Correcting a wrong, as NFL did with overtime, is a rule leagues should follow

In tweaking the overtime procedure it will use in playoff games starting next season, the NFL this week altered what was arguably the worst and most hotly debated rule in sports.

Except in rare instances, no longer will teams winning the end-of-regulation coin toss be able to win games simply by kicking a field goal on the opening possession of overtime.

“It’s the No. 1 issue that we hear about from fans,” Houston Texans owner Robert McNair told reporters. “And the downside is very limited. If it makes for a more interesting game that makes our fans happier, then we’ve achieved something.”

With that in mind, administrators in other sports might consider more changes.

In baseball, for instance, Commissioner Bud Selig couldn’t stomach another tie in the All-Star game after 2002, so he ordered that All-Star managers play to win, forcing them to hold players in reserve in case of extra innings. So Chone Figgins, a first-time All-Star, didn’t get into the game last summer.

It’s bad enough to keep players out of an exhibition, worse still to shamelessly bow to television by tying the results to home-field advantage in the World Series.

Since Selig introduced his “This Time It Counts” promotion in 2003, the National League is 0-7 in All-Star games and, because of it, has not had home-field advantage in the World Series.

This is not only unfair but ludicrous, since the simple idea is the better way to go: The All-Star game is an exhibition showcase for the players, and the team with the better regular-season record gets home-field advantage in the World Series.

Basketball’s dumbest rule might be the one that differentiates it from other sports: Players are disqualified for routine infractions — personal fouls in this case.

In football, penalties are meted out in yards and players must hit someone before they’re thrown out.

In the NBA and all other levels of basketball, teams not only shoot free throws but also have an opportunity to get their opponents’ best player out of the game.

Possible solution: After the sixth foul in the NBA (and the fifth at lower levels, where games are shorter), the team that is fouled shoots free throws and retains possession of the ball. Nobody is disqualified.

The outcome is decided by the best players rather than by the best players who haven’t fouled out.

USC Coach Kevin O’Neill would like to see college basketball adopt several NBA rules: give players six fouls instead of five before disqualification, add a charge line around the basket and allow teams to advance the ball to midcourt after a timeout in the game’s final two minutes.

Of the ball-advancing proposal, the former Toronto Raptors coach said, “It would make the game much more exciting.”

The Big East experimented with a six-foul rule in the early 1990s, but the rule was widely criticized for increasing rough inside play before it was struck down by the NCAA.

Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post argued that the rule lengthened games to the point that, “an average Big East game lasts about as long as the French and Indian Wars.”

Another basketball rule that might be worth considering: create a standardized three-point line for all levels of the game.

In college football, rules governing unsportsmanlike conduct have long left players, coaches and fans — and sometimes even officials — scratching their heads.

It’s understandable that slashing a finger across one’s throat would be universally interpreted as taunting, but who can forget when Washington quarterback Jake Locker was penalized for flipping the ball into the air after scoring a late touchdown against Brigham Young two seasons ago?

Locker wasn’t taunting. He was celebrating.

But, by NCAA rule, teams must be punished for “throwing the ball into the air.” The Huskies were penalized and forced to try a long-distance extra point. The low kick was blocked and Washington lost, 28-27.

Here’s another college football oddity: The ground can’t cause a fumble, but it can make a tackle. Unlike in the NFL, ballcarriers are ruled down even if they slip and fall without a defender knocking them to the ground.

In the NHL, the rule mandating shootouts for regular-season games that are tied after regulation and overtime is akin to ending a tied baseball game with a home run contest or a deadlocked football game with a field-goal competition.

Sometimes a tie is the right result.

In soccer, players committing fouls and denying the opposing team a clear scoring opportunity are red-carded — i.e., ejected — and a penalty kick is awarded to the team that was fouled.

That, many claim, amounts to triple punishment — a penalty kick that almost always results in a goal, a red card that leaves a team a player short, and a subsequent suspension. They want to see the punishment reduced to a yellow card if a penalty also is given.

“It’s an interesting one,” Gordon Smith, chief executive of the Scottish soccer federation, told Britain’s Press Assn., “and we need to explore whether a player might be less likely to commit a foul because of the existing punishment.”

Meanwhile, now that the NFL has changed its overtime rule for playoff games, supporters already are calling for the same mandate to be enacted for regular-season games.

There shouldn’t be different rules for the most important games of the season, goes the thinking, when teams have not played under those circumstances up to that point.

The overtime rule was changed because many believed sudden death wasn’t fair competitively. When it’s time to win or go home, changing game-ending scenarios might also be unfair.

Now, about the rule making it a penalty for defenders to touch receivers within five yards of the line of scrimmage: Too many rules favor the offensive team.

Football is a contact sport, but under current rules receivers are allowed to run free through defenses.

But that’s a debate for another day.

jerome.crowe@latimes.com

Times staff writers Chris Dufresne, Helene Elliott, Sam Farmer, Mark Heisler, Baxter Holmes, Grahame L. Jones, Gary Klein and Bill Shaikin contributed to this report.