NFL coaches shouldn't call timeouts

In 2004, the NFL changed the rules to allow coaches, not just players, to call timeouts from the sideline. The idea was to make precision clock management easier and avoid confusion during hurry ups at the end of each half.

Unfortunately, it's given coaches an unintended power that has a deleterious effect on the game. A coach, unlike a player who has to get set and worry about minding the play, can often get the timeout in mere moments before the opposing team snaps the ball. The result is frequently that the snap goes ahead. In field goal situations, this often means a kicker will nonetheless get the now meaningless kick off, and then have to retry the attempt. Icing is one thing, but deliberately attempting to force a "non play" seems unsportsmanlike, not to mention extremely annoying for the crowd and TV audience.

Similarly, coaches have used these "just in time" timeouts to get an unfair preview of offensive plays. Once again, right before the snap, a coach calls timeout and the play goes ahead, usually for several seconds before the whistles stop it. Bill Cowher in particular seems fond of this technique.

I think the old rules should be restored, and players forced to call timeouts themselves. A compromise might be to allow only sideline timeouts by the offense.

If the NFL keeps this rule, I guarantee there will one day be controversy when a seeming game-deciding kick is called back because of a coach's timeout, followed by a re-kick miss.

Life's Annoyances, Part 2

Second in a series.

OK, so let me start by saying that I don't hate bicyclists. Some of my best friends are bicyclists. Everyone on the road should do everything they can to keep the commute safe and fun for all.

With all that out of the way, I've finally realized what it is that annoys me most about bicyclists on city streets. Many times have I been out driving on a reasonably wide street with light traffic and find myself behind a biker in the dead middle of the lane, making no effort to move to the side so I can safely pass, and forcing me to slow to the breakneck speed of 10-15 MPH. OK, OK, "share the road" is the mantra. Fine, then how to explain that when I do hit traffic, these same bikers are now zipping along past the traffic on the side of the road, mere feet from my passenger door?

Either you use the lanes like regular traffic because the side of the road isn't safe, or you use the side of the road to facilitate traffic flow. You can't have it both ways.

Life's Annoyances, Part 1

First in a series.

Why is it that some mobile phone carriers (I'm looking at you Verizon Wireless) insist on making you listen to a 15 second spiel before you can leave a voice message? Somehow we got by for years with answering machines that said, "I'm not home right now, please leave a message after the beep...<beep>". Straightforward and efficient.

Now, after I wait for the phone to ring 12 times--just in case it's in a combination safe underneath a sofa rather than in a pocket--I spend a quarter minute of my life I'll never get back hearing again about all my wonderful choices in case I didn't actually want to just leave a message. Maybe I'd like to leave a callback number. Maybe I'd like to hear more options after I leave a message. Maybe I'd like to send electric shocks into the eyeballs of whatever moron decided that they'd make literally millions of people listen repeatedly to a message that maybe four of them will ever use. Oh, I guess that's not an option.

Sprint nicely lets you work around this by pressing 1 as soon as the prerecorded message starts. I haven't found a similar trick for Verizon. Maybe it exists, but systems like this shouldn't be designed so that only through esoteric knowledge can you make them work the way they're supposed to.