Random ideas: Sports edition
I have some random sports thoughts that I want to blow out into full pieces, but that’s greedy, because these don’t warrant full writeups. Also, to be totally fair, I don’t 100% believe all of these, but I think they’d be fun. Anyway, quick thoughts are enough:
Extra timeout in NFL game
Okay, hear me out: Every team gets one more timeout per half. BUT — and this is the important part — every field goal attempt or punt costs a timeout. There are times when kicking the field goal makes sense. There are times when you’re at 4th-and-25 from your own 30 and you need to punt. So you don’t want to eliminate these altogether. But make it cost the teams something to make the attempts to encourage them to avoid the kicks as often as possible.
Plus, imagine how Andy Reid could screw that up.
Anti-bobblehead
I’ve seen a Chipper Jones-and-Freddie Freeman ATV bobblehead. I’ve seen a bobblehead of the pope in boxing gloves and holding a hoagie (what?). A freaking bobblefinger to promote prostate cancer awareness. Teams are always hunting for the next weird bobblehead idea. So how about the anti-bobblehead. The best fielders — Andrelton Simmons, Matt Chapman, Kevin Kiermaier, whoever — have everything made up like a regular bobblehead, except when you tap the head … nothing. And you know why? Because the best fielders … never bobble.
Whatever, I like it.
Fantasy points in wins only
Shamelessly ripping this off from Dannys Kelly and Heifetz on their podcast, but what if players only accumulated points in games their team won? It would eliminate one of the criticisms of fantasy — “Yeah, he accumulates stats, but how does it help his team?” — while incentivizing fans to watch the entirety of a game. Imagine you’re a Ravens fan watching a fourth-quarter drive in a 31-27 49ers-Seahawks game. You have Tyler Lockett (7-120-1), your opponent has George Kittle (6-92-2). Right now, you’ll watch the end of the game, because you like football, but you’ve gotten what you need out of it from a fantasy perspective. But if that drive decides whether you get 25.0 points from Lockett and your opponent gets 0.0 from Kittle, or your opponent gets 27.2 from Kittle and you get 0.0 from Lockett? That would be amazing. On draft day, do you take a fantastic player on the Bengals or Dolphins, or a middling Patriot or Saint? Joe Mixon would have been a disaster in this setup last year. Jimmy Garoppolo would have been the No. 4 QB. Fascinating.
Please note that I do not want fantasy to go to this approach as a default state, but I absolutely want to play one season this way. I want to play one season this way very, very badly.
While we’re at it, here’s a look at how the 2019 PPR scoring would have looked under this scoring:
Narrowing NASCAR
Okay, I 100% do not think this ever will — or ever should — happen, for about a thousand different reasons. But it’s such an amazing idea that I can’t not share it with you. So NASCAR races just go around and around and around, and I’m sure fans of the racing can identify idiosyncrasies and quirks of the laps — early laps they’re setting the pace; middle laps they’re jockeying for position; late laps they’re, I don’t know, trying to go even zoomier — but ultimately, the problem with car racing is that it’s just the same over and over (and over and over and over).
Idea! Set the outside walls of the track on a little conveyor/track. And every 50 laps (or whatever) … the track gets narrower. Move it in a foot, five feet, whatever. So the early laps are about setting the pace, figuring things out. Middle laps, it gets tighter, so the jockeying for position matters even more. In the late laps? The track is only like two, three cars wide. It’s real tense.
There are a bunch of reasons this is dumb, and I get that. But hot damn it sounds fun.
Survivor, Scripps edition
Survivor is in its 40th season right now, and the conceit for this 40th season is that it’s all winners returning. Sandra and Rob and Wendell and whoever else; to be on this season, you had to have a win under your belt. I’m a couple episodes behind (trying to watch the season with a small child who wants to watch too is super difficult), but the players from the earliest seasons all got voted out with a quickness. Whether that’s because the game has passed them by or just bad luck, who knows, but it’s true.
How would that work for a spelling bee? Do the previous winners keep up with their spelling acumen over decades, picking up even more words as they age and grow their vocabulary? Or have those muscles atrophied? Scripps needs to have a “best ever” spelling bee of the last 20, 40, however many winners. Get the eighth-graders and the now-50-year-olds together and just spell until they drop. I love this idea so, so much.