The Best Innovations in Sports

Here are what I believe are the top innovations in sports. Feel free to add to the list:

Orange colored basketball: Paul D. "Tony" Hinkle, a coach at Butler, invented the orange colored basketball. Until the late 1950's, basketballs were dark brown, but Hinkle wanted a ball that could be better seen by players and fans. He worked with The Spalding Company and the orange ball up was tested at the 1958 NCAA Finals in Louisville. The NCAA was impressed and the new orange ball was adopted.

90 feet between bases: The original Knickerbocker Rules of the 1840s. established the distance between bases as 90 feet. Through trial and error, it was decided that 90 feet was !the perfect distance. And it is ! 100 feet would give the defense too much advantage and 80 feet would help the offense. Even today with bigger, stronger players 90 feet remains the perfect balance between between a runner's speed and a fielder's throwing arm .

Soccer style field goal kicking: Pete Gogolak , an Hungarian- born kicker, was made fun of in high-school when he started kicking the ball soccer -style. But he was the first man to kick a 50 yard field in college and he changed the face of kicking. He joined the Buffalo Bills in 1964 and now everyone kicks soccer style.

Basketball shot clock: The NBA introduced the shot clock in 1954, to speed up the game. Women's basketball adopted a 30-second clock in 1971. The NCAA adopted a 45-second shot clock for men which was reduced to 35 seconds in 1993 and to 24 seconds in 2000,.

Invention of the baseball: Ellis Drake was just a kid who never got paid for inventing the baseball. He invented the perfect ball with seams which enables curve balls, sliders and kinds of neat pitches. He lived in Stoughton, MA and played a game called "round ball", where you threw the ball at the runner and if the runner was hit , he was out.The balls were made lead wrapped in yarn and covered in leather. These balls came apart easily and constant repairs held up the games.

Sitting in class one day, Ellis scribbled out a design, then made a ball in his father's shoemaker shop that would not come apart easily . The two-piece, figure eight stitching ball is the same design used today. Within two years of his unpatented invention, Harry and George Wright took his designs and began selling balls to baseball teams for profit.

The forward pass: .The forward pass in football was legal in 1906, but rules stated it could only be thrown 20 yards. This rule changed in 1912 and you could throw it as far as you wanted. The Notre Dame-Army game of 1913 was the first extensive use of the pass after the rule changes and was the first time that long passes-20, 30, and 40 yards-werr thrown to receivers who caught them while on a dead run. The game received great publicity, and as one writer said, it "demonstrated the devastating potential of the forward pass."

The Three Point Shot: On November 29, 1980, Western Carolina's Ronnie Carr scored the first three pointer in college basketball history. Western Carolina was playing Middle Tennessee State. The Southern Conference introduced the three point field goal by testing the experimental rule that other conferences had not adopted.

http://www.shootandstar.com/site/734608/page/555081

http://www.electro-mech.com/team-sports/baseball/who-invented-the-baseball/

http://www.butler.edu/senior-gift/about/what-is-the-purpose-of-my-gift/paul-d-tony-hinkle

http://www.baseballfielddesign.com/

http://www.americanfootballkickinghalloffame.com/gogolak.html

http://www.pickupgame.com/Sports_How_To_Play_Every_Sport/basketball_rules.php