The Rules Have Changed Slightly
The NCAA's passed some new rules. (One thing they did not pass: the anti-grad-transfer legislation. /waves tiny flag) Let's consider them.
Overtime must end
There was a seven-OT game that ended 74-72 last year, causing consternation amongst TV executives, players, coaches, and persons who fall asleep at reasonable times. There will never be a seven OT game again:
Moving forward, if a game advances to a fifth overtime, the teams will run alternating two-point plays instead of regaining possession from the 25-yard line like in prior overtime periods. … As part of the change, the NCAA is instituting two-minute rest periods after the second and fourth overtimes.
The degenerates of college football twitter hissed at this, because seven OTs is an event to remember. People who are not into late-night delirium are more numerous, unfortunately.
If they had to bring a definite end to a football game, two-point conversions are dumb. The article linked above calls it "football's version of penalty kicks," which is correct because penalty kicks are also dumb. That crazy California playoff OT system Spencer found is way better:
The format of The California Tiebreaker is butt-simple. The ball starts on the fifty. The winner of the coin toss gets possession, and each team receives four plays to move the ball however they like in the direction of the other team’s endzone.
The weirdness kicks in here: Each team trades possessions, and works the ball from the spot where their opponent left it on the previous play. Complete a pass to the opponent’s 35 yard line on the first play? That’s where they play their first. Because this is a godly solution to football’s overtime problem, field goals and punts are not allowed. If no one scores or turns the ball over after four plays, then the victor is determined by field position.
That ends a game in exactly eight plays and features passes in which receivers can run more than 13 yards downfield.
I still think OT periods should start from the 35 so you don't get a reasonably makeable field goal for going three and out.
[After THE JUMP: targeting roulette!]
Targeting roulette may get less random
No more booth cop-outs on targeting reviews:
…penalties for targeting will either be confirmed or overturned. There will be no more plays where a call on the field “stands” like in a situation where a replay review is ultimately inconclusive. … Only targeting fouls confirmed by replay will be upheld.
This sounds like they imagine all the "stands" ejections will turn into no call at all, but surely some percentage of them will end up moving into the "confirmed" bin, with the accompanying ejection. That would still be a reduction in the number of ejections… but not the number of reviews. Womp womp.
Also they've added a one-game suspension if you get three targeting calls in a season. That will be rare. In 2017 one player, Akron CB Alvin Davis Jr, had three targeting calls go against him. Only seven players drew two flags.
No more decleaters
This is probably overdue:
Any block deemed to be a blind-side block “attacking an opponent with forcible contact” will be a 15-yard personal foul penalty. If the block “includes the elements of targeting,” targeting rules will be enforced.
That strange looking punt block technique where you get in front of the dude and put your arms up as you impede his progress would still be legal, since it doesn't involve forcible contact. Hammering a guy who isn't even looking at you into next week is now a guaranteed 15-yarder. That's fine. Those hits have always been cheap shots.
Mumble mumble kickoff something
Okay:
Finally, the NCAA voted to eliminate the two-man wedge formation on kickoffs.
Every time there's a batch of rule changes they whittle away something from kickoffs. I wonder how long they'll last before being replaced by a dance-off for field position. To be clear: this is not a complaint. I am wildly in favor of field position dance-offs.
Kickoffs are boring.
April 24th, 2019 at 11:48 AM ^
I don’t like that OT solution either. I’m not too keen on a football game ending with a dramatic hail mary to the other team’s 49-yd line. What happens when the last play ends at exactly the 50? Probably a ten minute video review to see who got that last inch.
The team that wins the coin-toss decides to either start with possession or defer. Team 1 starts with possession at their own 35. Regular rules of football apply; Team 1 tries to score a TD/FG, if they cannot, they punt to Team 2, who then tries to win with a TD/FG. If Team 1 does score a TD/FG, Team 2 gets a shot from their 35 to win/tie the game. End the game with a team either scoring or failing to score, you know, like football games decided in regulation.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:01 PM ^
Yeah, but in that situation you get to end the game in the most exciting way possible. Staring at a ref's ass while he stares into a monitor for 10 minutes. Riveting!
Regular season games shouldn't have OT. It's a tie. Everybody go home.
CCGs and CFP games should play an entire 5th Quarter of actual football. Still tied? 6th Quarter of actual football.
Yuck on ties. Nothing like watching Lou Holtz play for a tie to preserve his team's ranking. Thrilling football, that.
OT: Team gets 1 point and defends or gets the ball. Teams place bids at where they are willing to start their possession. Team willing to go the furthest gets the ball. If defending team gets a stop they win. Offensive team needs a fg or td* to win. If bid is same then coin flip decides possession from bid.
*At some point i am sure a player will get an int and run into the end zone and lose on a safety.
The rule change is just putting a limit on how long OTs can go, not to make them generally shorter. I doubt we'll see much tinkering simply because the current OT system is exciting and I'd guess, popular.
If they were to make changes, I like simply starting from the 35 instead of the 25. I also like lessening the advantage of going on defense first. That could be done by eliminating XP kicks only for the team starting on defense that possession. It adds a little strategy to the game. If a team scores first and kicks an XP, they guarantee it's the last OT. They can replace the both sides have to go two rule with that.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:03 PM ^
How many 7 overtime games have there been since they started the OT format? Five times. Of course a rule needs to be changed because it messed up TV programming that one time.
I'm assuming this is a "safety of the student-athletes" change, but then why arbitrarily cut OT at five and why add the additional strain of basically running goal-line plays when the teams are most tired?
April 24th, 2019 at 12:15 PM ^
I think having a cutoff at 5 basically makes a change without actually affecting game play at all. IF another 7 OT game happens, people will know about it. Otherwise it's a moot point. OTs rarely go beyond 3 anyway so effectively the rule doesn't matter.
If I'm game's stilled tied after four To cycles I'd like to see it end as a tie.
A tie?
April 25th, 2019 at 11:57 AM ^
Agree with you on that. This rule seems like 3 people complained so they made a rule to appease them that will rarely have any implications. Plus if you get to 5 OT, both teams have had plenty of chances to win at that point, I’m ok with having the system decide.
I like the new decleater rule. Too many cheap shot hits out there with intent to injure.
April 25th, 2019 at 12:47 PM ^
Fer God's sakes, just play it out. Why is this a problem, considering (as you suggest) that it almost never happens?. Only a small percentage of games even go to OT and only a much smaller percentage will go to seven OTs.
If the numbers I saw are right, there were 636 FBS OT games from 1997-2015. Adding in the numbers from 2016-2018, 5 games going to 7 OT's over 23 years isn't much.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/4jtvc0/history_of_overtime_in_college_football/
April 24th, 2019 at 12:09 PM ^
Saying a targeting call "stood" as called was a cop-out, but I'm dubious on if removing it will reduce targeting calls. If a referee makes the call on the field and then goes to the monitor, what're the odds that a questionable call by refs gets overturned by those same refs? No conspiracy, just lack of confidence in refs.
I think this change is a good one, and less about reducing the number of targeting calls than reducing the number of players ejected where the targeting conduct was reasonably debatable. If the booth can't confirm, then the player should stay in the game.
Like Brian (and you, I think), I think some of the calls that "stood" under prior rules will be "confirmed" under the new rules, so those will have the same result as before. But there also will be some that previously "stood" but can't be confirmed, and those players deserve to keep playing.
April 25th, 2019 at 12:57 PM ^
Amusing to me that they pass an OT rule in order to shorten the length of multiple OT games and then change the targeting review rule in a way that should make reviews longer. Don't you think that eliminating the option of allowing a call to stand is going to lengthen the time of the booth reviews? I'd think this rule will force the replay booth to be damn sure with what they decide.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:11 PM ^
I'm OK with starting overtime at the 35, but don't agree that we need to change rules every time a crazy outlier event happens (which is what that 74-72 game was). In truth, making teams go for two in the third OT has already largely solved the issue of never-ending OT sessions.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:45 PM ^
Agreed, this seems like a reaction to that one time it happened. To me, it’s the format overall that needs changing. Right now, it’s like if tie basketball games were settled in OT with a three point contest.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:51 PM ^
I like Harbaugh's idea. Keep playing until the clock runs out. Then start the 5th quarter in the exact spot where it ended, with the same team in possession. First to score wins.
It's clean. It's elegant. It adds strategy (do you try to kick for the win from 50 or let the clock run out knowing it's only 3rd down and you have a chance to get closer in OT?)
Hmmm... sounds okay, but tied teams will just treat the end of regulation like the quarter clock. It's there, but who cares? I feel like it would ruin the end of game urgency that builds to the final gun. Not sure if that's a problem. I've considered this for all of about 45 seconds.
Either way, this and everything else is light years better than the California Tiebreaker nonsense Brian is supporting. That's the worst idea imaginable. No special teams. No down markers. No series. No scoring. -- We're going to award wins and losses based on the final spot of a ball? What the hell is that? I'd rather flip a coin.
Even more than that....the team with the ball will tie itself into knots trying to keep it. Instead of trying to kick a game-winning FG, they'll burn as much clock as they can so they can kick in sudden death instead.
I completely agree I hate the so-called California tiebreaker too. If the current college OT is like penalty kicks (and for the record I really like the current system and not the rule change) the California tiebreaker is like, I dunno, a throw-in contest or something.
Why would you kick on third down from the 50 in that situation if OT is sudden death anyway? There's zero downside to waiting, don't see how that's an example of adding strategy.
April 25th, 2019 at 12:17 PM ^
No thanks. Only because that system would have likely deprived me of the Denard victory against Notre Dame at the big house. My greatest memory of Michigan football in the last 20 years.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:11 PM ^
The college OT solution now is convoluted. Red zone offense and defense almost exclusively, no special teams outside the FG unit, and incredibly biased towards the team that wins the toss.
I don't know why college football decided it couldn't handle a game ending in a tie anymore, but this 2 point stuff is just trying to end a game in order to end it. Just go back to ending a game in a tie, as we did prior to 1996. Or a version of hockey's extra time--two OT's max and if it's still a tie, it's a tie.
CFP games and conference title games would have to be exceptions played to a winner.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:48 PM ^
Ties serve no purpose in CFB and most people want to see a clear result from the games they watch (since there are so few per team).
After a three or four overtime I've got no problem with the game ending as a tie. If they play that evenly for that long a tie seems like the most appropriate result to me.
I have no problems with ties in a season that involves more games, thus reducing the quagmire effect that a tie has on the standings. College football only has 12 games (a very very very limited sample), which means each game has ENORMOUS consequences on a team's standing at the end of a season. A single tie would drastically alter the championship teams, playoff standings, and bowl selection. College football with its limited season needs definitive results to make sure each game matters. Who wants to watch the playoff committee decide if a 10-1-1 team is better than a 10-2 team, or if a team that goes 11-1 but plays nobody is better than a team that goes 10-1-1 but played a harder schedule. No thanks.
So polls with no data but the eye test were able to make this determination 25 years ago, but in the data driven world of today a tie game becomes the Y2K bug of our time? Give me a break.
We make subjective determinations all the time. A tie game doesn't change that.
You're my new best friend.
"I don't know why college football decided it couldn't handle a game ending in a tie anymore"
The teams are tied. It's a tie. Call it a tie. I've never understood why American sports fans are so disgruntled with tie games. My beef is with hockey. The shootout is an abomination. If I were commish, games would immediately go back to 5v5 for 5:00 minutes and then it just ends a tie. I don't get why we need to play some post-regulation bastardized Frankenstein version of a sport just to find a winner. There was no winner. They tied.
My beef is with hockey.
Yep.
1. The losing team gets rewarded with a point. We're rewarding losers. Ugh.
2. It skews the record. A .500 record is the benchmark for a winning season. That means you need to win half your games played. It should be 41 wins. But if a team goes 37-36-9, somehow that's now considered a winning season when they're actually short of 41 wins.
Exactly right. That 37-36-9 team is 37-45. They lost those 9 games. They give them an OT point because the league acknowledges overtime rules are so vaguely related to actual hockey that it'd be unfair not to give you a little something for your effort.
Mind-numbing. Simply because the disinterested fringe fans that the sport was so desperate to attract thought ties were dumb.
And now we have the Tampa Bay Lightning tying the Red Wings' record of 62 regular season wins. Only the Red Wings did it with 5v5 overtimes and tied 7 games. Meanwhile, Tampa won 6 of theirs in a shootout and 7 more during 3v3 crackhead hockey. That's at least 6, and potentially 13 wins the Lightning would not have had during the 95-96 rules Detroit set the record under.
Not that I really care about that record, but it's an example of how the points and wins are just jacked up now. Nothing historically has any relevance, standings-wise. They're incomparable. Why? Because Atlanta Thrashers fans thought ties were stupid.
April 25th, 2019 at 12:28 PM ^
Really? It’s not even enough to win anymore, you need to beat team X by a certain number of points or it could hurt your ranking. Ties accomplish nothing for the fans, the teams, or the sport, and should be completely eliminated.
that being said, I’m all for creating a system with a fair but guaranteed quick resolution.
I agree. If it ends in a tie, it's a tie.
If you feel you should have won, I guess you should have either A) scored more points during the preceding 60 minutes or B) stopped the other team from scoring as much in the preceding 60 minutes.
Incredibly biased to the team that wins the toss? The winner of the OT coin toss wins 54.9% of the time in college football.
A tie game at least implies the teams are relatively evenly matched. Assuming that, an edge of roughly 55-45 is huge and it's based on the toss of a coin.
Let me put it this way, any gambler who could win 54.9% of the time would be a billionaire.
Bullshit.
They'd be a billionaire after gambling thousands of times.
How many times does a team play OT?
If a gambler gambled one time...he or she is not a billionaire without gambling a HUGE amount of money.
Your analogy only works if college football teams played OT as much as a gambler would gamble to get to that billion. They don't.
I prefer to start at the 35 and keep OT as is...but if you want to end it, just call it a tie after 4 OTs. Sure you'll have some teams kick a pressure packed FG to tie, but you almost certainly eliminate a team sitting on the ball in a tie game (because they're already in FG range for the win).
I suppose if you get knocked out of FG range or if you're Kicker blows or if you're playing in a monsoon and don't want to risk a block going back for a touchdown you may take a knee on 4th and end it. But THAT feels like billion dollar odds.
I THINK that roughly 1% of CFP games go to OT
April 25th, 2019 at 12:31 PM ^
I hope you aren’t a CPA or “financial advisor”.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:20 PM ^
I like this OT. The biggest problem with college OT is the kicking game - playing defense first is an advantage because you know whether or not you need to go for it on 4th down, or a 2P conversion. The goal of OT is to eliminate ties. At a certain point, the game just needs to end. IMO, the fairest thing is to eliminate XPs and FGs from the start, and then after however many OTs is decided necessary - say, 2 - start running these one play drives. Start at the 2. If both teams score, the next OT inning is from the 5, and then the 10. If neither team scores, the one play drive doesn't move back. Defensive TDs add some variance but are so rare and so truly exciting that who cares, let them stand and end the game.
The comparison to soccer is a bit silly, because the goaltender is at a tremendous disadvantage in soccer, so it's more a question of "who misses." I think it's more like a hockey shootout - sure, it's sorta gimmicky, but at some point the games need to end. And this version is fair.
I also wouldn't hate it if they just brought back ties.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:31 PM ^
Overtime should have simultaneous possessions on each side of the field. Start at the 25 yard line. On one side of the field, Team A is on offense. On the other side of the field, Team A is on defense. If you have Jabrill Peppers-ish player that you want to use for both, you will have to sub him on and off the field to get him to go from side to side. It would be difficult and probably wouldn't ever be worth it.
Once the clock starts, the first team that has the fastest maximum success wins. What I mean is this:
- The first team that crosses the goal line wins. (No extra point needed.) "First" is determined by real time, not the number of downs.
- If you turn it over either on downs or with an actual turnover before the other team loses possession, you lose. The other team no longer has to run plays. If somehow you get sacked behind the 50 yard line or recover a fumble behind the 50, that's a turnover.
- If you kick a FG instead of score a TD, you win if the other team eventually fails to score a TD. If the other team manages to get a TD after you score, you lose.
If you don't like the idea of having both ends of the field used at the same time, you could modify this to simply time each possession with a stop watch and see who scores or turns it over the fastest. But that gives the second team on offense the decisive advantage (similar to how it is now).
I dont get the notion of why who scores first in real time ought to matter. Seems like it opens up lots of opportunity for gamesmanship. Send a goon out to purposefully commit targeting, introducing a review delay to eat up real time and win!
Defender grabs the ball when the ref spots it and chucks it into the stands. Delay of game penalty issued. Rinse and repeat until your offense scores on the other side of the field. Yeah, the real-time idea is not thought through.
Alright, the real time aspect isn't going to work. It will have to be done with game time, which makes the simultaneous part moot and difficult to manage.
If you are really committed to the simultaneous thing, you could do it in a play-by-play basis. Spot the ball for both teams at the same time with a single play clock after every play. It would work, and it would be relatively fair. It could even create some amazing moments where one team has scored on the play and the ball is just being snapped by the other team, creating a do-or-die moment that wasn't anticipated until that very second. I could see it being cool, but I think it has some headaches and the viewing experience for fans would almost certainly be worse because you're going to miss things in one "game" while watching the other.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:36 PM ^
Kickoffs can be some of most exciting parts of the game. Anyone who watched the NW game a few years ago where the opening kick was returned for a TD (and also sufficient to win the game) will not say that was a boring moment. Anyone who dislikes kickoffs is a communist and should go back to watching soccer - now get off my lawn!
Anybody who thinks kickoffs are boring is clearly not watching BENCH Mason enough.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:38 PM ^
Kick offs are not boring unless its auto touch backs like in the NFL.
To anyone who watches a game in person this year watch Ben Mason every kick off. He is a wrecking ball and destroys people. It's beautiful.
Huge kick returns are also an exciting part of the game.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:47 PM ^
NO WAY IN HADES would I put even more trust the outcome of an overtime game to the refs and the chain squad.
#barrettwasshort #neverforget
The play before the spot was arguably more important than that one. The RB (whoever, he didn't play for M) was dead in the backfield and escaped. If Michigan's D makes that play, the spot play never happens.
I think people complain too much about blown calls in general. Be just a little bit better and then you aren't relying on the ref's 50-50 judgement call. They are human too, they make mistakes.
April 24th, 2019 at 12:47 PM ^
Bring back the tie. It's old school and FFS the world could use a little of that.
Boy, I'm getting mighty sick of this.
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