Discussing questions WITH sports teams, leagues and governing bodies

Question

Just like the other SE communities, we provide answers to the questions regarding our topic. However, we have the unique ability that we could reach out to the official governing bodies of sports and the leagues. Most other SE sites don't have the luxury of being able to ask any entity for the reasoning behind their decision makings and policies. But we could potentially direct our questions to teams, leagues and governing bodies. I think we should discuss on how we can directly take aim at some of the leagues. It's a unique way to promote the site.

I'm not sure how we can get there, but I think it's worth debating and brainstorming. The idea is much like how anyone on twitter can target a person of high rank or group that has a twitter account. For example, we could ask the NHL why a certain hit did not result in suspension, or ask FIFA how they're aiming to expand the World Cup from 32 teams to 48. Additionally, a league has some data resources that ordinary people don't have access to, so they can provide us with some answers we can't find ourselves.

Answer 1

We've certainly done this before; I emailed a curator of a museum for example for clarification on a fact that was unclear and got a response.

I don't think we're of a size (reputation wise and reader wise) that something like the NHL or ICC would respond to us, though. A site with a few hundred regular readers isn't exactly something a sport's governing body is likely to connect with. Unless we find a connection to a particular person, we probably don't have any more access than any other regular person would have (though certainly nowadays that's more than you'd think).

That said, if we do have a legitimate question that justifies asking the governing body, I think it's well worth our time to make the effort to do so; some rules questions for example have a method for asking rules questions and having them answered, and if nothing else a tweet at the official account could get a response. I'd encourage this only be used when we have a legitimate question that does not have a good answer, and we have sufficient expertise on this site to be confident that the question is not easily answerable by an expert outside of the sport's governing body (i.e., it's an unclear rule).

Better yet, though, would be to connect with people who are either journalists or social media presences who have expertise in these kinds of questions. If we have a question about how the MLB trading deadline works, I'd probably tweet the question at Tim Dierkes or Steve Adams (of MLBTradeRumors.com) before I asked someone at MLB - they're more likely to answer, and more likely to have a useful answer for readers at our level. And, on top of that, it's possible someone like that might occasionally browse our questions and answer them unprompted, if we ask them good quality questions originally.

Answer 2

I did this 3 times. Premier League and UEFA didn't answer my question when I asked them about:

• "Will the club finishing 4th in the EPL go to any European competition if clubs from 5 to 8 win corresponding titles granting European qualification?".

Whereas IFAB has answered my question on:

• "What happens when fouled behind the goal line near the penalty area?"

I have shared their response as an answer. So it's worth a try.