Interesting Changes Coming Up …

Andrew Marchand covers sports media as his beat for The Athletic; over the years, his reporting has been authoritative.  One of his latest reports is that Mike Tomlin will join the NBC team for Football Night in America starting in the Fall.  It took no time at all once Tomlin stepped down from coaching the Steelers for speculation to begin about his taking a TV commentary job; and now, according to Marchand, he has one.

NBC has an opening of sorts on the show since it decided not to renew the contract for Tony Dungy; I say “of sorts” because I believe what the network needs to do is to reduce the number of people with speaking roles on the show.  But that is off on a different vector heading…

I think Mike Tomlin is a natural for TV; when he was behind a microphone in press events during his coaching tenure, he was comfortable and he was agile with his turns of a phrase.  Once when speaking about a player who supposedly wanted to be traded, he said that the Steelers wanted “volunteers not hostages” making it clear how he interpreted the situation.

Mike Tomlin is only 54 years old; he can return to the sidelines in the NFL if that is what he chooses to do.  He coached the Steelers for 19 seasons and never had a losing season; that item alone should get him any interview he would like to have.  But there are few guarantees in life.  Tomlin’s predecessor in Pittsburgh was Bill Cowher who left coaching at the age of 49 and has remained as a TV presence ever since.

I have mentioned this before but let me repeat it here in brief.  Football Night in America has too many commentators.  None of them ever have the opportunity to develop a thought before it is time to move on to the next person’s turn to speak.  I understand that the network’s goal there is to give the program an energy level that does not exist on the other network program offerings of this type, but “frenzy” does not equate with “energy” or with “entertainment”.

Moving on …  MLB has instituted some radical changes in the past several seasons and most seem to be working out well.  [Aside: That last comment does NOT apply to the “ghost-runner rule” in extra inning games.]  All those changes were tried out and tinkered with in Minor League games for years before coming to the big leagues; so, I was wondering if there were any more “experimental situations” under investigation.  And the answer is that there are.  Here are a couple of them:

• Starting pitcher can be removed and still re-enter the game.  There are three conditions that accompany this allowance:
  • It only applies to the starting pitcher.
  • He must have thrown at least 25 pitches in the inning when he was removed.
  • He must re-enter the game in the inning immediately after his removal.
• The ABS will be expanded to include challenges to a call of a checked swing.
  • The same challenge system will be in place; only pitcher, catcher or hitter may challenge and there are limits to the number of challenges.
• Pitch clock refinements.
  • No stoppage when the catcher leaves the catcher’s position to signal defensive changes.
  • Everyone but the pitcher must be outside the circumference of the mound by the end of the Mound Visit Clock countdown.
• Moving second base.
  • The baseball diamond is not a perfect square; second base is further out toward centerfield than it should be to make the diamond a perfect square.
  • Putting second base “where it belongs” will move second base closer to first base and to third base by more than 6 inches – – encouraging more stolen bases?

The pitch clock refinements could be implemented in MLB almost seamlessly; so, if those rules find favor with the rules’ mavens, we might see them in MLB sooner rather than later.  My guess is that the other experiments would require a lot more study and tinkering before anyone attending a major league game would see them enforced.

Finally, here is an observation from Thomas Sowell:

“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………