Don't Fix What Ain't Broke: Part 1

This is part one of a two-part piece amid the many proposed rule and regulation changes for the next National Collegiate Dodgeball Association (NCDA) season.

Part one will take the side of why very little to no changes should be made with the current system the NCDA has in place, followed by part two which will be released at a later time and will take the opposite side of the argument. As a player/administrator that sees both sides of the story, I want to make as impartial of a view as possible, hence two separate articles, and I strongly encourage anyone's feedback to either article. With that being said, let's get started.

As some people may be aware of, at the Nationals 2016 Captain's Meeting there were a lot of rule proposals and administrative changes discussed, 25 to be exact. They ranged from making changes in the ranking system to in-game changes like making a catch bring two players back (sorry Wes, but you knew good and well this was not going to happen). In regards to exclusively game-play aspects of the rule changes, there has been a lot of emphasis on trying to speed up the game and have more action plays throughout a match. Some proposals that are currently up for consideration and have been brought up in the past include: smaller team sizes, a smaller legitimate attempt zone (LAZ), shorter attack-line distances, a shorter shot clock, the elimination of "dirty blocking", and imposing a Burden-Ball rule. The reason some of these ideas are being considered include what I mentioned before about speeding up the game, but additionally, players want to eliminate time wasting and stalling out games, and some members around the league want the games to be higher scoring.

A fair portion of these rule changes are a direct comparison to the current rules in place for Elite Dodgeball and the Ultimate Dodgeball Championship (UDC), two major leagues in the dodgeball community. For example, Burden-Ball, a rule which states that a team with the majority of balls must throw, is enforced in both Elite and the UDC, but not in the NCDA. Another example is decreasing the attack lines. The current standard in the NCDA is 30 feet from the neutral zone to the baseline, the proposed change has been to shorten that distance to 25 feet, the same distance as Elite for "pinch" leagues.

The idea of rule changes is nothing radical, and in fact, rule changes should be made when there is a major concern in play. As an example, under the old NCDA rules, all balls were placed at the center of the court, instead of the 3-4-3 set-up currently in place, and it caused a large amount of collisions and even head injuries. So the change that was made helped eliminate those early injuries, and actually helped balance the game so slower teams would have easier access to balls. However, many of the changes being proposed today do not concern to safety, or helping fix major flaws in the current rulebook. And in fact, as I said before, a decent portion of them are trying to mimic what is currently in place in other leagues. This opens up some questions like, why should we try to be like someone else? Why make changes that are going to impact only a fraction of the current teams? If the NCDA starts to turn into another Elite or UDC, then what's the point of even having the NCDA?

Everyone needs to recognize that the NCDA is a brand. Like the NFL, NBA, and even NHL, the league has its own ruleset and culture that helps distinguish it, and it needs to maintain some distinguishing factors in order for that brand to set itself apart. If Coca-Cola tries to make its product taste more like Pepsi, then why should people continue to buy Coke? The answer is, people shouldn't. In this same aspect, if multiple leagues become intertwined and start to all look the same, then eventually, there is no reason to even differentiate them at all, and that is truly a bad thing to have.

Part of what makes the NCDA so special is what I touched on in a previous article, this is both a social league and a competitive sport. The larger team sizes are meant to get as many people involved as possible. The larger courts are meant to accommodate larger teams and provide appropriate spacing for players as to prevent injuries. Additionally on the note of injuries, our 15 second shot clock serves the purpose of not only maintaining a flow of the game, but also to help protect a player's arm from injury too frequently. The rules that are currently in place do serve a purpose, and they are set up the way they are for a specific reason. In regards to time wasting and stalling-out games, that is a consequence of having a game with a set time limit. Any professional sport with a game clock will face time wasting in one aspect or another whether it's football, soccer, and even E-Sports. Sports that don't have time limits do not need to worry about this problem like baseball or cricket, but as a result, those games have the tendency to drag out much longer than they need to.

With respect to scoring, sometimes less can be more. Would it really be fun to be in a situation where the team on the defensive is so helpless that there is essentially no point in even trying in that situation? Of course not. And this can also be seen even when defense isn't incredibly hard to try. Just look at the NBA, do we want All-Star game like possibilities where no one even tries to defend anyone? Again, of course not. Whether it be because people just don't care or the rules favor the offensive team so much it doesn't matter, both are dangerous to a sport. Soccer is without a doubt the lowest scoring game there is, and despite that, it continues to be the most popular sport in the world. The reason? Because everyone loves the culture of the game, in the same way that many players currently love the culture of the NCDA. Modern day soccer has existed since 1863, and since the official rewriting of the rules in 1930, there have only been 4 total changes to the rulebook, 4. A sport that offers fairly little in terms of scoring, and not a lot for some in terms of spectator value, has basically seen no change in nearly a century. So why should we?

The purpose of this league is not to create a spectator sport, it is to bring people together through something we loved doing as children. Our brand is, and always should be, focused on the players. Whether that be in terms of health, commitment, or the overall play of the game, what makes this league different is that it focuses on benefiting its players. We should not succumb to changes that jeopardize this element, and there has been no mass exodus away from the NCDA, so there is little reason to think that the league needs to change. To quote the very first words you read from this article, don't fix what ain't broke.