Long Games and Low Scoring? Think Football, Not Baseball

People who don't understand baseball complain that a game takes too long and produces insufficient scoring. While the pace of the game is often unnecessarily sluggish -- weighted down by ceaseless pitching changes and bizarre batting rituals -- this criticism is more reasonably leveled at America's most popular sport.

Exhibit A this weekend was BYU's unfathomable 33-28 thriller over Nebraska. In case you missed it, the Cornhuskers led all the way until a last-second Hail Mary heave that they somehow failed to defend.

Sounds like riveting viewing, right? Except it suffered from all the maladies attributed to "boring" baseball:
1. The contest was completed in regulation and took three hours and 45 minutes.
2. Every single play was followed by, as George Will has pointed out, a committee meeting.
3. The final score was, in baseball terms, 5-4.

It's counter-intuitive but true: football involves less scoring than baseball. It just obscures its offensive anemia in two ways. First, when a team fails to do the equivalent of plate a run, it has a back-up option: kick a field goal. This is akin to baseball teams getting credit for half a run every time a runner reaches third.

Second, it awards crooked numbers for its scores. So Nebraska, which tallied four touchdowns (and four of those formalities called extra points, which are the equivalent of a butt slap from the third base coach), boasts a 28-point outburst. When a baseball team manufactures four scores per game, we decry their middling offense.

For its part, BYU crossed home four times (skipping the formality of the tushy touching at game's end) and reached third twice, for the margin of victory. Yawn.

That the game ended with a blown save by the defensive secondary in the most dramatic fashion shouldn't obscure the fact that the game suffered from the very characteristics that dog baseball in the public's eye.

Was that game an anomaly? At the very same time, , Alabama spent more than three hours defeating Wisconsin 4 1/2 - 2 1/2, Auburn held on for a three-hour-plus 4 1/2 -3 1/2 victory over Louisville, and Notre Dame needed more than three hours to smother Texas 5 1/2 - 1/2. And because there's a clock limiting late game possibilities, utter futility attended an entire quarter of that game. 

And all those yards they chew up? Cubbie third baseman Kris Bryant's latest bomb accounted for 185 yards on one play alone. Baseball is exciting. Football needs to speed up play.

Blue Ribbon Red Tape

When I covered state government as a reporter it was commonly known that if the governor didn't want to address an issue, he appointed a committee to study it. The more accolades he heaped on the committee members, the less likely we'd ever hear from them again.

So what does it tell us that Bud Selig has appointed a Blue Ribbon Panel to study...everything?

And what a distinguished panel it is. It could hardly get more distinguished if it comprised Kennesaw Mountain Landis, Abner Doubleday, Connie Mack and Branch Rickey.. No, really. Because the only difference between my group and Bud's is that my group is actually dead.

Bud's committee is the same retreads as every other Blue Ribbon Panel he's ever appointed. A bunch of old owners, a bunch of old executives, a bunch of old managers, a bunch of old players and representing all of fandom, a bunch of old George Will. Is there anything this illustrious group might conclude that they haven't already whispered into Bud's ear? It'd be like appointing your wife to study your sex appeal.

Among the issues this group will purportedly investigate are:

1. Whether there should be expanded instant replay. So is there an umpire on the committee? Uh, well, no.

2. How to speed up the action. So is there a player on the committee? Uh, no.

3. How to attract more young fans. So is there anyone under 40 on the committee? Uh...

4. What to do with the DH. So is there a union member or executive on the committee?

If Bud wants to know how to improve baseball, he could start by getting a Blue Ribbon Panel to tell him how to appoint members of a Blue Ribbon Panel. Of course, that's not the point, is it? What Bud really wants is cover for doing nothing by pointing out that the best minds are working on the great issues facing the game. Then, when they conclude that the solution to all of baseball's problems is a salary cap (of which, admittedly, I'd be fond) the Commish can simply blame others when it doesn't get done.

It's a great strategy for keeping the status quo. But Bud already knew that. The same distinguished gentlemen of his last Blue Ribbon Committee told him so.
b