Let there be more football
Rule 3-2-5e is nearing death.
Bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; college football is alive again.
Thomas Stinson of the AJC has the news and details of some additional rules tweaks that will try to clean up the mess from last year’s misguided attempt to shorten the length of college football games. The decision and recommendations of the NCAA Rules Committee still must gain approval from the Playing Rules Oversight Panel on March 12, so we can’t quite bury this rule yet. But the priest is giving last rites.
In the understatement of the year, rules committee chairman Michael Clark admitted, "The changes we made last year, overall, did not have a positive effect on college football at all levels."
The committee "recommended new measures to restore the missing 12 plays without effecting game times" (or affecting commercial time we presume). We’ll take a closer look at those later.
(HT: EDSBS)
Comments
Dawg Media
RSS 2.0
2 Responses to 'Let there be more football'
Subscribe to comments with RSS
J Huggins
February 15th, 2007
12:17 pm
I like the fact that the rules committee didn’t just tweak their new rules, but dropped the whole package.
I like most of their adjustments, but would suggest a major inequity in all football rules ought to be addressed:
Football is about field position, and a team that scores a touchdown should not have to kick off from the same place as a team which kicks a field goal successfully.
If they want to move the kickoff for the start of the halves and after field goals back to the 30, OK.
But leave the kickoffs after touchdowns at the 35, or even move them back to the 40, where they used to be.
Another pet peeve of mine is when a team is behind late in a game and trying to get the snap off quickly. The defensive team is often rewarded if they get to the line of scrimmage slowly by the officials holding the ball until they get in place. How about stopping the game clock after incomplete passes and first downs, as usual, but give both teams 15 seconds to get to the line of scrimmage and get ready for the next play.
Similarly, after a completed pass or run which doesn’t result in a first down, let the game clock continue to run, but give both teams no more than 10 seconds after the whistle blows one play dead to get in place for the next play to begin.
Also, the idea of giving a team 15 seconds to get the snap off following a time out is a good one.
How about s similar 15 second rule after penalties during which no decision is required, such as the delay of game or illegal motion penalty on the offense?
I like attempting to restore the lost plays, but have no problem with the goal of speeding up the overall time it takes to play a game.
BoB Hall
February 15th, 2007
12:42 pm
Just limiting the time allowed for reviewing a play will have the effect of shortening most games. We’ve all had instances of being able to go get a cold one and order a pizza before a difficult call is upheld or overturned.
Granted, all games don’t have these nap breaks, but over the course of a season a lot of time will be saved.