Taking Lessons from Rugby

While watching college football this past weekend I was struck by how many penalties there are in the game. In the NFL there are over 80 ways to get penalized on offense or defense. In so many ways the gluttony of penalties american football is consistant with the number of ridiculous laws and meaningless lawsuits that plague the world. It stands to reason that the high number of different penalties is to make sure that the officials get the call right and have good reasoning for it. Sound logic in theory yet in doing so the NFL has created both and unreasonably high standard for their officials as well as making the officials the most automated referees in sports.
In almost every sport the referee has final discretion about what is called and why. In baseball the umpire's discretion is the last word in strikes and balls, foul or not foul, checked swing or strike. In hockey the offside line is up to how close a ref wants to call it, same as in soccer, and a high stick versus just playing for the puck is up to the official as well. Basketball officials even have the ablity to dictate how much contact is too much. The closest the NFL comes to this is pass interference and offensive holding calls which seem to be the only place that there is much discretion.
Actually the problem isn't the discretion of the officials is the number of rules and the ridiculous need to have an infraction for every concievable offense. Which leads to the lesson from rugby. In rugby the officials have ultimate discretion, from scrum cadence to what is considered dangerous play to the always vague and confusing responcibility for collapsing a scrum. That is why there is one rule that needs to be adopted for the sake of football, to do away with ridiculous calls and non-calls that make the game obnoxious. The calls I am talking about specifically are any personal foul call, and there is a litany of them: facemask, roughing the passer, helmet to helmet contact, horse collar tackles, clipping and the list goes on. The problem here of couse is sometimes that late hit on the quarterback is not that late or the horse collar isn't really a move that puts the ball carrier in harms way. The rules are absolute and the referees can use them to make excuses for calls that are only questionably personal fouls. Why is it that the NFL cannot seem to umbrella these plays under one penalty the way rugby has done? What is the opposition to have a general dangerous play penalty that covers all plays such as the ones mentioned above? It is only logical to adopt this rule for personal fouls because thats exactly what most personal fouls are, dangerous. By grouping all of them into one catagory it can then be up to the ref to determine what is too dangerous. Example would be if a player is heading out of bounds and has slown down but, infact, is still inbounds and gets blasted by a defender that could've just as easily stopped it could be considered very dangerous play but technically not a personal foul.
I only recommend this because the NFL takes steps every year to futher protect quarterbacks and position players and every year it seems conversation about injuries dominating the airwaves every season. Instead of limiting the play of everyone and adding more and more ridiculous rules that only keep players from being aggressive at the point of attack. In order to preserve the high level of competition and keep players from getting injured due to stupid or unessary play all that has to happen is to put some faith and freedom into the officiating. Allowing officials to call dangerous play keeps it from being all about the specifics of the rule book and more about what they see happen. Of course people will say that refs already have the discretion they need to do this but at least weekly there is a question as to whether a call or non-call would have changed a game, a possession or so on. This way we can leave the questioning of these calls out of it and leave it entirely up to the officials, that way an official can be clear from the beginning of the season how he is going to call the game and take the heat completely the way it is done in other sports.

Maybe now I'll get this thing started

Here I sit, almost 4 pm, I'm off today but I have to work at 4 am tomorrow so I am not doing anything tonight besides going to bed at 8 pm. Class hasn't started so I have some free time for the last week of summer. I started this blog nearly a year ago in the hopes of bringing some awesome rugby-ness to the US of A, its not that there aren't other rugby blogs its just... mine will be better. Why the heck am I at all a person to talk rugby? I have no idea. I played in high school for three years I now am the assistant coach for that same team: the Linn Benton Lions Rugby Football Club, quite the mouthful. I would love to play in college but as it is I am overly busy and WAY overly lazy to quite get into that groove yet. So with no further ado. The Rugby in Oregon blog kicks off!