Rules Aren't Meant to be Broken

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a rule follower. Now, if you'd have asked me 10 years ago, I might have answered differently...And compared to my sister I've always come off that way. (NO, I will not tell you which sister! Come on, people. Seriously.) I am the oldest child. I think it's a birth order thing. Although, I tend to put a lot more weight in birth order than most people. I get that from my mom. Okay, I'm getting off topic. Let's try and bring it back. The only reason I mention that I'm not a real stickler for the rules is because I'm afraid I'll lose credibility in regards to this subject if that is your opinion. (That being said, if you are reading this as a parent or grandparent or some other paternal-type relative and would feel better assuming I've never broken a rule, please feel free to do so. You may be right.)

Whether it's college football or high school soccer or little league baseball*, people in this country seem to have a hard time following the rules (I really don't feel comfortable speaking for more than just our country). Newsworthy incidents have been hard to miss over the last couple months or so, but the one that set me off was this one. I won't make you read it. It's a high school soccer team in New York who has been declared ineligible for playoffs due to a "technicality". They played 17 games this season while the state high school association rules say they can't play more than 16. They, of course, threw a fit when they were told they couldn't play, and thankfully the athletic association denied their appeal. Their argument was that it was a clerical error and not fair. It's this notion of not fair that really irritates me. I'm sorry for picking on high school girls when it's the Ohio State's and Miami's of the world that I'm really mad at. The lady tigers were just the straw that broke the camel's back.

The aforementioned collegiate football programs seem to be leaning on the same defense, however. The rules aren't fair. I don't plan to argue the fairness of the rules today, although for the most part I don't have any issues with their objectivity. The point I want to make is that breaking the rules is not the way to change the rules, nor is your perceived unfairness a legitimate reason to ignore the rules. I feel like that is exactly what all of these teams are doing. I've also heard the everybody's doing it argument, which I find equally asinine. (Editor's note: I would have bet good money there were two s' in asinine.) The two teams that got in trouble, of course, swear that every team out there is breaking the rules and this is just the way it is. Most people I've talked to about this or heard talking about it on TV tend to agree with this statement as well. You know what I have to say to that? If everybody else was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you? (I was going to say something more vulgar, but this is a family show.) We have rules for a reason. I think everybody would agree with that. We couldn't play the sports that we all love, if it weren't for the rules. So we have rules, we need rules, we know the rules, and yet we don't always follow them.

If in fact it is true that everybody is breaking the rules or that the rules really aren't fair, then maybe we should get together and work on updating some rules that maybe no longer make sense. I'm completely okay with that. I'm not anti-change, just anti-cheating. And it is possible to run a successful team and a successful program and follow the rules all at the same time. I'm just tired of all of the excuses. Everybody is making excuses. Even Yahoo is crying a river for the soccer girls, when the fact is that somebody messed up and sometimes life's not fair. Sometimes people make mistakes and there are consequences for those mistakes. We are all free to make our own decisions, but if you decide to cheat, you better be ready to pay the piper when he comes looking for you.

Thanks for letting me rant. I know it's annoying, but if you can't rant on your own blog, where can you rant?!?


*I don't actually have an example for little league baseball so if none exist, I apologize for dragging them into this.