rules

#AllGroundingOffense probably doesn't work as well as #AllPIOffense, but…

I have a question for the football brain trust at Mgoblog.
Should the quarterback always intentionally ground ball to avoid a sack?
It seems like a good idea to me. What is the downside?

Phillip

Uh. I mean… he's not wrong? Since the penalty is "lol no this is still a sack" without anything extra tagged on, grounding is a penalty that's not really a penalty.

The main thing keeping quarterbacks from attempting any desperate chuck to avoid a sack is the potential for a turnover. I'm pretty sure Patterson's first fumble against Army happened because Patterson was trying to get the ball out after he saw the guy coming, and later in that game the MTSU QB's attempt to ground the ball should have been a pick six punt directly at Lavert Hill.

FWIW, I think grounding should be harsher. If you're in someone's grasp and you aren't making a genuine attempt to complete a pass that should be grounding. That includes booting the ball six yards OOB, throwing the ball to a running back in pass protection, and throwing the ball aimlessly in the middle of the field with no one within five yards.

[After THE JUMP: MSU twelve-man-on-the-field radio call]

A mea culpa. A couple things on the fight song kerfuffle from yesterday. One: apparently there are people who have escaped Taken memery. (They probably "take walks" and "go outside.") No part of the threat-type substance offered yesterday was serious. I'm not going to poison anyone's search results.

I was just referencing this famous Liam Neeson thing:

As for Weiss, I hopped aboard the outrage express in the manner that the generally loathsome Gawker and Jezebel do for most of their clicks. If I'd thought about this Daily article more I would have realized that this proposal was in no way going anywhere, but I took the cheap, easy route. While the goal of preventing a Michigan version of We Are ND is a laudable one, firing up the internet outragemobile is likely to get out of control and I should know better.

Seriously, though: just stop. Nothing good can come of this quest.

Now, like, call it. One of my top eleven subjects to rant about in recent times has been offenses flinging ineligible guys downfield on pass plays with impunity. Boy does that put a bee up my bonnet. Spielman, too.

It appears the hue and cry has made it to the lawmakers of our sport:

The ineligible downfield rule was shifted from three yards to one yard past the line of scrimmage. National officiating coordinator Rogers Redding said defenses were beginning to read run more frequently because offensive linemen were 3 yards downfield and then the quarterback would pass. “It's going to be easier to officiate,” he said.

Or, like, six yards downfield blocking the people who were supposed to be covering passes. One or three doesn't help much if you're just forgetting to enforce it either way; hopefully this will come with an increased emphasis on calling illegal men downfield.

(One exception: if you're engaged with a guy and just kicking his ass enough to end up downfield that should be let go. Taylor Lewan got a penalty a couple years ago because his pass blocking was too effective.)

Approximate top eleven rant subjects in recent times. Give or take:

1. Dave Brandon
2. excessive basketball timeouts
3. block/charge calls
4. Big Ten expansion
5. bubble screens
6. "but the spread won't work in the Big Ten"
7. piped in music
8. ineligible men downfield
9. waggles
10. Tom Izzo press conferences
11. when my wife puts the cheese grater in with the food manipulation devices (tongs, spoons, spatulas, etc) instead of the food reconfiguration devices (juicers, graters, mallets, zesters, etc)

This is not 'Nam, MGoWife.

Nyet. Roquan Smith will announce his decision on Friday, whereupon he won't sign an letter of intent. He'll just sign scholarship papers. Well done, sir. (It seems like it's a foregone conclusion that it's not Michigan, unfortunately.)

Add another to the list? If Justice Hayes goes and rips off 1,500 yards I'm gonna be all like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Sleeper to keep an eye on: #CMU RB Thomas Rawls. Michigan transfer w/ off-field flags. But quick and physical on the field. Mid-round talent

— Dane Brugler (@dpbrugler) February 10, 2015

I'm looking forward to a running backs coach with aspirations.

We would like less football, I guess. It's time once again for a college football person to mutter about changing clock rules For The Fans. Larry Scott's turn, as he advocate running the clock after first downs:

"You'll always get traditionalists who won't change it," Scott said. "I don't find it concerning or daunting that there are some that would oppose it. I think the job for commissioners is to take a step back and look at it holistically. The health and welfare of student-athletes is first and fans are a close second in terms of keeping games appealing. Three-and-a-half hours, to me, is too long."

There will always be traditionalists who are your core customers who know you're not seeing increased costs but still soaking fans with higher prices and ever-longer commercial breaks.

Why might games be longer?

The high-pressure, commercialized world of FBS is playing a much longer game than other NCAA divisions. While FBS games averaged 3:23 in 2014, the Football Championship Subdivision was 2:55, Division II was 2:45 and Division III was 2:41.

I mean:

Sun Belt commissioner Karl Benson also favors a running clock after first downs, citing declining attendance. FBS home attendance dropped 4 percent in 2014 for the sport's lowest average since 2000.

"I think our fans are expecting shorter games, and I think when you see attendance is down, we need to address it," Benson said.

Changing the ratio of game to red-hat-on-field the wrong way isn't going to help your attendance, but you don't actually care about that anyway. Just be honest about it. At this point it might be worth looking at some soccer models, which have to deal with an un-interruptible flow of gameplay. I'd rather have a logo next to the score chryon instead of ever-expanding ad time.

Early signing is dumb. Andy Staples addresses it:

I don’t mind an early signing period in theory because the vast majority of recruits know where they want to go, are happy with their decisions and shouldn’t have to wait. But cutting a month off of the process isn’t going to change much. It might be nice if the players who make up their minds really early had a chance to sign before their senior seasons begin, but that isn’t going to happen, either. Athletic directors would hate that since it would make it more difficult to fire a coach if he underperformed. The coach would have the leverage of half a signing class in the barn, and the AD might have to wrestle with double-digit players asking to be released from their National Letters of Intent. This happens all the time in basketball, but it’s different when the coach has 15 players signed instead of three.

Staples advocates a change to the LOI that says "the LOI is a bad thing to sign," so that's not… likely. To reiterate my excellent plan:

The MGo Recruitin' Plan

1. You can sign a pre-NLI any time.

2. The pre-NLI guarantees you a scholarship at the school you sign with, allows them to contact you whenever and prohibits other coaches from doing so. You can only take an official visit to the school you sign with.

3. You can withdraw the pre-NLI at any time.

4. On Signing Day everyone makes it official.

5. (Optional but highly desirable) NCAA does away with 85-player cap and allows everyone to sign up to 22-25 players a year, no exceptions. Transfers and JUCOs count.

Changing the cap from a roster limit to a yearly limit instantly does away with any oversigning mutterings since your motivation is to keep players instead of cut them.

(Via Get The Picture.)

Karan Higdon will help you with your homework. Unless you're a fellow athlete, I think that's a violation. Randos welcome though:

"Football comes second to academics and my future after it."

Higdon's a 4.0 student at Riverview. He wants to be an occupational therapist. He's involved in several academic leadership groups at his school, and has been invited to various academic summits, from Washington D.C. to Paris.

If Higdon couldn't run, catch, block or score a touchdown, he'd probably still be headed to college next year with a scholarship in tow.

Academics aren't just part of the deal for Higdon. They're the deal.

I guess he doesn't want an MFA, or he'd be at Iowa. If Fred Jackson was still here he could be a grad transfer and get drafted, maybe.

Etc.: Orson is so fascinated with Tom Crean that he wrote about him. Michigan was the 12th most-watched team in college football last year, which really says something since… uh… you know. NTDP camp thoughts featuring comments on a few Michigan recruits. SBNation has a "Jim Harbaugh is weird" page. Tom Leyden on Bo's passing.

LeVert still projected 15th by DX. Noted Michigan columnist Ramzy Nasrallah on Harbaugh as nemesis.

SOUNDS ENCOURAGING. Oy.

Michigan OL coach Darrell Funk says young linemen must move forward, 'we don't have any choice'

I already bombarded you with grim news about the OL yesterday, so I'll forgo that today.

Ten second impact: minimal. Patrick Vint went back to a few games of a hyperspeed nature to find out how many penalties would have been issued if you couldn't snap the ball until 29 seconds were left on the shot clock. Answer: a few. Auburn would have gotten hit four times in the Alabama game, presumably just by a second or two. It's really hard to get a play off within ten seconds of the previous one's end.

It still seems virtually guaranteed that the rule won't pass; even if it does it's not a huge shift in the game.

Stats by conference. They now exist on Kenpom and validate the steep drop in shot-making you have probably perceived in Big Ten games this year. The league is 30th of 32 leagues in eFG%. They're also 28th in FT rate. Even last year's Best League Ever was 28th and 25th in those metrics, but in 2012 the B10 was 8th in eFG.

The moral here is probably that these margins are very thin. The difference between the top power conference in eFG, the Big East, and the bottom, the SEC, is about two percentage points. IE, you'd see one extra make in 50 Big East shots.

One other notable thing: home dominance has plummeted this year. Home teams are at a 55% clip compared to 64% last year and 62% the year before. That's a big ol' swing.

The other side of the pit. Bill Connelly's OL stats applied to the defensive line reveal that Michigan was slightly below average at rushing the passer, good at preventing runs of more than five yards, and bad at holding up in short yardage and getting TFLs.

IE: their defensive line was bad. That's not a huge surprise given the obvious things like playing former WDEs at nose tackle and the still-inexplicable absence of Quinton Washington.

It's not good. Gasaway's Tuesday Truths have one over-arching truth for Michigan fans:

                      W-L   Pace    PPP   Opp. PPP    EM
1.  Iowa              8-4   68.5    1.13    1.00    +0.13
2.  Michigan St.     10-3   63.7    1.10    0.98    +0.12
3.  Wisconsin         8-5   62.9    1.12    1.03    +0.09
4.  Michigan         10-3   61.8    1.15    1.07    +0.08
5.  Ohio St.          7-6   63.7    1.02    0.97    +0.05
6.  Minnesota         6-7   62.9    1.06    1.07    -0.01
7.  Purdue            5-7   64.7    0.99    1.03    -0.04
8.  Indiana           4-8   64.9    0.97    1.02    -0.05
9.  Nebraska          6-6   63.9    0.96    1.02    -0.06
10. Penn St.          4-9   66.2    0.99    1.08    -0.09
11. Illinois         3-10   63.8    0.94    1.04    -0.10
12. Northwestern      5-8   60.9    0.88    1.02    -0.14

AVG.                        64.1    1.03

That is: they are the worst defense in the league save for Penn State.

Oh no. Please don't. No one else can possibly wear a suit. Iowa's athletic director preserves the Big Ten's most precious tradition: making grandiose promises to quit if players get a larger slice of the revenue pile.

Barta suggests a pay-to-play system would force schools to put a monetary value on the different levels of competition in all collegiate sports.

"And I'll probably choose to do something else for a living if we ever had to go that route because it's so complex," Barta says. "Do you pay the Division III football player as an employee? Do you pay the tennis student athlete as an employee?"

I should probably be his replacement because I can figure out those two answers immediately: no, and no. Neither is involved in economic activity for their school since their programs are not making money and are therefore charity cases instead of employees.

[HT: Get the Picture.]

Defensive rotation. With Michael Downing and Andrew Sinelli both suspended for Friday's game after hits to the head against the Gophers, Michigan really needs some help. They will get it in the form of Kevin Lohan, who returns from injury after missing 19 games. Mike Chiasson will also draw in to a struggling blue line. Also returning is Alex Guptill and his wildly varying levels of involvement.

Etc.: Women's gymnastics beats Nebraska to take the Big Ten lead. Softball kicks off their season with a 4-1 trip. Dee Hart booted from Alabama for a pot possession charge. Lists of top recruiting classes over long periods of time always point out Michigan as a good recruiting school that sucks despite the recruiting; there really needs to be a recruiting + attrition study.