Most notable are, yet again, the changes regarding the clock.
As we all know, the play clock in college football is 25 seconds - that is, 25 seconds following the referee marking the ball ready - the proposed rule would institute a 40 second play clock that would begin counting down at the end of the previous play. There are exceptions for timeouts and injuries (use 25 second clock). My anger in brewing, but wait, there's more...
While the clock will stop when a player goes out-of-bounds, it will now start again when the ball is set (rather than at the snap of the ball) - EXCEPT during the last 2 minutes of each half, when the clock will only start with the snap.
These recommendations are a direct result of television and requests that the college games be shortened. The Committee Chair, Michael Clark, head coach at DIII Bridgewater, was quoted to say "We wanted to find something the TV people are looking for without taking away plays from the game. The hope is we got it right."
THIS IS COLLEGE FOOTBALL - it is not the NFL - it was not created solely to entertain and sell horrible mass produced malt beverages in a neat and compact time period. And yes, I do realize that I'm being so super duper naive about the priorities and contributions of mass media to college athletics. I know that the power, influence, impact, and yes, importance, of the Sports media far outweighs my opinion - but that's not going to stop me from having one.
There are soooooo many ways that these new rules could go wrong and/or be abused - and this is just what we need - give the clock people more responsibility.
Hate to think what will happen once Dickie Rod gets his hands on this...There are some other proposed rule changes:
The definition of a chop-block has been simplified to be "any high-low combination block" is illegal regardless of formations and locations.
Another change for kick-offs - the receiving team will have the option to take the ball at the 40 yard line following out-of-bounds kicks.
No more sideline "warnings" - crowding the sideline will result in an immediate penalty.
Instant replay will be allowed on fumbles leading to immediate recovery - huh? my guess is that this will close IR loophole of fumble recoveries not being reviewable when the fumbling team recovers the ball.
The 5 yard "incidental" face mask penalty would be eliminated - grabbing of the face mask which has "no impact" on the runner (or his safety) would be a non-event.
And yet, a penalty for horse collar tackles will be added and the language regarding helmet to helmet infractions will be clarified and strengthened.
Coaches who successfully challenge a call will retain a second challenge (for a total of 2).
- Much info found at Rivals.com and be sure to follow Every Day Should Be Saturday to see how Mr. Swindle reacts the proposals.
Of course, these are just proposals, that need to be approved by the Playing Rules Oversight Panel - but I'm not holding out much hope.
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