| Essay: Well I saw a thread title that was calling my name, it was "What is it about Football......" then the rest of the entry went: ".....that makes you LOVE Baseball so much??" So I decided to vent (unfortunately in a sane matter). "It's because I'm sick and tired of almost every play in football resulting in a penalty. The offense getting rewarded yards on passing interference on a catch that never happened. How almost every big run is brought back 10 yards for holding. How a kicker can miss an easy PAT or field goal from 20 yards out but can hit a 55 yard one. How it doesn't matter where a football team plays (they can play in a Hollywood studio with special effects & we could never tell the difference on TV) and how most football stadiums have no characteristic or difference on TV. How in football, after almost every play, somebody or two is celebrating for making a catch / tackle. (Tho I hate pitchers who start screaming and pointing upwards after a strikeout like they just won the game) How in football, refs screw up so much more with obvious penalties, ball placement than umpires do with bad calls / outs / foul balls (excluding the homeplate umpire's balls & strikes of course) How a football team is only on TV once a week instead of 6 or 7 days a week. Too many damn TV time-outs in football. It shouldn't take 3 1/2 hours to play a 60 minute game. Football teams wearing dark jerseys with dark pants (The Illini wearing all orange, the Bills / Seahawks wearing all dark blues, Cardinals in all red, Jaguars wearing all black, etc) How it's more of which football team screws up less than the team who executes more that decides who wins. (in College it's even worse) How in football when teams KNOW there's a spread to cover by, and instead of covering the spread, they just take a knee to run out the clock! (lost many picks because of that) Whistles. I hate that loud, ear piercing sound of all the refs blowing their whistles at the same time. How any penalty on the defense results in a 1st down for the offense, even if it's after a play from 3rd and 7, or 2nd and 22, etc. 5 yards should be just 5 yards added on. I don't think there should be any change in the down if it doesn't meet up to the 1st down marker Intentional Grounding I feel is a stupid penalty. most of the time it's up to the ref to judge "if the ball was in the area of a receiver & if it was catchable" Passing Interference (reprise). That is so fucking stupid!! How can you award yards on a catch that was never made?? And you can NEVER assume that he would have caught the ball! Bribed refs. Some games it seems like one team seems to catch all of the breaks and doesn�t get penalized as much. And sometimes a play is really obvious but they still get the call wrong. And don't say it never happens, because sometimes you see a call and go "What the fuck were they watching???" The old standard: TV-time outs / commercials. There is too many god damned TV-time outs and commercials!! You need to take a break after kicked the PAT, then after the kickoff?? Come on! It shouldn�t take 2 to 5 minutes to get this set up! Players getting hurt. This is annoying to watch and it slows the game down & results in MORE commercials! Depending on what kind of person you are, injuries are only fun when they happen to the other team. END Here's what someone else wrote on the subject: John Madden. Hank Williams, Jr. The Fox pregame show. Chris Berman. Those Coors Light "twins" commercials. Endzone dances. Wardrobe malfunctions. Instant replay. Up With People singing "The Impossible Dream" during a Blue Angels flyover at halftime with bands. (Apologies to Tom Boswell for that one.) Belligerant, overweight, inebriated mouth-breathers in the stands. In 20-odd years of attending baseball games I don't think I've ever seen as many lowlife types as I have at a single Detroit Lions football game. The fact that football knocks important baseball games off the radio in my market, despite the fact that baseball is a vastly superior radio sport. END But I'm still a big football fan, seriously. But it's just these things that make it for a long, boring game. |