[CBFF] A Matter of Principal

[Tom Shannon]

http://chicagobearsfanforum.com/blog/?p=216

 

In thinking about the proposed rule changes that owners will consider at
their meeting on Monday, one in particular gets my blood up.

You'd think it would be one of the big ones like the proposed rule
<http://blogs.chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/huddleup/2008/03/49ers-tamper
ing.html>  to allow contact with agents before free agency begins or
re-seeding
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=clayton_john&id=33136
55>  the playoffs.  But no.  The one that gets me going is the change in the
rule which regulates the action
<http://www.profootballtalk.com/2008/03/27/nfl-adopting-madden-kickoff-rule/
>  following the coin flip before the game starts.

As it stands, the NFL rule states that the team that wins gets to choose
whether to kick or receive.  The team that loses the toss makes that
decision at the beginning of the second half.  The NFL competition committee
is now proposing to make the rule like the one in college, which allows the
team that wins the toss to defer the decision.  Simply put, I dislike the
college rule intensely and do not want to see it in the NFL.

There is an old saying that goes, "You make your own luck."  I love that
quote because, at least to me, it states a basic truth.  That lucky people
tend to be not so much those who get more breaks, but those who take
advantage of the breaks they get.  It means you shouldn't come to me with
excuses like, 'The ball didn't bounce my way'.  That's the mating call of
the loser.  If you are skillful and alert, you win.  There's no such thing
as "luck".  It's a life lesson.

So to me, and I think to most people, the best games are those that rely,
not on luck, but on talent.  Most people don't want to pay money to see a
rock-paper-scissors contest (something which I've never understood, either).
The more consistently the most skilled players win, the better the game.

Given the above, why would any one want to put more significance of winning
a coin toss into a game?  Why in the world would you reward a team simply
for being lucky enough to call "heads" and have a flipped coin land
correctly?  What skill does that require?

In my opinion you shouldn't let someone who "wins" such a toss have anymore
than you have to because good games simply rely on such things to the
minimum possible.  You don't let the team that calls the "correct" toss
defer the decision to kick or receive.  That's giving them the unnecessary
advantage of making a decision at the time of their choosing.  Instead, you
tell them, "kick or receive", knowing that whichever they pick, the other
team will do in the second half.  Each team does the same thing.  It's more
even.

Yeah, I know.  It's only a very slight advantage.  Truthfully, it's
miniscule.  But sometimes you make a stand, even on things that aren't a big
deal, because they are a matter of principal.  Because, even though the
consequences are small, the issue is one that goes to the heart of what you
believe in.  I think this is one of those times.