Ten Ways To Make X Better: Football
Previously: hockey, soccer, basketball.
[Bryan Fuller]
This is about college football. The NFL list is "why are you the way you are" ten times.
10. Fumbles out of the endzone are treated like other fumbles.
Nonsense that a fumble that goes out at the one stays with the team that fumbled but one that brushes the pylon is a game-changing turnover. Way to emphasize the essentially arbitrary nature of both football and life, rule. You suck!
9. Count intentional grounding as a sack, and count sacks against pass yardage.
This doesn't do anything to help on-field things but hoooooo boy do I want to throttle whoever came up with these inane statistical quirks that I shake my fist at every week during the season. If I was a defensive end and saw the QB fling the ball moments before I engulfed him and then I didn't get credit for a sack I would send a sternly-worded letter to someone. You better believe that.
8. Actually enforce illegal man downfield rules.
that's two count-em two Air Force OL seven yards downfield on a pass
It's three yards in college and one in the NFL, except it's more like infinity yards in college since refs don't bother calling it*. The lack of enforcement here has created an indefensible subset of run/pass option plays. Those are fine, as long as they stay within the rules. If OL are allowed to go downfield and cut block linebackers, which I have seen multiple times in UFR, you might as well bury defensive coordinators alive. They'll enjoy it more than defending RPOs.
*[Except once when Taylor Lewan engaged a guy on a pass block and blocked him so dang good they ended up a few yards downfield. In the aftermath the announcers admonished him for not being aware enough of where he was on the field; I swore so hard at these gentlemen that an iceberg shaped like a middle finger broke off of Greenland.]
7. College overtime starts at the 35.
The 25 is so close that even a three-and-out gives the offense a reasonably makeable field goal. Moving the start back to the 35 would make each overtime period more likely to be decisive and help prevent 6 OT marathons.
6. Adopt NFL punt coverage rules.
Spread punting and its seven gunners have made the punt return an increasingly boring exercise in watching several people surround a ball until it ceases moving.
That percentage doesn't include balls that aren't fielded at all.
The NFL prohibits all but two people from leaving until the ball is gone; adopting similar rules in CFB would restore some of the drama when man kicks ball to Jabrill Peppers-type object.
6. Adopt MGoPlayoff and never change it.
In a nutshell: 6 team playoff with home games the first two rounds and the championship at the Rose Bowl. Six teams allows all reasonable contenders in almost every year without much if any filler. Byes for the top two and home games help preserve the importance of the regular season despite the slight expansion of the field. Having things at the Rose Bowl is just obvious man. All things should be at the Rose Bowl.
5. Change the scholarship cap to an annual one.
I'm ignoring Title IX and the absurd ways it funnels money from poor to rich here, so that objection is noted.
Virtually all of the problems with oversigning and medical redshirts and not-so-voluntary transfers go away if the incentives change. With an annual cap of new scholarship players instead of an overall one, schools are incentivized to keep everyone around in case they work out. I'd set it at 25 since there would be attrition still; you could tweak it if that ended up being insufficient.
4. Allow players to sign an early, non-binding LOI.
Moving Signing Day up is a dumb idea, but it's one that gets pushed on the regular because some people think the current "offer" environment is bad for player and program. They might have a point, but allowing people to sign mostly-binding LOIs before hiring and firing gets done just increases the chances that bad fits get locked in.
Instead, create a system where recruits can sign an early LOI. Parameters:
- The team must offer a scholarship on Signing Day.
- Team and recruit can have unlimited contact; other teams can have none.
- Recruit cannot take officials to other campuses; gets second to team he signs with.
- Recruit can withdraw NBLOI at any time until Signing Day.
A NBLOI offers more certainty for both player and program without the deleterious effects of locking players in early.
3. Add an FCS exhibition before the season. Other FCS games don't count.
Doesn't count against redshirts. Doesn't require players who are actually going to see the field to play. Adds another chunk of revenue with which schools can play more meaningful nonconference games. Prevents that week where everyone in the SEC plays Chattanooga at the same time.
2. Kickoffs that go through the uprights are worth a point.
Yeah buddy. Put some bite in those personal fouls after touchdowns.
1. Multiball allows you to score as many touchdowns as you need.
In the last two minutes you can snap as many balls as you please as long as they're all snapped at the same time. You get the outcome of the worst ball, but if you score with both you get two touchdowns.
if it is truly to punish and prevent dangerous plays, you shouldn't have to rely on an on-field ref to make the call in the first play to review it. The replay official should be able to buzz down and stop play to take a look at it. Maybe even go the MLB route and have a central reviewer to provide insight. That way you won't have a Morgan situation of someone misinterpreting the rule and you also won't have the 10 uncalled and 2(?) reversed targetings against Rudock
the problem is many NCAA FB refs are atrocious, but there are no replacements, you see the same faces year in and year out no matter how they perform. Doesn't mater how many ref on the field, they still would get it wrong. NFL ref are nuch more professional.
Same thing happens to college BB and hokcey.
I don't want to live with that, but it's reality. So please stop blaming me whining about referees.
The refs can't get the call right. No one knows what targeting is. Throw it out.
Football is an extraordinarily popular sport whose major threat is not reduced popularity or competition in the market but a complete meltdown prompted by serious legal attack of either corruption, unfair labor practices, or unsafe conditions.
Because of this, football (college and pro) must pro-actively stay ahead of problems like paying players (note how quickly things began to change when Northwestern talked about unionizing) and serious head injuries. The widening knowledge of head injuries and its impact on the lives of players is a serious, serious issue, and a threat to the game.
So the sport must be proactive. And that means cutting down on violent collisions that have a propensity to cause head injuries, detected or otherwise. And lead-with-your-head tackles are a major source of those impacts.
Eliminating targeting is not an option. However, expanding the rule is, and that may be what is necessary.
I enjoy huge hits. I don't want guys to have to change the way they play, but they may have to. The worse collisions must be limited for their own safety. And if that means they change the way they tackle to avoid penalties, so be it. The penalties may need to be more common, more consistent, more likely, rather than less. That will change the way people play.
It's a good rule that is poorly enforced.
Personally, I think targeting should be reviewed by an impartial party in the booth (or remotely). If there is a targeting foul, that party should notify the referee to eject the player, even if it's one or two plays later. It doesn't interrupt the flow of the game, but it still enforces the rule without counting on referees to see it in real time.
I like it. A "targeting specialist" if you will. And his uniform is a white shirt with red target or crosshair on his back.
I thoroughly detest the part of the rule which states that a personal foul penatly, predicated upon targeting, will stand as a 15 yd penatly even if the review overturns the targeting foul.
Sacks should not count against rushing yards. I am for moving the ball back in overtime. I like the kickoff rule for one point through the goal posts. I don't like the idea of an exhibition game. I certainly like the playoff rule.
No gradual decline. All sensible options, then #2: 'wait a second...' and then #1 is multiball
#2 is 100% sensible. I hate that you can basically get a free shot at someone after a TD because special teams coaches are too chickenshit to run an onsides kick and would prefer to just belt the ball into the fourth row.
The actual change I would make though is for coaches to grow a pair and onsides kick from the 50 when they get the chance. If you don't get the ball it's like a 15-yard swing, from the 25 to about the 40. Surprise onsides kicks work like 60% of the time. Even a non-surprise onsides kick works 10-20% of the time. Would coaches trade 15 yards for a 20% chance at another possession? Shit yeah they would, or they should, so not onside-kicking in that situation pisses me right off. Second only to the inordinate number of wide-sweep plays to the short side of the field.
Since coaches don't do anything scary, I'll take the point for kicking a field goal on a touchdown. That'd be cool too.
I agree the root of #2 makes sense but I think the proper way to do it is to not apply it till the next offensive play for the team. They already exempt the PAT, just exempt the kickoff too
about all of these suggestions, some of them or none of them.
I am still not sure.
illegal man downfield absolutely must be enforced. its a game changer and easily tops my list of complaints / desired changes (itd prob even be 1a and 1b)
I'm imagining multiball with 11 balls on the field. That would be so ridiculous
I think you could easily have 14 balls. You need at least 7 players on the line of scrimmage, two hands each. It would be pretty cool to see the remaining 4 players each have 3 or 4 balls snapped to them simultaneously at the goal line then jump over the top of the pile for 84 points!
The interesting thing is, do you then have to kick 14 extra points simultaneously?
gets a sling shot and 10 marbles to be shot at players on the field only - this is a much better idea for soccer
Allow an earlier official visit.
My amendments;
1. Make a catch two feet or body parts like the NFL.
2. You can't snap the ball on first down until the chains are set.
3. You have to use the same ball the entire drive. No more of this throw a 40-yard pass and flip in a new ball so you can still snap it in 10 seconds bullshit. You throw it deep and its incomplete. Retrieve it and run the next play.
You even have to use the same ball if it is popped.
It would be hillarous to see Oregon trying to run their offense with pigskin bag.
No chintzy bowl games allowed past December 30--period
I'd be okay if you ended your sentence after "allowed".
The changes here are mostly small, some of them relating only to statistics, which correlates well with my impression that college football in the stadium is a near-perfect sport. (The out-of-the-stadium stuff, well, we tolerate it because there are 12 fall Saturdays of perfection).
College football overtimes are weird in the way that they start at the 25, but I'm not sure that starting at the 35 exactly fixes anything. A 42-yard field goal is no sure thing, so a 52-yarder is just a more marginal version of the same. You will have a few more teams going for it on 4th-and-7 from the 32, I guess.
I'm all in favor of home games for the playoffs (am I ever) and the Rose Bowl as a permanent title game, but that scenario will never happen. First, because it is politically unfeasable. Second, because a play-in round is just too unbalanced. A winning team may advance having lost a QB to an ACL injury; alternatively, the host teams could be surprisingly rusty playing against a team that had just played the week before.
I am saddened that the sport's brilliant regular season will continue to be diminished by playoff expansion, but as long as there are 5 major conferences and 4 spots (plus all the underdog mid-major hopes) it is unsustainable. At this point, my main goal with an inevitable 8-team playoff is to mitigate the damage by guaranteeing 6 slots to the 5 major conference champions plus the highest-ranked mid-major champ, with only two at-larges for Notre Dame, LSU, and OSU to fight over after we win the B1G.
An FCS exhibition sound interesting but since it is an exhibition it will be, essentially, an NFL preseason game. And that would be pretty cheesy. The upside of playing redshirted players would be more than offset by the downside of opening the season with a meanginless, half-attended game.
10. Where do you put the ball in play if it is fumbled out of the endzone? The one yardline? The five yardline? The previous spot?
9. Not a change to football, just a change to our recording of the game.
8. Not really a change to the rules of football but rather a change to enforcement of a current rule.
7. That doesn't seem like the best change to OT if you want to avoid marathons. Why not make teams go for two points after every touchdown? Or even *gasp* end the game in a tie after two or three overtime periods if no winnner has been determined?
6a. Isn't it safer to have more fair catches on punts since you would minimize the number of high speed collisions? Why not add in a rule that the ball is live for anyone who is behind the ball, punter included, at the time the ball is kicked after it has travelled ten yards beyond the line of scrimmage. Or like the CFL you could eliminate fair catches on punt returns but enforce a 5 yard halo rule for the returner.
6b. I love it.
5. I love it.
4. I'd rather have an early signing period say the July before Senior year that is binding, but if there is a head coaching change at the school before enrollment it gets voided. Seems like a win win for both players and coaches.
3. Interesting idea, do you reduce the regular season to 11 games or add the exhibition to the current 12 game regular season?
2. Just add in the rouge from CFL. If you still want touchbacks just say any kick that goes out of the endzone counts as one point.
1. I hate it.
I was hoping for a "horses should play human football" throwback.
I love this series. Love it!
I like the ideas about the NLOI. I think it will reduce suspicious, last minute poaching by the more unscrupulous. it will also cut down on those visits, and unnecessary visits where I think a lot of skeazy corrupt shit goes down.
I would say, just as in the basketball fix-it post about charges, college football needs to determine what pass interference is and what constitutes a hit-to-the-head personal foul. Especially, now that they pull the trigger so easily on ejections (Exhibit A: Desmond Morgan). The NFL needs to figure out what a catch is.
FCS exhibition smacks of 'pre-season' and scares me. But they should definitely make a rule that major conferences can't play OOC and especially FCS games after Nov. 1 or something (ND rivals excluded I guess?). But its bullshit when teams in the Big Ten and Pac Ten have to finish the season murdering each other and SEC teams get a nice warm-up against a cupcake before they face their rivals.
Brian...
From Article 10 of the NCAA Staticians Manual: A.R. 1. Team A’s ball on Team B’s 20. Adams fades back to Team B’s 28 and intentionally grounds a pass after being pres- sured by Benton. A loss of down is assessed against Team A from Team B’s 28. Charge Adams with a rush attempt and minus eight yards rushing. Credit Benton with a solo pass sack, a solo tackle, and a solo tackle for loss of eight yards. Charge Team A with a penalty for no yards.
So the player that pressured the QB does get a sack.... although I am sure some stat crews do not do apply this correctly.
I would agree about charging it to passing yards but would then you should also charge all sacks to passing yards... not just IG penalties.
But the biggest change I would make to this rule is to penalize the offense 5 additional yards from the point of the grounding.
JStats
I think you are right. It seems like Intentional Grounding is NEVER counted as a sack, though that might be because I haven't been paying attention.
(which, depressingly, ins't all that much) that #1 would have been somthing about targeting.
The only think I'd change: Make the OT start at the 50.
A hard 25 scholarship limit would be great.
I still think every FBS conference chamption should be in a playoff. That would create a 12-16 team playoff, depending on how you structured it. I'd love it, but I don't think there would be much support for this large of a system.
I think teams in conferences that would have no shot of getting into the current playoff system should break off and form a division in between FBS and FCS. For example, if San Jose State goes undefeated they will not be one of the final 4.
No OT = a life lesson. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes nobody wins. Life.
Sudden death + 1 possession = when a team scores the other team gets one possession to better the score. (I hate that OT basically tells a defense to back up to the red zone)
Bowls & Playoff: seat the playoff after the bowl games. The bowls will give more clarity. Hole the title game the week before the super bowl.
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I loved ties in college football, because both teams would drop in the polls afterwards. So, let's say Michigan was #4 and in the Rose Bowl, playing #8 USC; #1 Texas was playing #7 Miami in the Orange Bowl, and #2 Florida State was playing #3 Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl. I could (and did!) root for Miami and a FSU/Nebraska tie.
With OT, I know that even if FSU beat Nebraska 2-0 in 130 overtimes, they'd still get credit for a "win" and would end up ranked ahead of Michigan. (Although, they will have played the single most boring football game in the history of the sport. with the least probable ending ever).
Scholarship limits are outdated and anti-competitive. The answer isn't to change the limit to 25; it's to eliminate them entirely.
If Michigan wants to offer 145 football scholarships, why on earth shouldn't they? What is the justification for telling 52 (or 20-45, in Brian's proposal) young men, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, "Sorry, we'd like to pay for your education, and we have the money, but a bunch of rich white guys think it'd be unfair."
Recruits today have more information at their fingertips than ever before. They can tell how likely it is that they'll get playing time, and since pretty much every football game is on TV, the smaller schools still have a chance. ("Sure, your parents can watch you play; we're on Tuesday Night MACtion all the time!")
The only reason that scholarship limits exist is to reduce labor costs, to make sure that there's revenue left over to give a massive raise to Florida's defense coordinator. (Which is true. Now go back and read yesterday's UFR again. Again, Florida's defensive coordinator just got a massive raise).
First, Title IX is an issue here; second, it's bad for the sport and potentially bad for the players. It's bad for the sport because you have the big dogs taking even more of the best talent, since they don't have to focus on a few players but can basically just recruit everybody they like. So teams like Mississippi State and Texas Tech and Iowa get even more of a raw deal.
And it's bad for the players because more go to these schools thinking they have a chance to play, never see the school, and either transfer out or graduate. With unlimited scholarships a school has no incentive to worry about a guy panning out. They can work with them, coach them up, and if they don't show starting potential, forget about them and move on to the next guy. It's better for the players to go to a school that has an interest in them working out from the beginning.
Title IX isn't a real issue. It just makes the scholarships more expensive, because you have to price in a scholarship to a women's team as well. The softball team can give out 125 scholarships too.
Yes -- the big dogs get more of the best talent. As a Michigan fan, this bothers me not at all. Iowa can try to sell recruits on playing time and depth chart issues. As I said, recruits have plenty of visibiilty into this kind of thing now.
Yes, kids will transfer out or graduate (did you mean 'not graduate?'). That happens today -- just look at basketball recruiting. And, yes, coaches may not spend that much effort on kids who didn't pan out (Saban's medical hardships?). But if you give four-year guaranteed scholarships, the kid can either transfer or get a degree and move on with his life. The free education was supposed to be the point, after all. :-)
Title IX isn't a real issue. It just makes the scholarships more expensive, because you have to price in a scholarship to a women's team as well. The softball team can give out 125 scholarships too.
Yes, but you're talking as if the scholarship decisions are made by the same people in a coordinated effort. If football teams suddenly jack up the number of scholarships they give out, the school's Title IX metrics will be thrown out of whack, and it's not the football coach's job to care about what a scholarship costs.
That said, scholarship limits are important because the recruiting environment is already set up in favor of the coaches being able to manipulate and deceive recruits. Yes, recruits are sometimes not honest, and they decommit all the time and coaches have to live with that, but overall it's still coaches who control the message. Anything that tilts the recruiting game further toward giving coaches more tools to sell recruits a lemon is a bad idea.
Not sure if they were all on scholarship, but I read somewhere that when Bear Bryant was at Texas A&M, they had 150 players- ON THE FRESHMAN TEAM. (Freshman were not eligible to play on the varsity until the early 70s).
Back before scholarship limits, schools would offer schorships to players they KNEW were never going to play, just so their rivals wouldn't get them. Who know's what they told the kids. You can imagine what a Saban would be telling them...
Also I think it should be legal on goal line plays to be able to throw someone under 5 feet tall over the pile into the endzone. You could snap the ball to your small guy and your biggest dude can toss him over the line. I imagine opposing defenses would also employ this as a defensive strategy too.
I'm sure this will do nothing to decrease the violent roughness of the game but I think it would be fun to watch.
Concerning item 5, I'm putting on my lawyer cap, but I still don't see how swithching to an annual instead of an overall scholarship cap is a problem under Title IX. It's the specific annual number. If you insist on 25 scholarships and everyone gets a red-shirt year and stays in school all 5 years, that's 125 (instead of 85) football players. Yeah, that could be a problem. But, I see three ways to mitigate that:
1) Natural attrition is going to reduce that number without any action at all. Dudes will have career ending injuries (unfortunately). Dudes will turn pro early, or start playing as true freshmen (fortunately). Dudes will do dumb stuff and get kicked off the team (unfortunately). Dudes will graduate and/or trasfer (fortunately), but there will be much less incentive for this because every grad transfer with only one year of eligibility left will still count against that year's limit, even when the guy is long gone. You could apply a formula to reduce an incomming class' limit if the total number of dudes still on scholarship and eligible to play (not medicalled) is over a certain limit.
2) Doesn't need to be 25; could be less.
3) Most athletic departments don't fully comply with Title IX as it is. There are more women than men enrolled in most colleges, but with football sucking down 85 scholarships, hardly any schools have as many womens' athletic scholarships and mens', let alone in proportion to the actual male-female percentage of the student body. These schools rely on the second clause that allows schools to simply "show progress towards" numbers of scholarships in line with the male/female ratio (i.e. better than the year before; you could take a real long time to get towards the goal if you slice the sausage thin enough). If the Fed Dept of Ed will go along with this, you could let every school reset its baseline ratio the year they go to annual scholarship. Then all they have to do is continue to make progress from the new baseline.
I would take issue with one remark, the alleged transfer of wealth from poor to rich?! What universe are you in? Do you think every revenue sport athlete comes from an impoverished family, and every non-revenue athlete comes from a wealthy family? Do you even have numbers to support the thesis that there are more poor kids playing for a scholarship in revenue sports? Moreover, since we are really talking about male football players versus female scholarship athletes, are you suggesting every female athlete comes from a rich family? This is a lazy comment that is inconsistent with an otherwise well thought out and well written article. You're better than this, man.
I'm having some trouble finding the data, but it's not too far a stretch to guess that many scholarship football & basketball players come from less advantaged backgrounds than non-revenue sports. We don't often hear stories about the poor kid who made it on the rowing team, for example. Many non-revenue sports are quite expensive. I'd be willing to bet most NCAA golfers and tennis players come from well-off families. I grew up playing hockey, a very expensive sport.
In any event, the football and basketball players generate millions of dollars and are paid like people who generate zero. That's a transfer of wealth.
I'd suggest making onsides kicks a little easier for the offense to recover. If the recieving team expects them, it is very rare for the kicking team to recover. Maybe the ball only has to travel 8 yeards before being recovered or something like that. Last minute comebacks are super entertaining. A few more of them is a good thing.
Also, if any team turns down the chance to win in regulation and goes for the tie (not going for two), they have to be on offense first in the first overtime.
One thing that I think both levels of football should develop:
Put sensors on footballs and on players.
There are so many games that have crucial moments decided by a naked-eye spot by a referee that is himself moving at the time the ball is dead. An inch or two of human error here or there is the difference between a first down and a fourth, a touchdown and a turnover, and so on. And part of the problem is that replay reviews rarely ever conclusively change spots.
I heard that the NFL is experimenting with placing a microchip in a football for an exhibition game or something. This needs to move forward and fast. The technology either exists or nearly exists to place a simple sensor and transmitter inside a regulation football, and to at the same time plot out its location on a millimeter perfect plot of the football field. This would allow replay officials to identify the exact location of the ball at any point in time (for example, when a knee is visually judged to be down but the ball is not visible on goal-line plays). This can easily be coordinated with sensors on first-down markers and so on.
The ball needs to be wired and the information needs to be available to officials.
Regarding players, I think it would be wise to track their movements with at least an accelerometer to learn what G-forces are involved in their collisions. Drifting back to my discussion of head injuries, it's a serious consideration for the future of the sport.
Wire the players (maybe just their helmets?), gather data. Much of the conventional wisdom regarding injuries is hampered by the fact that there just isn't data. The move to reduce kickoff returns, for example--what are the stats regarding injuries on kickoff returns as opposed to other plays? I haven't seen any.
Gather the data. And, as trends become clear, find ways to address them. For example, if it becomes clear that players who endure, say, a 25-G collision (that number is absolute hogwash, a total guess) make up 60% of diagnosed concussion cases, real-time tracking of collisions can prompt a neutral medical official to page a sideline to pull a player who has just been involved in such a collision to check him for a concussion. In another example, if a certain type of play clearly produces more of these collisions (a crossing route into a zone defense, for example) rules can be tweaked to reduce that element of the play.
But you need data.
And if the technology doesn't yet exist, set aside some of these massive millions and offer them as a bounty or a commission to a University that develops it. This should be right up the Big Ten's alley, right?
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