What I do like are sports that don't have pearl clutching, Miss Manners style rules about rough play.

The NBA has a white glove phobia of rough play. The league sends the refs forth with vague powers to enforce rules that can't possibly be properly quantified, leaving the enforcement of said rules up to the discretion of the referees.

NBA refereeing is getting clowntastic. Each crew takes on an increasingly significant unique character on how they enforce the rules, which essentially means that the game is played differently from one night to the next depending on the referees.

At the same time, the National Figure Skating League has ruined hockey by trying to make almost all contact illegal. That's been about as successful as I imagine banning body punches would be in boxing.

Contact and the resulting aggro are part of sports. The NBA and NHL need to put on their big boy shoes and step up and realize that contact is part of the game and that players ought to be allowed to play instead of being smothered by rules.

In the NHL back before Gary Bettman took it to the spa for a tweezing and a manicure, there was a balance...a sort of mutually assured destruction. You knew that if you ran an opposing team's goalie or first line center that your goalie or first line center was going to get scalped.

The NBA used to be similar as well. Instead of getting an automatic suspension because you got out of your seat and took a few steps onto the court to yell at someone on the other team, you knew that "the guy" on your team was going to Mahorn or Oakley or Laimbeer the next guy who drove the lane from the opposing team.