Too Much Of A Good Thing

You know me. I'm all for accepting change into our beloved sports traditions. Technology can help us. We don't need to accept things the way they have always been when we have an opportunity to improve them. That whole deal.

And then, of course, we have this. Change gone amok. New technology interfering with the greatest tradition in all of sports. FIFA is doing its best to undermine my point--but just watch while I twist this into supporting my point of view.

What FIFA is helping us see is simply the fact that we have to be reasonable. I've argued that the idea that we can't change our sports is unfounded, but the other extreme is just as insane: the idea of changing our sports for nothing other than the sake of changing them. Case in point: what on Earth was wrong with whatever soccer balls we used last time? Why can't we just pick a ball and stick with it, instead of changing it for absolutely no reason? This is, in fact, the same frustration I've shown before--just as we shouldn't change our sports equipment for no reason, we also shouldn't change our team logos and colors just because we feel like it.

When we promote change for nothing more than the sake of change, we're suggesting that change is inherently good. When we argue that we can't add replay to baseball because human error has always been a part of the game, we're suggesting that change is inherently bad. And I can't understand either point of view. Whether or not change is good depends entirely on what we want to change and why. If we have a good reason for updating our beloved sports, then we're damaging them by not following up on that opportunity. If we have no good reason at all, then we're throwing our dearly held sports traditions away just because we're bored. Thankfully, things are ultimately very simple: if we can just act for the right reasons, then everything won't just be okay, it will be better.