Deflation-gate

The demand for precision has gotten a bit out of hand, I think. Back in 2008, when I first joined the EvC community, I was caught up in the idea that there had to be purity in sports, and that it was an unfair assessment of an athlete's or a team's performance if something other than their athletic ability (equipment, environment, etc) impacted their success.But now, several years later, with all the instant-replay and the the concussions and the controversies about things I didn't even know mattered (like PSI), I've kind of gotten sick of hearing about all the underhanded ways people have come up with to get an edge in a competition.Not to drag this too much into politics, but this goes back to the fundamental question of how to balance free-market vs regulation. Allowing some experimentation with the parameters of the game leads to innovations (that's how American football got the forward pass, the two-point conversion, etc); but too much "innovation" cheapens the experience for the players and the spectators.A sport that has a strong following and a rather long history, like American football, is bound to accumulate regulations over the years, but you have to wonder whether the regulations and concomitant controversies will eventually become so stifling that the game loses its appeal.

Hi, Xongsmith. My secret hope is that, sometime in the near future, the game will be played by non-sentient, humanoid robots. That way I can still watch the game I love without feeling guilty about the "old boys' club" politics, the dark side of fame and fortune, and all the severe medical ramifications of the sport.

Hi, NoNukes. I was thinking more broadly than just air pressure. It just amazes me how many ways there are to "cheat" at a sport. If you peeked at the old thread I linked to, back then I was confused about why performance-enhancing drugs are considered cheating, but many types of performance-enhancing equipment aren't.Now, it feels like people have gone too far down the road I was advocating in that previous thread. "Deflate-gate" seems to be part of a pattern of people becoming more concerned with precisely monitoring and regulating every aspect of the game, including not only the players' behavior, but also environmental variables that we can't reasonably expect to be meaningfully controlled anyway.