Roller Derby Isn't Broken

by Lex Talionis September 18, 2012 - 10:53pm

Roller derby isn't broken. Passive offence isn't ruining the game. Gotham haven't got cheat codes, and they're not unbeatable.

Let's take a moment to think about what we can agree on. Starts are definitely broken, but I dont want to get into that today. What else? I think it's clear that a single jammer penalty can have too big an impact on the game. Passive offence isn't the problem. It takes skill to execute properly against a good opponent, and requires lots of hard work from the jammer. The problem is how long it goes on for.

Ignoring the specific tactic for a moment, if your team has the only jammer on the track, your only aim is to help your jammer get as any points as possible. This means making passing easier for her, but it will also always mean bringing pack speed down as much as you can. This is a natural and unavoidable consequence of the rules as they stand.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that jammer penalties are the problem, and they need to be fixed. No other sport penalises players in specialised positions like other players, or without allowing for changes as soon as their speciality is required. In hockey, outfield players can serve time for your goaltender; in football you can make an immediate substitution for your goalkeeper if they are sent off, or have an outfield player take the role on if you're out of substitutions. In rugby, you can replace a sin binned front row player when you get to a scrummage; and the list goes on.

Roller derby just doesn't work when you only have one jammer on the track, so let's change the rules so that you almost always have two. It's a fundamental change, certainly, but its one we need. We can't allow penalties to go unpenalised but the current system is as unreasonable as it is untenable.

Teams are punished exponentially more for the same penalty when it's committed by a jammer, which means the punishment rarely fits the crime, especially when you remember that jammers don't get points for illegal passes either and so get punished twice regardless. Admittedly some of that issue goes away with no minors, but it will still be valid.

How do we fix this? Here are a few suggestions as a starting point. Could you allow star passes on the way to the box, thus penalising the player but not disproportionately penalising the team. Could a blocker serve the time for the jammer's indiscretion? Could a penalised jammer start the next jam in the box as a blocker? Could we end jammer penalties after the opposition's next scoring pass, rather thank on time?

There are issues with all of these, but none of them are completely unworkable, and maybe some might even work in combination. I don't have a snout-to-tail solution for this particular problem, but together we must be able to figure something out.

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Comments

Submitted by lady quebeaum on September 21, 2012 - 11:23am

That you for writing this.

Submitted by lady quebeaum on September 21, 2012 - 11:25am

i haz typos

Submitted by Bombshell Shock on September 21, 2012 - 2:47pm

I like this a lot. I had only ever thought of reducing the time of a jammer penalty down to 30 seconds, but I really like some of your ideas better. I guess I wasn't thinking outside the box enough (no pun intended). And I completely agree that jammer penalties have a disproportionate affect on the game relative to the crime.

Submitted by Ana Bollocks on September 21, 2012 - 3:35pm

>This leads to the inevitable conclusion that jammer penalties are the problem, and they need to be fixed. No other sport penalises players in specialised positions like other players, or without allowing for changes as soon as their speciality is required. In hockey, outfield players can serve time for your goaltender; in football you can make an immediate substitution for your goalkeeper if they are sent off, or have an outfield player take the role on if you're out of substitutions. In rugby, you can replace a sin binned front row player when you get to a scrummage; and the list goes on.

THIS. Completely.

Personally I favor just holding all penalty pulls til the end of the jam (as in LADD's ruleset) and sitting the player then, regardless of her position. But at the end of the day, the problem is not having both jammers on the track.

Submitted by TheInvisibleNSO on September 21, 2012 - 4:58pm

Your points intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter

Submitted by Ava Tarr on September 22, 2012 - 11:36am

Yes, Lex, YES.

I have nothing against the passive offense or slow derby, but a game that is just trading power jams is boring for everyone involved.

Submitted by Lex Talionis on September 22, 2012 - 2:03pm

Glad I'm not the only one thinking these things. Can't say this weekend is doing anything other than entrenching my own beliefs...

Submitted by Foul Bundy on September 24, 2012 - 1:37pm

I agree with everything you said. Thank you for bringing reason and logic to this discussion instead of just proclaiming that the sky is falling.

Submitted by KoKo on September 24, 2012 - 2:58pm

How has this change of some sort not been implemented yet. I'd gladly sit the penalty box for my jammer if that meant my team was able to score points instead of having the score run up because she's in the box. There is still impact because now the team is down one blocker at least which still gives some advantage to the other team.
Lex for prez!!!!

Submitted by John_Maddening on September 25, 2012 - 9:29am

...but that doesn't matter. Patient offense is boring to the fans. If the fans are booing, it's because they're not being entertained by the slow play and nonengagement that is the exact opposite as the past decade of derby that they're used to.

Without paying fans, derby cannot continue in the manner it has been. Why are teams trying to make fans leave?

Submitted by Our Man Flip on September 25, 2012 - 1:58pm

With respect, I don't think I could possibly disagree with this article more.

The issue I have with patient offense is that it uses a loophole in the rules to do something that the rules are trying to prohobit: Destroying the pack. Yes, patient offense takes coordination and working together, but it's still a tactic for destroying the pack within the bounds of the rules. —And that's terrible because the rules specifically say that both teams are responsible for maintaining a legally defined pack.

Teams have just figured out that the rules don't enforce maintaining a pack; they only prohibit actively destroying it. Passive action that destroys the pack is not penalized, so teams take advantage of this loophole to do something that the rules try to prevent.

—And as far as power jams are concerned, I have no problem with them. In fact, I think removing them would hurt the sport. I think power jams add a level of excitement that could not be gained without them. Without power jams, a 15-point bout with 1 minute to play would be almost certainly out of reach. Power jams give trailing teams a puncher's chance to put together a rally and thus keep fans interested to the end. I do not think power jams lead to blowouts. Blowouts are caused by differences in skill level. Removing power jams isn't going to suddenly make less skilled teams skate more competitively. Skill will still be slanted, and blowouts will still happen all the time.

Besides, I kind of like the idea that jammers have to skate clean to keep their team in the game. If there were suddenly no punishment for jammers trying crazy/dangerous things, they would try more crazy/dangerous things resulting in more injuries for a sport that has a big problem with lots of injuries.

Submitted by WindyMan on September 26, 2012 - 1:31am

> And that's terrible because the rules specifically say that both teams are responsible for maintaining a legally defined pack.

This is the #1 problem with roller derby. In a so-called "competitive" sport, WFTDA rules expect teams to cooperate to maintain the core function of the game, the pack. This is ultimately a pipe dream, because there's always going to be a team that does not want to do that for either offensive or defensive reasons.

Note that some of the great games that have been happening in the playoffs thus far, the ones where teams are (mostly) skating to attack the pack, capture goats, and push forward on offense have been in spite of the rules, not because of them. That's not good, and that's why the rules need fixing.

> I think power jams add a level of excitement that could not be gained without them. Without power jams, a 15-point bout with 1 minute to play would be almost certainly out of reach. Power jams give trailing teams a puncher's chance to put together a rally and thus keep fans interested to the end.

It appears that you're therefore saying that penalties make the game better, not worse, because without penalties a game could not stay close and exciting, as if the only way a game can be exciting is if it's close on the scoreboard. Well, if you saw the Rat City/Rocky Mountain game at Westerns this year, it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that how close a game is, is completely irrelevant to how exciting it is—the game was so bad, even Rat City's fans were mostly quiet throughout it...even though they won!

How you keep fans interested in the game is to give them genuine, constant, uninterrupted action. Power jams kill crowd excitement and break up the flow of an otherwise good game, because when a team goes "patient" it immediately cuts the action on track by 50%—ten players were active before the jammer penalty, but only five are active after it. And you're saying that makes games MORE exciting?

If you watched the ending of the Angel City/Sacred City game, which was easily the most exciting thing I've witnessed in-person, both jammers were on the track, the pack was moving, and both teams were working their asses off. That would have been fun to see regardless of the score, but the fact that it ended the game with a 1-point victory put it off the charts. It was both a close game AND one where everyone on the track was active, which is what we should be striving for, not an artificially close game on account of a poorly-timed jammer penalty and 60 seconds of no-effort offense.

> Besides, I kind of like the idea that jammers have to skate clean to keep their team in the game.

Yet, a team's blockers can take penalties left and right—especially at the end of a game—while their team is on a power jam, because those penalties neither hurt their team or directly help their opponents. You should like the idea that ALL skaters have to skate clean to help their team, because right now there are many instances where blocker penalties not only don't hurt their team, they HELP their team. That needs to be fixed with a better ruleset no matter what you think.

Submitted by Our Man Flip on September 26, 2012 - 11:59am

>>This is the #1 problem with roller derby. In a so-called "competitive" sport, WFTDA rules expect teams to cooperate to maintain the core function of the game, the pack. This is ultimately a pipe dream, because there's always going to be a team that does not want to do that for either offensive or defensive reasons.<<

Roller derby lacks more competitive bouts because it's new. It doesn't matter what rules you play under right now; competitive imbalance will still exist due to the youth of the sport. If you're trying to figure how to make roller derby more competitive, the only real answer is to improve the training available to leagues/skaters/referees/etc. —And I think that everyone is universally trying to do this already. In 20 years or so, when skaters will have grown up playing roller derby and derby training has been standardized, I expect the level of competition to be much closer. Still, it's worth mentioning that last year's WFTDA Championship tournament was much more competitive than in years past. If you compare bouts accross the years, you can obviously see the development happening. It's part of the natural maturation process for a new sport. You may not like that roller derby hasn't established itself enough to have universally good training, but that's just reality. Rule changes aren't going to change that.

As far as requiring or not requiring teams to maintian a pack: I don't think this is impossible in the least. Right now, 95% of the time this works. The only situation where it doesn't is with the patient offense in power jams. Yes, teams are always going to look for strategies to speed up or slow down the pack. —But that's part of the game at it's core. Altering that would be fundamentally change the sport, and who knows what the result of that would be. It could make it a little bit better, but it could also destroy flat track roller derby as we know it.

>>It appears that you're therefore saying that penalties make the game better, not worse, because without penalties a game could not stay close and exciting, as if the only way a game can be exciting is if it's close on the scoreboard.<<

What I'm saying is that I think removing power jams would be giving people a reason to stop paying attention to what is now considered a close bout late in the game. I think power jams help more than they hurt the sport because the threat of them creates the possibility for something exciting. Besides, I think strategies like trying to force jammers to cut the track have ultimately been good for roller derby because they allow blockers to be a bigger part of the game. If you eliminate power jams, you also eliminate the importance of having blocker that can force jammer penalties. Penalties are always going to be a part fo roller derby. Unless you want WFTDA to turn into renegade roller derby, they need to be a part of the game.

>>How you keep fans interested in the game is to give them genuine, constant, uninterrupted action. Power jams kill crowd excitement and break up the flow of an otherwise good game, because when a team goes "patient" it immediately cuts the action on track by 50%—ten players were active before the jammer penalty, but only five are active after it. And you're saying that makes games MORE exciting?<<

I completely disagree that power jams kill the excitment of roller derby. Situational roller derby can be very exciting. Power jams can and should be no different than when one team tries to take the front or walls up in the back to defend against a lone opposing jammer coming in ahead your jammer. Power jams just require a team to play defese for longer.

Let me be clear: I blame the patient offense "strategy" because I consider it loophole exploitation aimed at accomplishing something the rules try to prohibit. It's a tactic designed to destroy the pack and prevent the opponent from legally blocking. That's what makes the game boring; I just don't think that removing power jams is the answer to solving the patient offense problem. Prior to the pace line strategy, power jams were exciting because teams had the opportunity to kill penalties. If a team had a power jam, it could end up netting them zero points if the opponent blocked well. A 2v4 pack on a power jam wouldn't get you much because the defending team could use the numbers advantage to keep the jammer bottled up for the full minute. Prior to patient offense, a power jam only returned ~10 points on average. Teams had to work hard to convert power jam opportunities into a lot of points, and defending teams were often successful at killing a jammer penalty. What patient offense has done is basically doubled the impact of power jams. It now no longer matters if a team only has 2 blockers to help their jammer. They're all just going to stand at the rear of the pack regardless of how many there are. It requires little-to-no effort.

Ultimately, what bothers me the most is when people react to loopholes in the rules like this by demanding drastic, game-changing action. "WFTDA needs to blow up the rules and start over completely!" If you ask me, this perspective is horrible. This new sport has seen explosive growth under the WFTDA rule set. Obviously the rules are not perfect. They're probably never going to be perfect and make everyone completely happy. Demanding that they be perfect is utterly pointless. There's an evolution process which is ongoing. I'm far more in favor of making small, evolutionary changes rather than doing something drastic like eliminating power jams or changing the definition of a legal pack. I'd rather see something simple like just defining minimal movement which results in a pack destruction (the patient offense) as illegal pack destruction. The simplest solution is usually the best.

I feel like a loud minority of people are far too quick to call for wholesale changes whenever there's something about the game they don't like. They complain about WFTDA not rebuilding the rules fast enough because they don't like the fact that WFTDA has an established process for such things. They want immediate, radical action without any foresight. Persoanlly, I think a little caution is a good thing.

Submitted by AlphaQUp719 on September 27, 2012 - 6:39pm

I like your points, now what can we do to change/fix roller derby?
I am personally tired of the fighting through walls. It's boring.
It is sad to me to hear someone that used to be a spectacular jammer not want to jam anymore because they haven't practiced/do not like the slow walls strategy.
No one is hitting and it seems like the jammers are left to do all the work.
I liked derby when we were hitting and moving forward!
Let's get back to that. It's exciting and what will keep fans coming back, imo.

Submitted by Lex Talionis on October 2, 2012 - 4:29pm

I am enjoying the debate this has engendered -- as I said, I'm not proposing a solution as a fete accomplit, I'm just trying to put forward some suggestions to get us all thinking about a path to a solution.

Some points raised are good; I too like the fact that powerjams *can* change a game; I don't think we need change that. If we were to leave the penalty box structure as it is even while allowing (for instance) jammer substitutions, I think you'd have a situation closer to the one people are looking for; if you allowed a situation where you had three blockers boxed and one blocker and one jammer on the track, if the team with the numerical advantage wanted to keep things stopped they would *have* to engage with at least one opposing player and hold them to keep the score ticking over at the maximum rate.

I love derby as it is; complicated, variable, and competitive. The Denver v Bay Area game at westerns was one of the fastest, most hard-hitting most competitive games I've seen in a long while. Try telling anyone involved in that game that no-one hits any more...

And John, I agree with you -- current powerjams are boring. But my entire point is that the problem isn't the tactic; the nature of the tactic is simply dictated by the way jammer penalties work. We need to fix those penalties to keep jammers out on the track more or we'll just get variations on this problem as it's immediately in the attacking team's interest to drop the pack speed to as close to 0 as the rules allow.

And Alpha--while I appreciate the presumption in telling Rocky Mountain how to play derby, I'm going to anyway. Talk to your packs. Get them to get the speed up, break those walls up. If you're running 4D and letting dense walls build up and pack speeds drop and you're fighting through walls and getting worn down, get your blockers to run some more aggressive offense. If your team is electing to just run 4D, then that's their call and their problem; but nothing in the rules says you have to run a slow defensive set-up. You run the set-up you want that works best with the players you have and the opposition you're facing.

Seeing blockers running offense deliberately run the pack speeds up from the off to the advantage of their jammers in a pleasure to see--just to think of one recent example, Philly did it really well against London for much of that game last weekend, in the first half especially, letting V-Diva dominate even more than she would have done otherwise. It's one of many things Gotham do well too; when they want the pack speed up, dear sweet lord do those packs go fast.

Submitted by Sir SkateAlot on October 3, 2012 - 5:10am

I agree with your analysis.

Roller derby is not broken. There are some issues that need to be fixed. But the games i saw at the regionals so far were really exciting, strong fast clever play, something happening all the time. Big difference with the few games i saw under Usars rules.

I also agree that the issue we should think about is not the passive offense. It's a skillfull play where the way the jammers have to work themselves trough the pack is really exciting to watch. The powerplays you have in a close game are so exciting because of the jammer action and because they often come as a lead change. So i even wonder if we have to fix it.

But if you want to fix it it's the impact, the number of possible points that has to be fixed. I like the idea of a star pass on the way to the box. Maybe allowing the pivot to pick up the jammer cover not on the way to the box, but as soon as the jammer sits in the box offers more exciting strategic possibilities. It could be the right balance between penalising a jammer commiting a major and not overpenalising the team. It gives your team still the advantage having only your jammer on the track, but the time you have this situation is more limited (as long as you can keep your pivot out of the box).

Submitted by thebigchuckbowski on October 3, 2012 - 9:59am

"This leads to the inevitable conclusion that jammer penalties are the problem..." I don't get this. AT. ALL. Passive offense is what makes power jams boring. Building a back wall against a crappy jammer with no push is what makes regular jams boring. PACK SPLITTING IS THE THING THAT'S BORING. Not power jams. I really just don't get how you make that leap. "Well, I think this one specific thing is boring, therefore we have to completely change how something else works." Makes no sense.

Imagine what power jams looked like if offensive blockers actually engaged the other team's blockers to get their jammer through. There'd be less points scored per power jam. It would have a smaller overall affect on the game. And, it wouldn't be boring in any way. In fact, it would probably be MORE exciting than an average jam.

How anyone can say that there's nothing wrong with blockers not blocking is beyond me. THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE THERE FOR. It's in their title. They aren't "pack splitters". They're blockers. They should be blocking.

"Teams are punished exponentially more for the same penalty when it's committed by a jammer..." It's NOT the same penalty. It might be called the same thing in the rulebook but it's not the same thing. A jammer committing a penalty is a much bigger crime than a blocker penalty. That's just a fact. A jammer is a more important skater, they're the only one that scores points. A team that sends out an extra blocker instead of a jammer in every jam is guaranteed to lose in a shutout even with five blockers. Jammers are more important, therefore what they do is more important, therefore their penalties should have bigger consequences. You may say that the punishment doesn't fit the crime and that's fine but don't try to say they're committing the same penalties.

Submitted by Our Man Flip on October 4, 2012 - 12:06am

Obviously you restated some of what I put in my comment above about passive offense being legal pack destruction via loophole, but I still wanted to voice my approval. Jammer penalties are different and should be different.

One thing that is never mentioned in the "remove power jams" argument is how much it would change the game. People fail to consider how the game is built around forcing jammer penalties and avoiding power jams. If there's suddenly no real punishment, then what's to stop jammers from just cutting the whole damn pack when they're stuck on the initial pass? Nothing. A jammer who is about to be lapped is always going to trade 1 blocker for getting out of that situation by cutting the whole pack. Always. If you take away power jams, then you suddenly make good blocking much less important. I wouldn't be surprised to see jammers consistently cutting whenever the other jammer gets lead to force a quick call off. I'd do it.

The other thing that isn't considered is the safety issue. Right now, jammers have to approach the pack cautiously to avoid back-blocking penalties. If they didn't have to worry about going to the box, jammers would be coming in at full speed all the time. You'd see a lot more jammers crashing into the backs of blockers' legs and destroying knees. Similarly, you's see more dangerous apex jumps and mid-air collisions. If the worst punishment is losing 1 blocker to the penalty box, jammers would be a lot more likely to try dangerous maneuvers resulting in more injuries for a sport that needs to find more ways of reducing injuries.

Submitted by nocklebeast on October 3, 2012 - 4:49pm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/8046161855/

there is something slightly soul killing to edit a sequence like this.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nocklebeast/8047278943/

Perhaps it would be better to put the camera down and drink beer (like Sharkey and Levar Hurtin' are doing in the background).

Submitted by Sir SkateAlot on October 4, 2012 - 10:41am

In any sport you can take pictures of athletes not participating in the action. While you are taking a picture of this, the jammer is giving all her best while scoring as many points a she can.

This is like taking a picture of a soccer goal keeper while his team scores and complain about the fact he is not participating actively at the game.

Submitted by nocklebeast on October 4, 2012 - 5:28pm

and is on the other side of the track..... the choices are limited.

If there is no action within 30 feet of my lens, then there is no action to take photos of. If there are skaters just standing around within 30 feet of my lens, then that is what I can take photos of. Other photographers just stop taking photos altogether in these circumstances. Like Sharkey in that photo.

At last year's Westerns when no one skated, including the jammers, I watched the jam clock click down from 2:00 to 0:00. That was exciting.

Submitted by Sir SkateAlot on October 5, 2012 - 4:59am

Most of the actions in this clip are also during passive offensive powerjams. Nothing worth looking at?

http://youtu.be/rXMJvA8VhC0

Submitted by thebigchuckbowski on October 5, 2012 - 9:56am

What about all the other jams where he didn't get through with some crazy spinny move? You can make anything look good if you edit out all the bad stuff and set it to fast paced music.

Submitted by nocklebeast on October 5, 2012 - 11:10am

should actually do something (the blockers playing offense are not doing anything).

That video is of clips and photos of the white blockers standing around as they watch their jammer go by. And it set to music.

As far as that soccer goalkeeper goes? She isn't playing offense.

Submitted by nocklebeast on October 5, 2012 - 11:29am

by cropping the blockers that are just standing there out of the photo.

Submitted by Darkjester on October 5, 2012 - 6:46am

Perhaps some 'test' fixes are on order? Of course even if they are found to be great the moment a 'loophole strategy' is discovered we're putting on more bandaids.
I'm just throwing stuff out there as a brainstorm, not meant to debate/argue just think of it.

Lowering the Jam times to 1min per Jam (Maybe 1.5 Minutes). Less Jam time each Jam less time to score. Couple that with lowered Penalty Box time, and you have more time on the track.
Yes, that means penalties don't carry as much weight, but you allow for more defense by the pack, and more offense by the jammers.

Penalty Box Time 30 Second penalties per infraction. More time on the track more action.
or
Jammers released from Penalty on first score of Powerjam/Entry into the pack.

I am a opponent of Stopped Derby. Its like taking a knee in football, valid.. but not much skill.

Submitted by thebigchuckbowski on October 5, 2012 - 10:00am

People are trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. Power jams are not the problem. Power jams were never a problem until split packing became popular. What they were, were the most exciting jams of the entire game. What they allowed was for dramatic comebacks in the final minutes. Reducing them doesn't solve anything because it isn't the problem.

Fix the problem of pack splitting by not letting jammers score when there isn't a pack. It's so simple, it's stupid. If you take away the ENTIRE reason to split a pack in the first place, teams will have no reason to ever split the pack again.