Monday, December 03, 2007

Can Anyone Explain to Me...

...how letting coaches call timeouts improves the game of football in any way?

3 comments:

Gnuosphere said...

Do you think they should not be allowed to call timeouts? If so, why not?

Tom Hoffman said...

I don't think non-players should be able to intervene on the flow of the game. Coaches calling timeouts probably cost two teams the game this weekend. I'd like to see the players determine the outcome.

Unknown said...

I'm not sure whether I'm for or against coach called time outs, however football is an interesting sport in that the defense, offense, and special teams are played by three distinct squads. That being the case, even when on the sidelines each player has obligations to their own role in the game. Quarterbacks review photos, DBs discuss strategy and formations. The kicker warms up. The headcoach seems to be the only person responsible for being on top of all aspects of the game at the same time including watching what player substitutions are happening, what the time left in the game is, knowing all of the rules for both sides of the ball, etc. Because of this, it seems logical that they have the ability to control the flow of the game.

A quick survey of sports and who can call a timeout:
Baseball allows a pitching coach to go to the mound. This is like a timeout. (rule 8.06: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/official_rules/pitcher_8.jsp)

International soccer seems to allow the "team officals" (including a coach?) the ability to request a one minute time out (see page 29 of this document: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/federation/futsal%5flotg%5f06%5fen%5f21839.pdf).

Basketball only seems to allow a player to call time out, and it must be a player on the team with posession of the ball.

The NHL allows a timeout to be taken during a normal game stoppage and any player designated by the coach can request this of the official. This seems to imply that the coach calls the time out (http://www.nhl.com/rules/rule92.html).