Hurry Up And Wait

There's a controversial rule proposal being suggested in NCCA football this week that's got a lot of football fans hot and bothered.

The proposal? That defenses would be given at least 10 seconds to substitute players after each play, forcing offenses to wait for them rather than run the next play as soon as the offense is ready. In effect it would greatly curtail the hurry-up offenses that so many college teams are finding success with.

This year it was powerhouse Auburn that refused to take a breather between plays. But in past years teams like Texas Tech and Oregon made those types of all-out offenses popular.

The reason given for the change? Player safety concerns.

That all sounds well and good, I mean who wants to see more injuries? But the problem arises when you start to look at the facts. Defenses forced to play that up an tempo game don't have any more injuries than regular defenses. They might get a tad more TIRED but that isn't exactly a safety issue. It's more of a conditioning one.

It seems that old school coaches don't like having to coming up with brand new defensive schemes to stop these high powered offenses, so the only thing they could think of to slow them down was to change the rules.

In the NFL, teams like the Broncos, Patriots, San Francisco, and Philly are incorporating these kinds of offenses more and more. But guess what? As good as THOSE teams are, each one was convincingly STOPPED this year by a better DEFENSE.

The real solution, it seems, to high-octane offenses is to build a better defense. OR to build an equally high-powered offense of your own.

Proposed rule changes are a gutless move by lazy coaches. Making college football less exciting by handicapping offenses is NOT the solution. Hiring more modern coaches is.

College football is going to be bad enough going forward because of the loss of the BCS system. The last thing you want to do is make the game even less watchable with bad new rules.