There was a post a couple days ago that I want to look at from a different angle. A while ago, I wrote that somebody should go backwards to cause a collision, thus helping his/her teammate to move up. Skittles, a PGR player for the San Francisco Optx, did just that, and in the GotFrag article I linked to, it said that admins stepped in and ruled on the “play”. They decided to penalize her and have a restart. Here’s the referenced quote from the article:
In one instance during another PGR 3 race, a small dispute arose over a move by Skittles to reverse course and interfere with the competition. After a few seconds of surprised looks and chatter around the room, Levine stepped in and paused the match. A decision was quickly made amongst Levine and admins with a penalty being given and a restart. Although there was not a specific rule for this incident, Levine and company made a quick fair decision. Not only did the CGS resolve the issue quickly, they also revised the rules for the game to include the infraction as illegal. The next night franchises signed off on the revision to that rule in the nightly pre-match meeting.
After the shock from my idea coming to pass wore off, the Official Brother of LANDodger posed an interesting thought: was the CGS right in pausing the match and assessing a penalty?
Surprisingly, I found out my reaction was, “no”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making an argument that the maneuver should be legal. And really, I think it’s good that the CGS is organized and involved enough that they can pause a match and come to a conclusion on a ruling on the spot. That’s something that usually leads to a delay at LAN tournaments. That being said, assessing a penalty on the spot is unfair to the players, and, in some ways, dangerous for competition.
Admins will always be needed for matches because there will always be ruling on whether things violate the rules of the game. The problem is there wasn’t anything in the rules that said going backwards was illegal. When the PGR match started, that was a completely legit move. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t.
You can be sure other leagues have run into the same problems, and to my knowledge, they’ve been handled after the game, or even after the season. “Boosting” in the NFL comes to mind. Players used to be able to jump off other players, or get boosted, etc, to help block field goals or punts. But they didn’t change that rule in the middle of the game, the NFL has competitions committees and things like that to assess rules after the season is over.
MLB, of course, has had similar problems. The “spitball” was legal for whole seasons. Here’s the real kicker: even after they made it illegal, seventeen pitchers were still allowed to use it. How’s that for a curveball?
(On a pun scale of 1-10, I believe that rates as “LARGE GROAN”)
Why would they do that? Because it’s incredibly important. The teams tacitly agree to play by those specific rules before each match; when you’re playing, something is either illegal or it isn’t. Changing a rule in the middle of a competition changes the whole game. You’re no longer playing the game you were when you started, and that’s a problem because the new game emphasizes different skills and strategies.
A quick example: changing the rules in a fantasy league. In fantasy baseball, some leagues decide not to have a limit on how many innings a pitcher’s spot can earn. That means you can pick up a new pitcher every day and pitch him to gain extra wins and strikeouts, if you wanted (this is called “streaming”). Sometimes, the players aren’t aware of that strategy, and after the league starts and one manager is streaming, they decide to outlaw it.
Well, guess what? The streaming guy usually gets pretty ticked off, considering he built his whole team around that strategy, and now he won’t be able to brag around the water-cooler about beating his fellow nerds in fantasy sports.
In PGR, forbidding what Skittles did might mean a player shouldn’t get into a collision at the start, because you’re just as likely to end up in fourth, after a thirty-point turn-a-round, as you are in first. Even such a small, and maybe even obvious, change results in drastic changes in strategy and emphasis on different skills.
The last thing that I just want to mention, briefly, is that altering the rules like that makes it easier for a corrupted admin, or easily influenced admin, to have a huge impact on a match. What if that happened in the Finals, in front of thousands booing people? People are influenced by crowds, and sometimes the decisions we make are, too. And to be honest, I don’t think you want to open that door, even just a crack.
(By the way, I don’t want to insinuate that the admins on hand were biased, because I don’t think that’s true at all. But when you set this precedent, I think you’re raising the chance of something like that happening. It’s still incredibly small, but worth nothing, in my opinion.)
So, if I was Lou Piniella, this is where I’d be throwing my cap and kicking dirt on the umpire. Of course, if I was Lou Piniella, I’d have enough money to hire somebody to kick dirt on the umpire for me. I’m going to end it much more mildly: I appreciate that the CGS had the wherewithal to make a prompt ruling, but in the interest of competitive fairness, I think they should make changes to competitive rules in the offseason.
Just like the other professional leagues.
