Sports are games too, you know. In this episode, Marc, Matt, and Bubba sit down to talk about various sports rules and controversies and analyze them as game design. What are they optimizing for? Whose interests do they serve? What's the role of randomness or human judgement in making a sport great? What even makes sports great?

0:34 - Intro

1:32 - What's the goal when "designing" sports rules?

2:45 - What's the most viewer-friendly board game?

7:12 - Gold Drafting

13:24 - Playoff size

16:18 - Promotion/relegation

21:45 - Eliminating the kick return

24:39 - Conservative play in the NFL and elsewhere

29:18 - The designated hitter

31:50 - Changes to the actual baseball ball

36:03 - 3-point line

42:56 - Dunking on basketball

45:44 - Soccer's relatively simple rules

48:27 - Punishments and penalties in different sports

50:35 - Robots and video

54:22 - Disc golf penalty culture

1:03:10 - The 2 meter rule

1:11:41 - Back to robots

1:26:39 - The shift

Music: Sailing The Solar Wind by Abstraction

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