Thoughts on new rules?

[MAGfan]

Now that we have had a couple of duals and have had a chance to see the new dual meet rules, what are your thoughts?

Head to head:
I like this change. It is fun to see them go up against each other on the same event, and makes the end exciting.

No 1-touch:
Do NOT like this change, at all. I know they get 6 minutes between rings and vault, but that is hard. For the 2nd/3rd events (Horse, Rings, PB/HB) it has been an hour or more since you may have warmed up. This is too long.

5 up 5 count:
Definitely making things interesting, but I don’t like it. There seem to be more mishaps/ falls in most meets than I think we would see in a meet in the past. Whether that is due to the pressure of the 5 up 5 count, or the no one touch, I do not know. But having watched some invitationals as well, where there was a 1-touch, I think the pressure of the 5 up 5 count is a huge factor. I think 6 up 5 count to start is a better meet to watch.

 

[OnoNoKomachi]

I definitely like head to head. I was happy when the FIG started doing this at Worlds.
I’ve been advocating for this change for years, but was told it would “make the meets too long”
The Cal v So Cal United meet clocked in at a bit over 2 hours, so it didn’t seem to make it longer than usual.

One of the BIG issues with watching men’s gymnastics is it gets tiring to watch because people’s attention is divided. And this eliminates having two great routines happening at once and you only see half of each one.

Two teams going at once seems to have a little more energy, but that might have been the meet I was at - not too many fans in the stands because people are still nervous about COVID, and it wasn’t a close match at all.

No 1 touch

As a spectator I didn’t mind. Not sure why that rule change was made - maybe to save time?
I can’t even lift myself on the PH, so I’m not a good judge of this one.

5 up 5 count I am fine with. It makes the scoring 0.001 % less confusing, as there is no dropped score. This is another thing people have made a big deal about - even Greg Marsden is advocating not dropping scores in the women’s NCAA to make it more ‘fan friendly’

It really isn’t a big deal from that standpoint. I started watching men’s NCAA in the old days of 6 up 4 count.

I marginally prefer 5 up 5 count, though

Again, the meet I went to has, shall we say, two teams that fall a lot in the best of times.
It’s also early. I’ve been to Cal Stanford first meets where almost everyone fell on everything.

 

[MensGym]

Head to head is fine. It’ll be exciting when 2 teams closely matched, compete with one another. It’s been lopsided competitions so far.

5 up 5 count stinks at the beginning of the season. With all the guys being able to do an exhibition routine, what difference does this make? They’re up there for experience. You’re not going to get that by only competing 5 guys.

Not having a 2 minute touch is awful and more importantly, dangerous. The HB guy has to wait almost 45 minutes to compete. So many falls today. Scary falls. If Simone complained loudly about the no touch at finals to where, they changed the rule going forward, the guys need to voice their opinions to the powers that be. Not one NCAA guy is happy about it. They need to figure this out soon.

Men’s gym will never be in a 2 hour time slot with 6 events. Today’s OSU/NYA meet was about 2:20. A 2 minute touch can be a bathroom or commercial break or a recap. If the mainstream sports can figure out how to do this, men’s gymnastics can, too. Again, mainstream sports are 3 hours long. What’s the big deal to make this safer for the athletes and keeping the 2 minute touch? There are so many breaks in football.

 

[MAGfan]

Good point about the head to head. The only one that was remotely close was Army@Penn State. This weekend there is a whole slate of head to heads that could give us more information.

As for 5 up 5 count, I agree with the experience part. These guys need practice in that situation, and it is hard to get in a 5 up 5 count.

 

[MAGfan]

Another thought:

Humans, in general, have short attention spans. In football, basketball, etc, there are natural breaks in which to go get a snack, another drink, pee, throw in a load of laundry, etc. We need that. (or at least I do). I need a moment to just focus on something else.

In watching the duals, I felt like I Could not walk away or I would miss something. It made it a little less fun as I was trying to walk around with my computer or phone and watch.

MAG needs to embrace what we are. We are a high flying, action packed sport with lots to watch. Not sure how I feel about trying to turn it into something else.

Navy Open this weekend was exciting! It would have been a great meet to have on tv. It was exciting. It came down to the final routine. That is the kind of stuff people love to see. With a good announcer, it could have really played up the suspense. That is what we need!

 

[irichluck21]

I would be curious on how a different scoring system would change things.
Instead of tallying the 5 scores per event as traditionally been done, I wonder if a point system based on ranking would create more excitement. Similar to swimming and diving, where points are awarded on your placement.
For example on each event:
1st=20 points, 2nd= 17 points, 3rd= 15 points 4th= 13 points 5th=11 points. 6th= 9 points 7th= 7 points 8th= 5 points 9th= 3 points 10th= 1 point

 

[MAGfan]

That’s an idea. You could stop at 5, unless you allow more competitors.

Of course, even as a swimmer, I could never remember how team awards were determined, so I am not sure how much less confusing that would be. It is still tallying scores.

I think we are focused so hard on making MAG fit a certain image instead of promoting what MAG already is.

But I like the thinking outside the box

 

[irichluck21]

Of course, even as a swimmer, I could never remember how team awards were determined, so I am not sure how much less confusing that would be. It is still tallying scores.

Oh really? I still remember 25 years out.
1st=6
2nd=4
3rd=3
4th=2
5th=1
6th=0
Trying to finish 5th instead of 6th was important because meets might come down to a few points or sometimes just 1 point.
It is also why it was important to have 3 divers that could compete 6 dives regularly. A few teams we faced in league didn’t have any divers at all. We always had 3 so right off the bat we had a 13 point advantage. Also gave the coach leeway on strategy because he could stack some events so we could maximize points.

 

[MensGym]

100%.
During the OSU/NYA meet on BTN+, I could hit pause to finish dinner and get back to it. When it’s a FB live, you can’t do that. And on FB live, you could only watch 1 team.
They keep trying to fit men’s gym in a 2 hour time slot. It’ll never be that. 2 1/2 hours is comfortable. It’ll have the 2 minute touch the guys need for safety, better commentary of the story that unfolding in front of them instead of all scripted content. The head to head competition will be great for that natural story progression.

 

[MensGym]

They talked about the point system before and it was not well received. MAG fans still want scores and SV.

NBC just needs to explain it better. The dumb green, yellow, red system is way more confusing. Execution is out of a 10. People can relate to the 10. The better they perform the skill, the higher the number. They can see a bent leg or a handstand angle, if you teach them. The audience is not stupid. Just uneducated. Then explain the difficulty. The higher the difficult, the higher the start value.
E-10
D-5.2
SV-15.2
Deductions-
E-8.8 8.6 Avg-1.3 in deductions
D-5.2
Score-13.9
Ice skating has changed the way for the TV audience to understand and it’s easy to follow. And the commentators explain it throughly. Maybe that’s the way to go if they decide to change it for TV. But in non-televised meets, why change it?

 

[Denn]

I have not seen a meet yet, but if the timing is such that you get to see all the exercises, that sounds good.

Two ideas I had:

I do feel like NCAA could just add like 3.6 to D-scores scores and deduct from there to get scores that end up in the 7-10 range and that would avoid the need for this green-yellow-red stuff.

Using @MensGym 's Example:
D-score: 3.6 + 5.2 = 8.8
Average of Deductions: 1.3
Final score: 7.5.

There’s really only a couple guys who can do more than a 10.0 SV in that format, and I think that mostly probably ought to stop around 6.4 and work on execution anyway.

If making it fit into a reasonable amount of time is important, they could still salvage the head-to-head idea by making it for only 1 or 2 exercises per team per apparatus. In other words, the meet has a traditional team format where all apparatus are going on for 3 or 4 of the guys, and then the final round is the head to head stuff.

 

[MensGym]

The red, yellow, green is really is for Elite meets that are televised on NBC. Not NCAA.

This thread is more about NCAA than NBC. I know that NCAA is trying to get meets on TV, like ESPN and BTN to grow the sport. They have asked that Men’s gymnastics try to cut down to a 2-hour time slot. So, they are trying this head-to-head and no-touch for event rotations. Only a 6-minute touch is allowed between the 1st half and 2nd half in dual meets. They had 2-minute touches between events previously. Either way, Men’s Gymnastics will never be able to accommodate a 2-hour time limit. It’s very comfortable at 2.5 hours. Even with this shift in the 3 dual meets this year, it hasn’t really changed the length of the meet.

I need to ask, why are you making scoring more confusing?! I really don’t understand your conversion chart at all. You have to remember that MAYBE only a 5th year senior in NCAA has ever worked from the 10.0 system. They tried the conversation and it failed. The audience doesn’t need to see guys getting a 7.5. That’s an absolutely awful score. Especially if you are conditioned to watching the women get 9’s.
NCAA needs to stay with the FIG scoring. They are the feeder program to Elite. The JO/DP program needs to follow that as well. I think the revamping of this new COP in JO/DP will help Team USA in the long run.

 

[Denn]

I understand all that about the competition format. That’s mostly why I suggested the hybrid. The broadcast could start after the opening round and weave in summaries of what happened. But it would mostly focus on, say, 1-2 athletes per team on each apparatus. They could probably even fit the broadcast into 1 or 1.5 hours with tons of gymnastics to show. AND it would make the 1-touches work better — they can be every rotation during the opening round and every 3 apparatus during the final rounds, since there’d be only 2 or 4 exercises per apparatus anyway.

Actually, that might be a nice format in person. You get an intense opening hour or so with some simultaneous action, but the best exercises would be saved for the head-to-head rounds.

About scoring, I just disagree with you. And fact is that it’s still 100% FIG scoring. Just with a simple shift at the end. The tried the conversation in 2006 and it failed but it failed because 10.0 was way easier to reach back then. Lots of guys were getting to 10.0. (That code not only gave an extra 0.5 in requirements but also more bonus opportunities on floor and high bar, had higher values for lots of rings elements, and vault D-scores that were more than a point higher.)

 

[MensGym]

And miss Floor and Horse? I don’t think so. Floor is very exciting to most viewers and one they understand the most. Pommel Horse may not be understood as well but people love it. The audience loves to watch this and wonder how the heck they do it. It’s like HB with the excitement of, will he stay on? Will he fall off?
I think by limiting who and what you show, the audience will lose the storyline. Most NCAA meets, are not decided until the very last routines. And that’s the most exciting thing about this sport. If your team messes up on an event, will they make it up later? Will they win or lose? The fight to the end is the best! No one likes a blowout.
For example, I watched an NCAA Championship back maybe around 2012. They had their predetermined scripts and gymnasts to watch. The guy who actually won AA was never shown. It was so confusing and disappointing that we never saw him on any event. Very anti-climactic. How would your way benefit the AA gymnast? Is he the only one you want to see? What about the specialist? Are they the only ones you want to see? To me, this is a team sport. I want to see the team. I want to see how the story plays out in this competition. Who will win? Like Jim McKay said, “The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.”
As far as the 10 and the conversion chart for NCAA that I was referring to was tried in 2020 before Covid shut everything down. It failed. No one understood it. The margins of winning were not closer. It did not create the excitement as they thought it would. They have realized that Team USA will never get ahead if we keep romanticizing the past. In fact, it was flawed. You could touch the equipment and not do a thing and get a 6.
It’s really not that hard to explain to the audience the rules of the game. If we can follow football and all its different rules, we can teach our audience the rules of our game.

 

[MensGym]

Honestly, we would never expect mainstream sports to cut their game to fit a TV schedule. You’re asking gymnastics to do that. Football starting at the half. Baseball starting at the 5th inning. No one would watch. If I want the highlights, I’ll read about after it’s over. Not during a live show.
Changing the format to what you’re suggesting is so confusing. Head to head works because of the excitement factor, audience engagement, and that’s it’s even. One team is up, then the next team At the end of 5, you have a score from the same apparatus.
Are there even enough judges to do what I think you’re suggesting.
I guess I truly don’t understand this hybrid thing and I understand gymnastics. So if I can’t understand it, how is an audience going to?

 

[Denn]

You are arguing with me without even having taken the time to read what I wrote. I never said multiple things you are reacting to.

 

[MAGfan]

@Denn

Can you explain what you mean? I am picturing the tv broadcast starting after floor or pommel, and continuing with the last 4-5 events. is that what you are meaning?

Or do you mean like 3 guys going on the events to start, and that not being on tv, but then running a meet with 3 guys from each team going head to head?

I am not sure I am understanding either

 

[MensGym]

I did read it. Multiple times. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. At all. There’s a whole bunch of math and format changes, that seem unnecessary. Can you clarify, please?

 

[Passion]

I feel like the scoring system as it is now is less confusing than the 10 system was.

Right now you could just say everything is out of a 10 then you add difficulty bonus to that for the final score. Easy. That’s FIG scoring.

Under the 10 system it was oh everyone starts from a 9.4 but four years later they actually start from a 8.8 and you have to get bonus up to 10. Some people could do more difficulty but that just doesn’t count. It was always changing and if I hadn’t read Luan Peszek’s book as a child (pre-gymternet) I would have had no clue from just watching NBC/ABC how the start values were being decided.

Open ended scoring has been the same since 2006. Execution out of 10. Difficulty added for final score. Much easier system, networks have just massacred the explanation.

 

[OnoNoKomachi]

The thing I think is a real improvement in the new rules is the head to head. It’s easier to focus attention on one place, and the scores are easier to compare (FX to FX, not FX to PH) - although with a little knowledge of how the different events score it’s not that big of a deal.

As a spectator, the intermission didn’t bother me, but it sounds like it’s a safety issue. The most gymnastics I’ve ever done is falling down the stairs or tripping over chairs at meets, so I will defer to the athletes on that one.

The men’s NCAA should try to be the best version of itself it can be without actually changing it into something else.

Most of the community that wants the 10 back are either people who spent years under that system and became disoriented with the change to open ended scoring and interpreted a change from what they were used to with a change to something intrinsically more confusing, or people who are convinced the women’s NCAA is more popular because of the scoring.

I don’t think the men’s NCAA is finished with people wanting the 10 conversion. There are people still pushing for it and my prediction is it happens. I hope I’m wrong. I never had problems with the numbers used in the scores.
The Code on the other hand, even after close to 20 years of watching, I have but a rudimentary understanding.