Mike Celizic

The NFL is talking about changing its overtime rules, at least in playoff games. To this, all anyone can say is, it’s about time.

I have my own idea on that, which is to play an extra 15-minute period. If it’s still tied, play another 15 minutes. Continue until someone ends a quarter with the lead — and the win. In regular-season games, if it’s still tied after 15 minutes, call it a draw and go home.

OK, the overtime issue is solved. But we could use more changes. So while we’re at it, let’s have a few more new rules, not just in football, but in baseball, hockey and basketball, too.

Enough with the basketball time outs
The definition of eternity used to be two people and a ham. Now it’s the final two minutes of a basketball game. The problem, as we all know, is all the time outs coaches have at their disposal and their preference for calling time outs rather than actually play the game.

So reduce the total number to three. The game's not that complicated. Deal with it.

The second rule I’d like to see is a prohibition against calling time out during a time out. You know the situation. Team A draws up an inbounds play and Team B calls time when it sees how Team A lines up to draw up a defense. Then come back out and Team A looks where Team B lines up and calls a 20-second time out to counter that move. Then the inbounder can’t get the ball in inside of the five seconds, so he calls time again. Six or eight minutes later, they run the play and 12 seconds later, we repeat the process.

No more. One team calls time and that’s it. When the break is over, you have to start playing before you can call time out again. Plus, you only have three time outs anyway.

Quit your bitching
Coaches, owners, league commissioners and TV analysts love to tell players how to behave. The first rule for every player is to not disrespect the officials. Make a show of telling a zebra how to do his job and you’ll spend the rest of the game in the locker room.

This is a great rule, but it doesn’t go far enough. If players can’t yell at the officials, why are managers and coaches allowed to?

There are few sights more disgusting than watching a football coach — veins bulging and spittle flying — chase an official down the field, berating him for a call. Or a basketball coach “working” the officials, trying to get an advantage by bullying the poor guy with the whistle. Baseball managers aren’t as bad as they were in the heyday of Billy Martin and Earl Weaver. But they’ll still come out on the field and berate an ump while the crowd roars its approval, something crowds never do when managers behave themselves.

This is the problem. We celebrate Phil Jackson for bullying refs. Baseball fans talk in hushed awe about the way Martin used to kick dirt on the umpires’ shoes.

We all know what’s wrong for the players is wrong for the managers and coaches. Let’s have a rule in every sport — the NHL already has it — yell at an official and you’re gone. You’re allowed to ask an official to explain a call, but that’s it. Start telling him that he wouldn’t have a room-temperature IQ in a walk-in freezer, and you’re gone for the game.

Zero tolerance on this one. You whine, you’re finished.

No fighting in the NHL
Hockey had a terrific Olympics. More than 18 million people watched Team USA and Canada play for gold.

The fans loved the game they saw. The players skated at a furious pace, they checked hard, bodies were being mashed into every corner, bodies were being sacrificed to block shots, goalies were standing on their heads.

And nobody got into a fight.

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They didn’t because the IOC never got the memo from the NHL about how you can’t have hockey without two toothless troglodytes beating each other’s brains in. So the IOC said, thou shalt not fight.

That’s all it took. And the result was a beautiful game that had all the athletic violence and speed you could ask for without the goons going at it. If hockey wants to keep the fans it picked up, it needs to join the 21st century. Stop the fighting.

Get baseball an electronic strike zone
I used to be adamantly opposed to instant replay in baseball, where I used to think the rare umpire’s blown call was part of the game. But after watching last year’s playoffs, I’ve changed my mind. The only thing that was rare were calls the men in blue got correctly.

It was especially egregious on balls and strikes. I watched guys get called out on pitches four inches outside the strike zone and other guys walk on knee-high fastballs over the heart of the plate. Watching where the pitches went on those little virtual strike zones the broadcasts show and then seeing what the umps called was a journey into an alternate reality.

The players deserve better, and since baseball can’t provide it, it’s time to bring in the electronic home-plate ump. Let the virtual strike zone call it. Put it on the big board in centerfield. Make the game fair for everyone.

As for the other calls — do I hear instant replay?

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