A modest proposal for improving football: the ‘time-in’
If you’ve ever noticed that football games slow to a predictable crawl at the end of each half, the time-in is the rule for you. The idea is simple: When the clock is stopped, for whatever reason, a coach could call a “time-in,” and force the clock to start up again. Think of it as the antimatter version of the timeout.
The time-in is so powerful that I recommend it be strictly rationed: each team would get only one time-in per season. The possibility of a sudden time-in would loom large in every coach’s mind at the most tense points in the game, introducing just enough concern and uncertainty to make the game different. Timeworn clock-management strategies would no longer be a given. And yet, for the average viewer on a Sunday, the game on the field would still be your father’s football.
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Of course, this assumes that the time-in is used that game. If it hasn’t been used yet, it affects the game in a different, but more subtle way: the opposing team will simply have to assume that it might be used. Coaches would enter the realm of game theory: how do we calculate when it’s the best game to use it? And what if the other team is expecting us to think this way?
Once per season? Frankly this idea is so horrifyingly bonkers that it just might be great. If I’m allowed to add my own modest proposal, I’d settle for making “icing the kicker” a 15 yard penalty.
The proposed “time in” only used once a season would mean that coaches would want to save this “nuke option” for playoffs or a REALLY crucial game in the season. The crucial game, of course be a game the coach can’t afford to lose (like to get a playoff berth). Also coaches would have to keep track of who used it yet or not when planning out the clock in the last quarter.