Moving the Chains: Inexplicably, Offsides

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My last column was about World Cup Soccer.  More than one person inquired why I didn’t explain the penalty for offside.  It’s quite simple, actually.  Had I done so, I would have exceeded my word count.  You’ll find that out soon enough.

Actually, the truth is I have no earthly idea what constitutes an offside penalty.   The best I can surmise is that it’s soccer’s way of penalizing a player because they run too fast.  That absolutely makes no sense in a game in which running is basically the only thing that happens.  

So I thought it might be a good idea to dedicate a column specifically addressing the offside penalty.  

This is that column.  

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It’s only fair to begin by saying that soccer’s offside penalty isn’t the Lone Ranger when it comes to penalties that sports fans don’t completely understand.  

For example, in baseball there’s the balk.  Some fans’ve been watching the game their entire lives who can’t tell the difference between a balk and a pickoff throw to first base.  Chalk me up as one of them.  

Football has the pass interference call, which is so ambiguous that the game’s officials seemingly reinvent it from one week to the next.

In basketball, taking too many steps with the ball is known as traveling.  How many steps, however, is always a moving target.  Recently I’ve noticed a correlation between how many steps an official lets a player get away with and the number of votes that player receives for the all-star team.   

But still, the most perplexing penalty of all is – and always will be – soccer’s penalty for offside.  

Case in point: this headline recently lit up my phone: 

‘Was that offside?  Soccer’s most polarizing rule, explained.’

Even though I meticulously read the article in its entirety, I still couldn’t explain offsides to you.  

Which led me to make the following post on social media:    

My latest ‘Moving the Chains’ sports column was about the World Cup.

 In it I failed to address soccer’s penalty for offside, 

which has been pointed out by more than one reader.

That being said, my next column will be solely dedicated to it. 

For it, I’m going to need some help.

If you think you have a grasp on what constitutes offside, please send me a direct message.

 I will use the ‘best of the best’ in my next column. 

Please don’t send me the rulebook definition. 

Instead, send me YOUR understanding of the rule.

This led to another correlation I picked up on, only this time it was between the number of responses I received and the number of my friends on social media who actually read my posts.  

Suffice to say, I only got one response.  (Thanks, Michael!) 

‘Offsides is there to outlaw the soccer equivalent of the fast break. 

You know, the play that makes basketball so exciting. 

 Can’t allow that to happen in a game intended to end nil – nil 

after 90 bone-crushing minutes.’

Which happens to be exactly what I thought it was.  In its infinite wisdom, FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, considers it a penalty when a player is quick enough, alert enough, and in the right place at the right time enough to get to the ball before anyone from the other team.   (However, for some reason it only applies after the ball crosses midfield.)

I know what you’re thinking.  It’s what tennis player John McEnroe once said on the hallowed grounds of Wimbledon: ‘You cannot be serious.’

I’m sorry to break it to you, but I am being serious.  As serious as a heart attack.

Or, to put it in the vernacular of the sport, as serious as winning a prize for peace that FIFA, once again in its infinite wisdom, awarded recently to a person who doesn’t appear to even know the meaning of the word.   

That, my friends, is the very definition of offsides.