Whenever individual awards, such as the Heisman Trophy or MVP awards, are handed out, there is always talk of whether a candidate has a signature play or not. Think Desmond Howard’s punt return and subsequent striking of the Heisman pose in 1991, Jameis Winston’s halftime Hail Mary against Boston College in 2013, or Lebron’s chasedown block against Golden State in the 2016 NBA Finals. However, rule changes in major sports, especially the American ones, are also subject to signature plays. Take this winter’s NFC Championship between New Orleans and LA. With the Saints driving and looking to seal up the game with a touchdown, Drew Brees took a 3rd-and-10 Shotgun snap from the LA 13 yard line. Brees threw a wheel route towards Tommylee Lewis for a first down, but before the ball could get there, Rams’ defensive back Nickell Robey-Coleman obliterated him with a nasty drop of the shoulder. It was clearly pass interference. Everyone and their grandmother knew it. Everyone, that is, except the refs on the field. There was no flag, and the Saints kicked a field goal that allowed LA to tie, and eventually win the game.
This play has sparked huge controversy in NFL circles. Under current rule, the NFL cannot review a penalty call. Because of this play, that rule will almost certainly be altered soon. More and more, we are seeing big leagues like the MLB and NFL tweak rules every year. For instance, the MLB is looking into anti-shift legislation and has notably outlawed dangerous plays like blocking the plate in recent years. The NFL has changed kickoff rules and made certain hits illegal within the last 5 years. Even the NBA is getting in on the action, albeit with offcourt issues like marijuana usage and the minimum age of draft eligibility (thanks a million to Zion Williamson’s shoe, which made good timing for the return of the draft debate AND ruined a good article on how to beat Duke). But why does it seem like there are more and more changes every year?
There is really one reason for all of these changes: the advancement of technology. At the advent of the NFL, there were no cameras that could accurately capture replay. Now there are, so we use super slo-mo cameras to see whether a receiver makes a catch. The same concept applies to replays in baseball, hockey, basketball, and even European soccer. There are even more repercussions to technology and its effect on how rules get changed. Social media, the Moneyball Revolution, and Equipment upgrades have all factored into the recent influx of rule changes.
The first subreason for all the rule change is how much equipment has improved over the years. Cameras catch more action with more detail more than ever. Replay cameras, as mentioned earlier, are just better than they used to be. But now, other technology factors are coming into play. Since the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, FIFA has been using sensors in the goal to tell if a ball has fully crossed the goal line. If the ball crosses the line a signal is sent to the head referee’s watch. The NHL has also added similar goal line technology. In the past year, FIFA has also added VAR (Video Assistant Referee) to most of their competitions. While there are a lot of problems to work out with VAR, it has so far been used successfully to determine the outcome of a few Champions League matches in the last few weeks. These successful integrations of tech have become the means for implementations of new rules.
Another development that has led to an increase in rule tinkering is social media. Apps like Twitter and Instagram have led to a lot of public discussion when calls are obviously wrong. Twitter exploded in the aforementioned missed pass interference in the NFC Championship Game. Players, agents, fans, and just about everyone imaginable took to the Internet to tell the NFL they were wrong. After Zion Williamson’s incident with his defective shoe and the resulting injury, the Twitterverse was alight with debate. The NBA has proposed a rule that would make the minimum draft entry age 18, meaning high schoolers could enter the draft and forgo the one-and-done system that has been the standard for phenom ballers since 2004, when Lebron declared for the draft out of St. Vincent-St. Mary’s high school. Social media has allowed the average fan to totally over analyze any and every questionable call and call for change themselves. Because of this, leagues are starting to respond to online criticism. They have taken into account the public, and are making changes to fix their complaints.
Technology is also having an affect on how rules committees view player safety. The brunt of the player safety movement is taking place in football, the professional sport with the highest amount of risk, but other sports like baseball are chipping in (thanks, Buster Posey and your stupid broken leg). Scientific studies have shown the amount of damage playing football can do to the brain and body, so the NFL has tried to limit that and manage the wave of social media backlash against their sport. Just this year, they have altered kickoff rules to limit high speed collisions by eliminating the kicking team’s running start, and word around the league says they might be looking to do something similar with punts, or even eliminate kickoffs and punts as we know them. In addition, rules dealing with helmet-to-helmet hits and roughing the passer are being enforced more strictly than ever. Why? Because the NFL is afraid that if they go one bridge too far with disregarding player safety, they will anger their fan base, which happens to be very vocal on Twitter.
The final piece of the rule change puzzle is affected by tech a little less effectively, but it is just as important. Now that nearly every game, highlight, and replay can be seen for any just about any team in any sport, rule makers are starting to worry about game pacing and watchability. In baseball, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is hell bent on making a baseball game less than 3 hours again. This would supposedly pander the game to the younger generations with shorter attention spans. However, even after the implementation of pitch clocks and limitations on mound visits, the average length of an MLB game rose from 3 hours and 42 seconds to 3 hours, 5 minutes, and 11 seconds, and increase of 4 minutes and 29 seconds. Horrifyingly enough, Game 3 of the World Series lasted nearly 7 hours. I am a diehard fan of a team who participated in that game, and I only made it 5 hours. Manfred is threatening even more pace-of-play regulations if games lengthen significantly in 2019.
More, though, most organizations are tweaking rules to making their sports more fun to watch. Usually, this means boosting offense, and therefore, TV ratings. The MLB has saw their first season EVER where there were more strikeouts than base hits. The league does not see that as sustainable, so they’ve begun looking at ways to boost offense and keep down strikeouts. Mainly, they are considering a limit to usage of relievers, who tend to throw harder and strike out more batters, all while taking more time to do so, according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. Oddly and impractically enough, the shift (fielders moving around to different spots to prevent a hit, with each spot depending on the current batter) has been targeted as a point for new rules. However, just about any rule change involving the positioning of fielders would be impractical at best. Football is also on the same bandwagon. Since 2004, the NFL has been liberalizing rules to make it easier and easier for teams to throw the ball effectively. They have allowed more pre snap receiver motion and less post snap receiver-defensive back contact. This has led to record highs in scoring across the league (see my NFL State of the Union article). However, no sport has been trying to up the offense of their sport as much as soccer, but few have been more subtle. In 1992, FIFA eliminated the backpass (a law that allows the keeper to pick up a ball intentionally passed to him) and has been making small tweaks to favor offense ever since. They have loosened the offside law, made tackling from behind a red card offense, and added VAR to boost offense everywhere.
Now, back to the first example, the pass interference no call. The NFL has the technology to change this rule and allow replay review of certain penalties, and everyone on Twitter has been letting commissioner Roger Goodell know about it. So it is possible we could see a rule change as early as next season. However, the NFL will need to be careful about how they implement this. They should probably not allow coaches to challenge penalties, but should instead have a designated eighth official in the booth looking out for obvious wrongdoing, similar to how FIFA handles VAR. This would eliminate the poorly awarded penalties without crossing the fatal line of doing too much (looking at you, Rob “Baseball is to slow and we must legislate every area of the game to fix it” Manfred.) Otherwise, they could be looking at even more sustained social media backlash and a small drop in popularity and profitability.
Note: Sorry for the week off, I've had a very busy couple weeks and I couldn't find the right way to finish this article. I'll hopefully be back to posting weekly now. Thanks as always to my fantastic editor Brooke Jones, and go follow @lothropsports on Instagram for post updates!
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