I dont have a problem with the new rule/suspensions, but I do worry about how heavily it is enforced...refs have enough trouble determining touchdowns and other penalties WITH HD replays...And in cases where the helmet to helmet is simply caused by the chaos of 22 men running around trying to knock eachothers asses off, its going to be tough to keep tabs on em all...
Running backs and ballcarriers lead with their helmets when going into the piles...defensive players should not be held responsible for that...but at the same time how do you punish the offensive player for doing something they've been doing since the little leauges...it will be interesting to see how it is handled.
as far as this "clutch" stuff...I think we are lookin at the wrong sport...Baseball is probably the mother of all statistics and probability junk...the answer wont be found in a scientific study, it will be found in examining numbers...so lets look there...
here's something a bit interesting
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/clutch_skill_does_exist/
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"Anyway, as for actually finding a clutch skill, Andy did in fact find it, and the results are published in The Book. On p.103:
Batters perform slightly differently when under pressure. About one in six players increases his inherent “OBP skill” by eight points or more in high-pressure situations; a comparable number of players decreases it by eight points or more.
But as Andy concludes later on p.108:
For all practical purposes, a player can be expected to hit equally well in the clutch as he would be expected to do in an ordinary situation.
And the reason is as Andy noted on the previous page:
...that normalizing factor of 7600 clutch plate appearances is simply too large to ever predict a specific player to have a significant clutch hitting skill. Put differently, the fact that one of three players performs at least .006 [wOBA] better or worse in the clutch doesn’t mean that we can tell which players have this skill, even when looking at several seasons’ worth of data.
So, the entire problem rests on the fact that the hitting talent in MLB is so narrow to begin with, and that even though we have determined that clutch skill exists in that population of players, it is simply too hard to identify the specific players that it makes any practical difference.
To conclude: yes, clutch skill exists. No, it’s not that big a deal (at best, half as wide as than the platoon advantage). Correct, teams should not rely on clutch skill in their decision-making process, other than as a tie-breaker."
