Fear is the only thing driving a proposed NCAA football rule change

By: Nate Scott | February 14, 2014 7:39 am Follow @aNateScott

Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

Today’s Big Winner: People who fear change in college football

It almost reads like a satire headline when you actually write it out, but this is true: The NCAA Football Rules Committee discussed a possible rule change that would make it so that offenses had to wait 10 seconds each play before they snapped the ball. If they didn’t wait 10 seconds, they would be penalized five yards.

High-tempo offenses? Gone. No more. Not when a penalty awaits anyone who dares speed up the gentlemanly pace of a football game.

The logic behind the rule change is that it’s for player safety.

From George Schroeder’s USA TODAY Sports article:

The reasoning behind the proposed change, according to Louisiana-Monroe coach Todd Berry, a member of the committee, is safety. The more plays in a game, the greater the risk of injury. Or so goes the theory, which Berry calls “common sense”.

Eh, I mean, yeah? If there are less plays in a football game, there are less opportunities for people to get injured. Of course, by that logic, the best way to prevent any injuries is for no plays to happen.

Auburn had one of the fastest offenses this year and they and their opponents averaged roughly 143 plays per game total. Alabama, with their more methodical offense, averaged about 124 total plays in their games. Is there any data that suggests 19 extra total plays a game significantly increases injury risk?

It’s a bizarre logic, especially when there’s no data showing that injuries increase in those extra plays but a heck of a lot of data that shows that fast-pace football is a significant advantage to some teams.

It also exposes a hypocrisy in some of these defense-first, “old school” college football coaches, who are shouting about player safety when it comes to the amount of time offenses have to hike the ball and then in the next interview will decry that the game is changing and defenders aren’t allowed to hit like they used to.

Again, there’s just no data out there, at least not that any of these coaches have seen, that suggests that extra plays in a game significantly increases injury risk. But there is a lot of data that suggest defenders hitting people in the head does pose a significant injury risk.

Here’s the thing, though. This proposed rule change has little to do with player safety. It has a lot more to do with the fact that defense-first teams are tired of the Auburns and the Oregons of the world speeding up the play and tiring out their defenses. With a new rule demanding a 10-second delay for offenses to snap the ball, a coach like Nick Saban can get four new pass rushers onto the field for every down, thus negating a major advantage for the offense.

Again, from Schroeder:

“If somebody presents proof that it’s a huge safety concern, that’s something different,” [Ole Miss coach Hugh] Freeze said. “But if it’s just so we can rotate four fresh defensive linemen in against your offensive line that’s not being rotated, I’m not a fan of that.”

And there it is. Show us the data that suggests 20 or so extra plays a game significantly increases injury risk, and maybe we’ll listen. For now, though, this sounds like a rule-change proposed in the name of safety that cares little about safety and more about protecting coaches who liked football the way it used to be played.

And besides, if more plays is a greater risk of injury, wouldn’t it make more sense just to shorten the game?

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Today’s other big winners….

Chrissy Teigan, Nina Agdal and Lily Aldridge — The three models will appear on the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue.

Henrik Harlaut — The dreadlocked Swedish skier took his moment on TV to explain to the world that “Wu Tang is for the children.”