These are supposed to be our happy days.
The NCAA Tournament is down to the Final Four. Major League Baseball is entering its second week. And University of Hawaii fans are pleased with the success of the men’s volleyball and baseball teams.
And yet …
>> Delays of games
Let’s say you’re ticketed for going 15 mph over the speed limit. “Hey, we’re all going with the flow, Officer, so why me?” You could make your case in a letter. But, come on, you know that will be rejected, even if it were read. Has anybody ever won a mailed-in appeal? So you take your chance on a court date.
And that’s why the video challenge is so inviting to coaches in a volleyball match or baseball game. There are lenses that can capture every dimple of the moon. UH does not have them to review plays inside the Stan Sheriff Center. Instead, it’s like trying to identify the dot-sized blip on an ultrasound. A challenge gives a volleyball coach a chance to overturn a call or, at the least, freeze the opposing server.
The reviews create too much down time, lengthen matches and, most important, stress reporters on deadlines.
One solution would be to empower referees and umpires to reject senseless challenges, much like a judge refusing to further a frivolous lawsuit. Another would be to allow challenges to be reviewed only after the 20th point in the first four sets or starting from the seventh inning. College baseball could follow the MLB in limiting the number of pickoff attempts to first base to subvert the pitch clock. At Les Murakami Stadium, a buzzer sounds when it appears the throws to first are stall tactics. That’s a first step.
>> Upon further review
But there also has to be a fairness for protesting games that are not televised or streamed and, thus, not reviewable.
After UH baseball coach Rich Hill was ejected for asking for an interpretation of a run-scoring balk in Friday’s game, umpire Andrew Burke added two more games to the suspension for a “prolonged” argument. It was like the scene in “The Breakfast Club” when the teacher kept adding Saturday detentions to an argumentative student.
Unless there is a grievous action, an ejection should not be trebled.
Or maybe allow 15 seconds to complain. Pitch-a-fit clock?
>> Tush Push comes to shove
Between the combine and the draft, the legality of so-called Tush Push continues to be a debatable topic. The act of players pushing a ball-carrying quarterback forward in short-yardage situations is not permissible in other plays, such as kick-blocking attempts on special teams.
The objection is the play is unstoppable, especially when run by the Philadelphia Eagles, who have mastered the technique. But protesters would have a better argument if they employed the health aspect. Trying to push a quarterback through a pile that is pushing back does not appear to be the safest tactic. In those ancient fights between spear-armed soldiers, many were inadvertently impaled from behind by spear-armed compatriots.
An equalizer would be to call the play dead once forward progress has been paused. Another would be for the referees to — wink, wink — look away if defensive linemen jumped into the neutral zone fractions of a second ahead of the snap. The refs do the same on Hail Mary passes despite nearly all of them involving pass interference.
>> Drawing the lines
UConn coach Gene Auriemma is correct in arguing his women’s basketball team should not have had to play a Super Regional game 2,900 miles away in Spokane, Wash. It’s not fair to his players and fans.
It also does not make sense for the men’s tournament to be separated into four geographical regions yet Oregon was in the East and Florida in the West.
How about having four regions — West, Midwest, South and East — with teams playing their first four games only in their geographical areas. The winners of the four regions advance to the Final Four. A team in the East can’t play in a Midwest regional. And it probably means some better-deserving power schools might be left out if their region fills up with winners from mid-major conferences.
Yes, we know the region labels are not literal. But sticking to a region would spread the wealth, and prevent, say, the SEC from fielding 14 teams in the tournament.
Or coaches can stop complaining about playing games so far away from their campuses.
