Imagine you’re master of the universe for a day, but your power only covers sport.
You have free rein to make changes to any sport you like.
But of course, you need to need to remember that with great power comes great responsibility, so go easy there.
For instance, you could not just cancel a particular sport because you had personally found it boring.
The challenge is to impose changes to make it more attractive for more people.
So for example, if you think football or soccer could do with a few more goals per game then do something about that.
Or in rugby league there may be a case for reducing the number of tackles a team gets with the ball.
So it’s about dealing with any boring aspects of sport, and trust me, there are plenty in most of them, even for mad sport fans like me.
What we love about sport is their unscripted, unpredictable nature, although we do keep fingers crossed none of the participants have taken performance enhancing drugs or bet on the outcome.
But thanks to coaches and other experts who hate losing more than they love winning, there are passages in every sport that have us reaching for the remote.
It’s up to you what you would do, but we’re also playing master of the universe with our Top 5 sporting changes we’d make…
Number 1. Some sports enjoy high scoring rates, whereas some, such as soccer/football often can end in 0-0 draws after 90 or more minutes. What we want more of are scores like 9-4 or even 12-7, goals, goals and more goals, but how? Easy: make the goals bigger, a metre wider on each side and another metre higher. Goalies will still spectacularly save some goals, but not as many as they do now.
Number 2. In basketball, where they have the opposite problem from soccer, the giants playing the game are getting taller and taller, some over seven feet. Yet the playing area, which is tiny, hasn’t changed, so that’s where I’d go. Extend it by 10m on either end, and, for goodness sake, raise the height of the basket, by a metre at least. There’s just too much scoring in basketball, and that’s as boring as hardly any.
Number 3. The changes to the AFL are easy: bring some rules, because right now the game doesn’t seem to have too many. Heard of knock-ons?
Number 4. Whereas in rugby they just love rules, so much so that they don’t have a bunker ruling on tries but a committee. Less is more, rugby chiefs.
Number 5. One of the things that really gets my goat with ODI and Twenty20 cricket is the rule that bowlers can only bowl so many overs. A silly rule that should be scrapped. Let the best bowlers bowl till they drop, I say.
