I heard a guiding principle

Context
In my Friends meeting today we were discussing guiding principles for life, things that help us decide what path to take in a given situation. One woman said she goes by "always take the easiest path," but upon further consideration she decided it was more like, "always take the path with the most fun."

Commentary
"Always take the path with the most fun" reminds me of football. The old season is two months gone and the new season is four months away and still things remind me of football. Whatcha gonna do?

Anyway, for about the past ten years, the NFL has had an "instant replay rule" (details here) which allows referees to take a look at video of a just completed play to see if they made the correct call or not. I often tell my husband they should change this rule to favor not the "correct" call but the "most fun" call.

I'm not serious. I know this wouldn't work because the main goal of professional football and most other organized sports is to create a set of objective standards (move the ball a certain distance, prevent the other team from moving the ball, catch the ball within the confines of the field of play, etc.) and award a "win" to whichever team does the best job of conforming to them. Since football has a lot of these standards, you need a person whose job is to very precisely evaluate each team's performance for compliance with all of them. That's your referee, or in the case of big-time football, your whole officiating team.

However, I think my proposal does fit in well with some of the NFL's ancillary goals. It's supposed to be sports entertainment, after all, so fun should come in somewhere. I also think most professional sports organizations like to promote a certain amount of parity, because a good close game makes it more likely that people will watch the whole thing. If referees started awarding questionable calls to whichever team was losing, it might very well make the game more fun.

It might make for interesting coaching strategies as well: "let's not take the lead yet. Let's try for a couple of 'most fun' calls." Hmm. How do you think that would work as a guiding principle for life?

What did you hear today?