Florida coach Urban Meyer makes your typical Type-A personality seem like a slacker.
He once said that “every second” in his day is accounted for, and he wasn’t exaggerating.
So you might think Meyer and his fellow college football coaches would be embracing new rules that give them another 15 minutes each week to break down film, recruit or–heaven forbid–relax at home.
Instead, Meyer is part of an irate group that wants the new rules to be clocked–as in knocked out. And quickly.
“I’m very concerned with the direction of college football,” Meyer said recently, adding that he would “go nuts” to discover the origin of the changes and to urge that they be rescinded.
Sound extreme?
The normally mild-mannered Mack Brown said he “hates” the new rules and maintained they made it far more difficult for his Texas team to try to rally against Ohio State in its 24-7 loss Saturday.
“They scored with six minutes left and the game was over before we had a chance to do anything,” Brown said. “One of the great things about college football is a team’s ability to come back. Now that’s limited. Our game was 22 minutes shorter. That’s a little below 10 percent of our game. That’s not fair to our fans. We worry about them sitting there?”
Georgia coach Mark Richt also voiced concern about the public’s welfare.
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“People pay a lot of money to watch it and they’re getting less of it,” he said. “Are they going to give a 20 percent rebate on tickets because they’re getting less football?”
What changed
All the fuss is over three rules changes:
– After changes of possession, the clock starts when the official gives the ready-for-play signal. Previously, it started on the snap.
– The clock starts on kickoffs as soon as toe meets leather, rather than when the receiving team fields the ball.
– The kicking tee was lowered to 1 inch to reduce touchbacks. Fewer touchbacks mean longer kickoff plays.
The result has been shorter games (by about 15 minutes) with fewer plays (from about 140 to 126). Last year’s average game lasted 3 hours 20 minutes, with one in four bowl games exceeding four hours because of high scores and extra TV timeouts.
“I don’t like [the changes],” Purdue coach Joe Tiller said. “They’re not necessary. It’s not coaches or fans who were calling for this. It was people higher up in the food chain.”
There’s some truth to that, but Tiller should know that the 13-member NCAA Rules Committee, which spearheaded and approved the changes, is made up of football coaches, athletic directors and assistant ADs. Each division–I-A, I-AA, II and III–has three representatives, along with a secretary-rules editor.
The Division I-A coach is Auburn’s Tommy Tuberville, who said the motivations were to shorten games and benefit student-athletes by limiting their exposure to injury in a new 12-game season.
Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer isn’t buying that.
“I think television just wanted it shorter so they could get more games on TV and start on time,” he said.
While television executives had no direct role, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive acknowledged to the Birmingham News in February that their wishes were taken into account.
“There is, for those of us who work in conference offices, the issue of consecutive TV games and our TV windows,” Slive told the paper. “On a given Saturday we have the JP (Jefferson-Pilot) game early, the CBS game in the middle and ESPN at night. One thing we want to be sure doesn’t happen is an overlapping of those games.”
Affects strategy
Northern Illinois coach Joe Novak faced a tough decision Saturday against Ohio. Trailing 28-23 and facing fourth-and-5 with about five minutes left, he opted to go for a first down rather than punt. Phil Horvath’s incompletion gave Ohio good field position and the Bobcats scored on a seven-play drive that essentially ended the game.
“There is no question about it,” Novak said. “Five minutes to me looks like three minutes used to.”
Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald felt helpless as the minutes melted away in his team’s 34-17 loss to New Hampshire on Saturday.
“When a team goes into four corners and starts to play a Georgetown offense, you have to execute in every series,” he said.
Dean Smith would remind Fitzgerald that he actually created the four-corners offense at North Carolina, but the point remains.
“A four-quarter game turns into a three-quarter game,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s a great challenge for a lot of offenses now. You need to make plays early. If you don’t, you could run out of time very fast.”
Northwestern’s loss to New Hampshire took just 2 hours 35 minutes. But it wasn’t televised and merely had radio timeouts. Last year, all of NU’s games were televised and each lasted at least 3:05.
Northwestern is averaging 62 plays this year, 18 fewer than last season.
Ohio State ran just 55 plays against Texas on Saturday, and that was plenty for a 24-7 victory. Texas ran 63 plays, but that wasn’t enough for Brown’s liking.
Brown’s complaint about the new rules making it harder to rally would have more validity if his team hadn’t gone three-and-out after Ohio State took a 24-7 lead with less than seven minutes to play.
Asked about Brown’s comment, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel was taken aback: “Gosh, I never noticed it from that standpoint. Meaning there were less plays? Well, I’m not sure about that. Perhaps that’s a vantage point, and I wouldn’t agree or disagree with it.”
Tressel said he would wait to evaluate the new rules until after the season.
“There’s the argument of: `Hey, we have 12 games, so if we have 10 less plays each game then maybe we’re not asking more of the student-athlete,'” he said. “On the other hand, they work so hard all year round, why would we have less plays in a game, especially in an important conference game or championship game?
“But I’m not for or against it. It’s the way the rules are. When you look up on the clock, you know how much time’s left and what you have to do before it gets to all zeroes.”
While most players seem ambivalent toward the new rules, Illinois linebacker Brit Miller endorsed the new up-tempo pace: “You realize you have to be ready to get on the field. It helps me and the other people on the sidelines be more aware of what’s going on in the game.”
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Time saved bigger
David Parry didn’t expect the rules changes to knock off 15 minutes from games.
“We were thinking between 8-12 [minutes],” he said.
Parry, the national coordinator of NCAA football officiating, said he understands coaches’ concerns about losing plays. Then again . . .
“God love football coaches, but if they had 155 plays, they would want 160,” he said. “And the [new] rules don’t bother defensive coaches. They’re probably saying: `I have a better world today than I did last year.'”
Parry said the rules committee considered proposals for either an NFL-style two-minute warning or a one-minute warning. But the overall goal of reducing the length of the game won out.
Parry, though, expects the rules to be tweaked for next season. One idea: Go back to the old rules for the final two minutes, so the clock doesn’t start immediately on kickoffs or possession changes.
“That would be simple and clean and would open the door for the excitement of catch-up football,” he said. “And we could still try to maintain games around that 3:10 or 3:15 mark.”
Then again, some coaches say the new rules are fine.
Arizona’s opener against Brigham Young lasted 3 hours 22 minutes, which was plenty for Wildcats coach Mike Stoops.
“It could have been four hours without the change,” he said. “This is the most overreacted [to] thing I’ve ever seen. I think every coach in America has gone absolutely crazy.”
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