I have a love-hate relationship with flopping, as many sports fans probably do.
On one hand, flopping can be hilarious without context. Part of the reason I’m writing this column this week is because I saw some borderline artful flopping in the Plant City-Durant boys basketball game a couple weeks ago and am just now finding the words for it. Without going after anyone in particular, there were a few times I couldn’t help but chuckle because light contact led to kids selling the impact like The Rock bouncing all over a WWE ring after a Stone Cold Stunner. The acting was so dramatic that Daniel Day-Lewis would have taken notes.
On the other hand, it totally hurts the game. It doesn’t matter which game. Basketball and soccer have earned reputations as flop-friendly sports for good reason, especially at the highest levels, but you also don’t have to look too hard to find these things in football and hockey and other sports. It’s cheating, point blank period.
It’s also extremely hard to regulate at the high school level. In the pros, where they don’t regulate it enough, there’s at least live video technology that could lead to booth reviews (if the pro leagues ever wanted to listen to Jeff Van Gundy, for example). In college, maybe not as much potential for live booth reviews exists but there’s still potential for it to work out in at least some areas.
All we have at the preps level are human eyes. Referees are always going to make mistakes and I’m not here to call for anyone’s head over a few calls kids got for dramatically overselling contact. But maybe we need to rethink how we’re monitoring things if people are so encouraged to keep flopping. Does that mean adding more referees to a game at any given time? The logistics for that idea probably aren’t great, but it would be nice to have an extra set or two of eyes on the floor specifically to watch for these things. Refs are already trained to look for flops, so more training isn’t necessarily the answer here.
I would hope coaches are encouraging kids to avoid flopping at all costs. Of course, stopping the flopping would also be easier if the pros kids looked up to stopped doing it, too. That probably won’t come without actual rule changes, but once they’re implemented it wouldn’t take long to trickle down.
I’m just hoping everyone involved with sports can be a little more proactive in taking steps to stop the flop.