After pointing out that the Man U stoppage scandal could be easily solved if only soccer kept time like American football, dude shoots back:
Or how bout we have a constant running clock in basketball, hockey, and football and add injury time in an extra quarter, period, etc.
As if I'm making an arbitrary suggestion.
No. I'm not saying that soccer should be more like American sports just because. I'm saying that it's demonstrably better when everyone knows when an athletic event is going to end instead of only a few.
Let's try a thought experiment. What if we made track and field more like soccer? So at the next Olympics, we abolish the concept of set distances. Neither Usain Bolt nor Samuel Wanjiru know whether they're going to run for 100 meters or 26.2 miles. They just show up at the start line, start running when the gun goes off and keep on running until, gosh, I don't know, the official decides the race is over.
Stoopid.
- I love when Americans do this, because while there's validity to the suggestion, they often fail to appreciate how resistant to change sports communities typically are. It's why goal line technology is still not in place, why there's no pitch clock in Major League Baseball, and why angst-ridden discussion follows all of those issues. Eventually changes do come, as we're seeing with the end-line official experiment in the Europa league, but I can't imagine significant changes with timekeeping are ever going to be seriously considered.
As a former minister I have head-banging-against-the-wall experience with the "But we've always done it that way" mentality. It's one reason why I am a former minister.
But that doesn't mean the change isn't right. It just means that people are obstinate.
In regards to timekeeping however, there is a difference. Soccer won't abolish stoppage time because it's a bad habit they just can't break. But the NBA isn't going to embrace stoppage time because to do so would be... stoopid.
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