Should the pace of college football be regulated?

No.

Nope

What, someone found the secret to overpowering Saban's defense and now he has to complain about it, saying it's "unfair"? Hurry-up is a strategy that coaches need to coach against. Are they going to make some rule of "you have to wait at least 20 seconds before you snap the ball"? What are teams going to do in a real two-minute drill?

And besides that, I think hurry-up is more exciting to watch than Lloyd/Tressel-ball.

If the offense can be conditioned enough to handle the accelerated pace of the game, so can the defense.  Saban's making a pretty stupid argument here in my opinion.

It's amazingly transparent that Saban forsees having to play Oregon for a championship this year, and is trying play some head games early. 

Nick, if you are such a defensive genius, you will find a way. 

Maybe run some stuff from your Miami Dophins days....oh, wait. 

While this is naked self-interest, that's not actually a logical ground to dispute his argument. I can't say I've seen a increase in injuries that appear to be due to pace. If anything I've seen people faking injuries in order to slow down tempo teams.

I think Fremeau posted over on twitter that "2.8% of offensive possessions this year have lasted 14+ plays. 0.6% have lasted 16+ plays. 0.01% have lasted 18+ plays." so his argument could be that a disproportionately high percentage of these injuries occur on these types of drives. Personally I think there's way too small a sample size to accurately judge that and I can't personally recall seeing too many more injuries due to up tempo college football.

While I see what Saban is saying (the more players get tired, the more likely they are to get hurt), that is part of athletics. Getting your team in shape is just as much a part of football as getting your team lined up correctly and your package of players you want on the field. Football is a sport, you can make your players better athletes fitness-wise and then this is less of a problem. To make everybody wait around so everyone can catch their breath makes football something closer to untimed chess.

While I think the rules have bent too far in favor of the offense in many areas, I don't think this is an area to be looked at. What happens if a team is down a few TDs? What happens late in the 4th quarter? This is a bad idea.

Excuse me but football teams today get long TV timeouts after every change of possession, plus actual timeouts that stretch several minutes more than they used to, and many drives are punctuated by drawn-out official reviews. Teams today get way more time to stand around with their hands on their hips than any who played in the first century of the game, most of whom played both ways I'll remind you.

And what's he regulating? Should teams have to wait 10 seconds between plays to snap the ball now? What about during the 2-minute drill, or is that exempted? You see how quickly this becomes ridiculous?

More plays means more football. I agree that it also means more kids will get injured because more chances, but the only dangerous thing they're doing is playing more football--if we had just 10 plays a game the kids would be even safer, but football wouldn't be a game worth playing anymore.

Saban is just looking for an angle, or to cut off every angle but his own. The entirety of the effect will be to decrease the amount of football you get to watch. Saban wants this because he is anti-football.

Teams can't snap it any faster than the refs can place the ball for play. That's enough delay.

Why does Saban care about injuries?  It just allows him to cut a player and replace him with a better recruit.

earlier this morning that there is no evidence of the amount of injuries increasing as the pace goes up. I cannot find it or remember where I found it.  If anybody can find it, it would be awesome!

If Saban can produce some concrete data that shows injuries increase as tempo increases, then I'd be ok with considering something like this. I strongly suspect that will not be possible though, so definitely no, it should not be regulated. 

Nick Saban is here to talk about fairness, you guys...

I think he kind of has a point and I think that they could do something to fix the issue without slowing the game down. There's already a rule that if the offense makes a substitution then the defense has to be allowed to make substitutions as well. Maybe something taking that a bit further can be implemented. Something like allowing substitutions on 1st downs while the chains are moving. If they make substitutions, they just have to hold the ball an extra few seconds while the subs get set. If they aren't hustling on and off the field, then either let the play start or call a delay of game penalty on the defense. That seems like a good compromise that will allow players to catch their breath but not really slow down the pace of the no-huddle offenses.

where yes it needs to be thought about. 

I upvoted because rarely to we get a geniunely GREAT non-Michigan related discussion on this board.

Very good stuff. I see it both ways - some very good arguments being made, please continue!

THEY WERE SO CONVINCING IN THEIR ARGUMENT! THEY SWUNG ME!

a genuine problem, but this isn't the best way to fix it.  I think they'd be better off letting DB's make more contact before and during the catch.

I'm not as big of a Saban hater as a lot of people. Granted, I think he cheats--I think his oversigning schemes work because his players are "well taken care of," if you know what I mean. But he is not particularly more evil than a number of other coaches, and his players clearly like him, and he is a brilliant coach. And I don't really object to his jumping to greater and greater jobs.

But in making this statement he is an absolute coward. 

Now, I enjoy the new hyper-fast offenses aesthetically; they are usually on my television at least as a flip. But apart from that, as a fan of football, I love the innovation that it involves; these offenses are taking advantage of an opening in the game they have found and exploiting it. That is part of the evolution of football.

And sooner or later one of these offenses is going to make some plays, sustain some drives, wear down his players, and begin exploiting his otherwise impenetrable defenses. And because he wants to play a certain way, he doesn't like that. 

And he is a coward for saying this. I don't think he cares about the health and safety of players at all; if he did, he wouldn't be kicking injured players off of his team to free up scholarships.

How small. How craven. I've never respected him less.

Here's an idea: If Saban is really concerned about the safety of players, perhaps he should pioneer better, thorough PED testing for players on his and other teams. Test his players vigorously for all substances including HGH year-round and challenge other major programs to do the same.

I don't think he wants to do that.

Saban doesn't care about anything but his own self-interest.  Following the "money," one can reasonably infer that Saban sees speeding up the tempo as a way that a team with inferior personnel to his NFL Developmental League team can bridge the gap a bit.  

These days "player safety" is like politicians talking about "jobs."  "I propose a plan to drop nuclear bombs on every city in the world....my projections forecast this will generate jobs both in the making of the bombs and millions of green jobs as we clean up the planet afterwards."  You can't set aside Saban's motivation here - player safety is not on his mind.

no. Next question!

Does fatigue increase chance of injury?  Yes, I think so.  But that's why you have depth and need to know the limit of each of your players.  And the last person that should have any depth issues is Saban.

Saban is 10 times the senator that Tressel was.

Mount up

In other words.........NO

Yeah all those 18-play drives from fast paced spread teams are killing people.

"Give me your tired, your poor, and any JUCO transfer with a questionable character who can run a 4.2.  When they go down, I'll cast them aside and get another one."  I saw this crap yesterday and there was nothing but sincerity as far as the eye could see.  What a magnanimous prick.

I hope to God this never happens.  I can't think of something more stupid said by anyone.  Ever.

I like to think we can be more thoughtful than that. But it's true that Saban's claim seems to hang by a slender thread: do injuries climb when the hurry-up becomes a game-long deal?

Probably very hard to prove. It's even possible they could go down--playing faster COULD even out, with Os and Ds not ON the field any more or less. You score in two minutes and the D goes off field. 

Likely different KINDS of plays are being made, which also alters your sample. 

No doubt the spread IS changing the game. It will be interesting to see over time whether manball starts to lose out, only works for elite teams, etcetera. The advantages of the spread for small and possibly less gifted squads do seem to have been established. 

Saban's concern is with the increase in probability of players being injured due to the fast pace of the game.  Further, his concern must be in regards to the players on the defensive side of the ball because the offense has most of the control over the game pace.  If he feels like his offensive players are so tired that the risk of injury is unacceptable, he has the power to slow the offense down and use the full play clock.  Or if he is supremely concerned, he can expend a precious timeout to ensure the safety of his offensive players.

So then, on to the defensive side of the ball. The meat of this argument lies in the game situation of long / extended drives: double digit play drives.  I hate to sound overly simplistic, but the defense's silver bullet here is to prevent an extended drive.  They need to display sound tackling on the players' parts.  The defensive coordinator needs to give advantageous RPS calls.  The defense needs to stop the offense's progress and therefore curtail these extended drives.

Offenses will always have an advantage because they act first and the defense reacts.  But overall, I don't think the pace of the game needs to be artificially regulated; defenses need to step up to protect their own safety.

This point is dumb. I like the fast paced offense because you get to see more plays and more action during the course of a 60 minute game. These guys are college athletes, they should be conditioned to play the full 60 minutes.

Saban is always giving his opinion about something, isn't he? 

Saban: "can we please slow down the pace of football? I need to use my medical scholarships on my terrible players, and all these legit injuries are getting in the way!"

I'm not sure about the health issue here, but I am starting to feel like the offense/defense balance in CFB is becoming skewed toward the offenses (whereas in the NFL it's balanced or even in the favor of the defenses).  There definitely seem to be more and more of these 49-42 type games.  If rule changes can bring things more into balance, I wouldn't mind.  I don't know how much of this really comes down to the hurry-up concept itself, though.  Would Oregon really be that much easier to defend if it took an extra 10 seconds to snap the ball?  I don't know.

Make up your mind Nick, is that you're concerned about player health/injury prevention, or is it that you think it's bad for your team (fairness).  I think we all know the anwser to that one.  It's ironic that Saban of all people is complaining about things not being fair.  If he doesn't have all the cards in his hands, if all things don't play into his power, if he doesn't own a competitive advantage over everything he is a little baby.  He is such a good coach I would just love to see him compete on a a level playing field.  He just always seems to get so caught up in taking advantage of policies.

If a coach wanted to slow down a tempo offense and be able to substitute defenders all he would have to do is tell the defender leaving the game to drop and cramp up on the way off the field. There is no rule against this currently, except that the player for whom the officials call the timeout must leave the game for at least one play.

I honestly have no idea whether slowing the game down would have any effect on injuries. However, I think this is worth talking about because I think it does mess with the game to a degree. I have no logical argument to why it can't be done, it just feels wrong sometimes. I watch an Oregon game and I don't always marvel at it. It turns the game of chess into speed. Going before the other team can even think. Sometimes I think it is tantamount to the batter's box being removed, and pitchers just hurling a ball over the plate as fast as the catcher can get it back to them. It'd be entertaining as hell for a time (seriously, wouldn't it? especially after how we've dealt with long delays between pitches) but it wouldn't be the same game anymore. 

between an OL that's conditioned to snap the ball in .0001 seconds like Oregon, and one that averages a metric ton of muscle, like Wisconsin. If anything, I'd bet Saban's model causes more injuries then Chip Kelly's.

I don't think Saban was all that worried about Western Kentucky and their defense getting injured when he started three All-American's on his OL and sent out huge TE's to block guys with no shot at doing anything against them and sent a 225lb missile up the gut of their defense.

Maybe Saban should keep his players in shape so that they aren't more likely to get injured.  I have a friend who grew up in South Africa and he was comparing the size of rugby players to that of american football players and how freakish yet out of shape american football players were.  I explained how spread teams are changing that trend by having fitter lineman who are not as huge.  I think up tempo offensive teams built around speed are actually healthier, though I don't have statistical backup.  Saban just needs to keep his team in shape and STFU.

The game itself is not safe.  I think we've all known that for a long time.  Saban probably just sees the pace as being mechanism for less talented teams to level the playing field a little bit.  And with the talent he gets, he doesn't want that.

Sounds too much like The Shift to me...  BAN IT ALL.