned to appreciate that a goal in soccer is special precisely because it is so hard to achieve.

And it’s not the officiating, though I wouldn’t mind if the officials explained what they’re calling once in a while. The disallowed goal in the U.S.-Slovenia game was so frustrating not just because of the injustice, but because nobody was charged with a crime. Habeas corpus, anyone?

And it’s not the overdramatic flops, though I find it ludicrous to see a player act like they’ve been chest-shot by a high-powered sniper rifle as they graze an opponent’s jersey. When the delightfully named Brazilian star Kaka received a red card for this, I felt the urge to don my Volunteer Commissioner cape.

But I decided that all sports have their own ethics*, and those ethics come from specific places in the sport. In football - I'm sorry, American football - a defensive back is considered wily and shrewd if he can grab a receiver’s shirt as long as he shields it from the referee. So what’s the difference?

* Golfers take great moral pride in the fact that they call penalties on themselves. But this is not because they are at their core more honorable people, but rather that in a sport played over many miles, self-policing is a must; the social mores of the sport grew out of its geography.

No, the flaw in the beautiful game is the ties. Through the first two weeks of the World Cup, nearly 1/3 of all games ended in a tie. The United States nearly advanced to the Sweet 16* without winning a single game. Their opponent in the knockout phase, Ghana, made it through their group without scoring a single non-penalty goal. Get a bunch of ties, and you’re in.

* Yeah, I know it’s not called the Sweet 16. I also am aware that the game is called football and that a 1-1 game is a draw, not a tie. You use your vernacular, I’ll use mine.

I’m willing to concede that there is something about American culture that makes the whole idea of a tie harder to accept. After all, the animating idea of communism and socialism (two philosophies that, like soccer, found more fertile ground in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa than they ever have in the U.S.) is to, as much as possible, create an economic draw among all its participants. Free market capitalism, on the other hand, is built on the idea of winning: if you reward society's strongest contributors, you create the incentive to perform at a high level, which benefits the entire society.

In fact, I think it was Adam Smith who coined the term "A tie is like kissing your sister". Karl Marx, meanwhile, posited that if the owners of the means of production had a 2-1 lead, the officials should allow the proletariats a penalty kick.

So what do we do about this problem? I know that shootouts aren’t the ideal solution, but if they are good enough to settle games in the far more important knock-out phase, why aren’t they good enough to settle them during Group Play? (I have no idea if I’m using the right terminology now…but work with me).

On the other hand, 147 zantillion people disagree with me, so maybe I should shut up.

Something Borrowed

I generally surf the web at lunch, and these two sports-related things both brought me pleasure:

1. A beautiful piece by the great Joe Posnanski about Armando Galarraga's "perfect" game: The Lesson of Jim Joyce

2. This link was sent by KMac in Chicago about Blackhawks fans getting on the bandwagon. I was in Chicago the week they won the Conference Finals (is that what they call it in hockey?) and the city was aflame with Hawk Love. Even the Art Institute had huge Blackhawks banners hanging out front. Anyway, a fun video about fans jumping on the bandwagon:

The Slowest Game?

" Don't Shoot!"

Lacrosse bills itself as “the fastest game on two feet”. But if fans of hurling (“the fastest game on grass”), hockey (“the fastest game on ice”), and jai-alai (“the fastest game on earth”) tuned in to yesterday’s NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Final, they can be forgiven for scoffing at this notion. Because the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame slowed the game down so much it could have been sponsored by Sherwin-Williams and called the “Watching Paint Dry” Lacrosse Final.

* All of these sports base their “fastest” claims on the speed of the ball or puck, but none are faster than a badminton shuttlecock, which can travel as fast as 206 mph.

Okay, I’m being unfair. On many levels it was a very exciting game. Notre Dame and Duke traded goals in the game’s opening minutes and the score was close or tied the entire game. A sudden death OT lasted only five seconds, thanks to a thrilling faceoff-scoop-run-and-score by longstick middie C.J. Costabile. And in a sport that has been dominated by a quintet of teams (Johns Hopkins, Syracuse, Virginia, Princeton, and North Carolina have won every title since 1978) the appearance in the Final of two teams who had never won a title is a great thing for the sport.

But still…lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in America (that claim might actually be true) and many people tuned in to ESPN yesterday to see this exciting sport they have heard so much about. Sadly, they were treated to a game that, as announcer Sean McDonough said, looked like a North Carolina Tar Heel basketball game before the shot clock.

Credit Notre Dame for the right strategy, which we’ll dub the Irish Famine. Coach Kevin Corrigan, realizing he had the least talented team in the tournament, slowed the pace of the game down to a crawl, starving the Duke offense of the ball. On nearly every possession, his offense was content to pass the ball around and bleed the clock. They were given multiple stall warnings and half their shots seemed designed to miss, so that instead of turning the ball over their X attackman can race to the back line and reclaim possession. (for lacrosse newbies, when a shot goes out of bounds, possession goes to whatever team gets to the out of bounds spot first)

The result: a 6-5 decision, the lowest scoring title game in NCAA history. And while Notre Dame goalie Scott Rodgers was as good as advertised, let’s not pretend that this game was about defense. This game was about Notre Dame playing keepaway, holding the ball for huge chunks of time doing nothing but playing catch. Duke features the best attack in the country, but Ned Crotty (63 assists this season), Max Quinzani (68 goals) and Zach Howell (51 goals) spent most of the game standing and staring at the other end of the field.

In a showcase moment for the sport, with its popularity at an all-time high and the first finals team from West of the Mississippi, it delivered a snoozer.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger (and if the Irish has the ball, I don’t have to worry about that)
This is not meant as a critique of the sport in general. I played a little lacrosse myself back in the day (with an emphasis on the word “little”). I sat at the end of the bench for a Long Island high school in the early 80’s, and found my way to the middle of the bench (3rd and 4th midfield line) for a Fairfield University club team that dominated New England club lacrosse in the late 80’s.

* I graduated in 88, and from 87 to 89 the Stags went 33-2. In ’93 they went Division I and today are good enough that earlier this year they beat one of the teams in yesterday’s final.

I picked up the game late and wasn’t very good – I scored 3 goals in my entire college “career” - but I loved the sport and still do. Today, lacrosse is wildly popular where I live in Rockland County. My 10 year-old daughter plays, as do all five of my Rockland nephews. My two brothers-in-law coach their sons, and a buddy announces high school lacrosse on MSG.

Lacrosse is a genuinely great sport – one that offers the ideal combination of speed, athleticism, toughness, knowledge and grace. But one has to ask: how many coaches across the country watched a mediocre Notre Dame team – one that was unseeded and went 10-7 on the year – get to within one goal of a title, and think, hmmm? Maybe I’ll slow down my offense next year…

And that would be a terrible thing for the sport.

The Fix
Luckily, FreeTime is here to propose a solution – to fix the problem before it manifests itself. You already know what it is, don’t you? You knew it as soon as you saw the basketball shot clock reference above. It was once said that the only man who could stop Michael Jordan was his own coach at North Carolina, Dean Smith. And basketball as a sport does not benefit if the rules can stop Michael Jordan.

Well, we don’t want to stop Ned Crotty, Max Quinzani and Zach Howell either. The NCAA – the only governing body of the sport that matters – should institute a shot clock immediately. I’ll leave the details up to smarter laxheads than me, but there’s no need to be too aggressive right away. I’m leaning towards two minutes but even three might be fine.

But you also need an intent rule. In other words, you can’t have guys launch shots 10 feet over the goal just to reset the clock.

The sport is at a key moment in its growth. Don’t let the Irish Famine slow it down. Literally.

(Hat Tip to the Rock Star, who suggested this post and served as research assistant.)

[This is the fourth in an unplanned series called The Volunteer Commissioner in which I helpfully point out the flaws in various sports and suggest fixes. Previous installments were The Losers Out Manifesto, Swimming is Boring, and Fixing Softball. And before World Cup fever has passed, look for a piece on soccer.]