Competitive sports have for centuries, been based on
traditions. Some are good, sensible and even rational, like the winner being
spared his life while the other contestants are sacrificed to Sun gods. Others though, aren’t so logical, in fact
they infuriate me for their idiocy, backwardness and just plain stupidity. So
here is a list of some of the most confounding and hair tearing aspects of
sport for me.
‘Free Kicks’ in
Football
Why does a ref award a free kick just outside the box but
then allows the defending team- in what seems a millennium- to establish a wall,
a moat and a surface-to-air missile system to thwart the free kick? By then it
certainly isn’t a ‘free’ kick, there should be a time limit from the moment the
penalty occurred to when the free kick is taken. 30 seconds would do it. This
would stop, what has effectively become 2min timeout for the players, the
continual interruption of the flow of the game.
But what really infuriates me is how wasteful teams are with
their free kicks. How many times have we seen the best player on the team (or
the one with biggest ego) trying to kick it over an eight man wall and into the
top corner only to see it travel 10 yards over the bar? cough.....Balotelli...cough!
Why not some imagination? Check out these free kicks out and
tell me they wouldn’t still work in today’s game?
Why do cricket
players still wear whites?
This is one of those classic traditions which has passed its
used by date. I know wearing white clothes make you clean and spotless and it
helps absorb heat but cricket is also played on grass. Sliding on grass happens
to make quite a mess on white clothes, by the end of a match players look like
they have processed an Indian curry in their pants. I swear the IOC has secret
agreements with detergent companies throughout the world to keep playing in
white, increasing the amount of laundry powder used in households. With
clothing advances there is no need to play in white anymore, it’s time to move
on boys.
Why do Boxing refs go
over the rules before EVERY fight?
Seriously?!? These
people have been boxing for years and there are no variants in professional
boxing- it’s not chess! Really it confirms that boxing organisers know that boxing
can have a detrimental impact on a person’s body and mind. I mean they can’t
even be expected to remember the rules from one fight to the next.
NBA in-game
interviews
Now these haven’t been around very long but they have
already become a constant source of clichéd sport terms which give you no
information whatsoever. I don’t know why the NBA thought it was a great idea to
ask coaches and players during the start of quarters and halves generic
questions which reveal nothing new to the viewer. Just stop it, for at least Gregg Popovich’s sake.
Baseball managers
wearing team uniforms
It’s like these guys are expecting to come on to play at any
stage. Frankly, they just looks stupid.
NFL preventing team
end-zone celebrations
The ‘No Fun League’ as people like to call it, banned team
celebrations in the end-zone a long time ago because of fear the celebrations
will go too far. It really is no fun stopping creative team celebrations
occurring, the fans would love it. Imagine something like this
happening in the NFL, or even this.
It couldn’t hurt could it?
Golf players counting
their own score
With the advancement of technology and TV coverage- this
tradition makes absolutely no sense to me in professional golf tournaments.
Golf is one of the most mentally demanding sports in the world, where pinpoint
accuracy and consistency is key. In the advent of automatic scoreboards and
tracking technology to ask professional players to mark each other’s scorecards
and make sure that they are correct is simply archaic.
Roberto Vicenzo was tied for first after the final round of
the 1968 Masters Championship and should have gone to a 18 hole playoff for the
chance to win the tournament if his playing partner hadn’t written down his
score wrong, thus disqualifying him. A girl in a recently, despite having a nine shot lead at the end of her
competition, lost because she failed to spot that her scorecard was wrong. To
win fair and square and still lose over a ridiculous and backward tradition is
just plain ridiculous. Why don’t you just let the players play and get someone
else just to count the strokes who isn’t wondering what iron to use for their
next shot. It’s not hard people, just do it!
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