Example number one of changing my mind: Spread Offenses in college football.
It's been nearly ten years since the disaster game my Ohio State Buckeyes played in Ryan Field against Northwestern on a Saturday night in October of 2004. My sister had recently moved to Chicago and we got tickets to see the only football team worth watching in Ohio. We bundled up and excitedly took the train to Evanston "O-H"ing and "I-O"ing the entire way up the purple line. Several hours later we travelled back home in stunned silence after our #7 Buckeyes lost to the Wildcats for the first time in 33 years.
What drove most of Buckeye Nation insane that night was the offense. On countless occasions we were stopped on 3rd or 4th and short. Had we lined up in our traditional Woody Hayes offense, three yards and a cloud of dust style football, the pill may have gone down easier. Maybe. Instead, shock and dismay filled the faces of the visiting fans that filled over 75% of the stadium.
It seemed sacrilegious to have 38 pass attempts and less than 100 total rushing yards. Criminal even. "If you can't line up with your bigs and slam the ball up the middle for one yard, you don't deserve to win." I probably heard that line fifty times that night from the Buckeye faithful. Hell, I must have said it myself at least a dozen times. What nobody in scarlet and grey seemed to understand is why we didn't even try it that way.
I know now what I didn't know then: this was the way of the future. As quarterbacks like Troy Smith, Terrelle Pryor and Braxton Miller have wreaked havoc on Big Ten opponents for the past several years, I have grown to love the system. I guess you love it when it works for you. I hated it that night in Evanston. It doesn't work for you with Justin Zwick at the helm.
Recently, football has changed. Safety, they claim, is the number one concern. "They" being a collection of NCAA and NFL leadership who have a large financial investment in the players, but in most cases not much of a personal one. Rules have been put in place to remove unnecessary contact, to remove dangerous contact. It's all for the best. For the most part, I agree with evolving. Though they have gone overboard at times, I could make the argument for most of the rules they have put in place.
For the past several weeks, the rules committee has been mulling over the prospect of instituting a slow-down rule in college football. This one I can't get behind. You see, with the spread offenses came the hurry up offense. Schools like Oregon, Arizona, Auburn and now my beloved Ohio State have put these systems in place for a reason. They give the offense a tremendous advantage when executed correctly.
Fundamentally, the advantage the offense has always maintained since the beginning of football is that they know where they are going and they know when. The defense's advantage is that they can move before the snap and line-up in any formation with no restrictions. To institute a rule that would force teams to let 10 seconds run off the huddle clock before they snap the ball in my mind cheapens one of the advantages that is supposed to go to the offense.
The argument for the rule is simple and flawed. More plays means more injuries. To this point, nobody has offered any statistical proof of this. As a stat freak, I'd love to see the data. I could make several arguments that it would actually be the opposite. The only another reason I have heard to this point is that football is not meant to be a continuous game. I ask the question, why not? It's origins are based on rugby and soccer. I'd be willing to wager that Walter Camp did not envision a game with nearly a full minute between snaps and five minutes of commercials every time the ball changed possession.
Urban Meyer made the point on Colin Cowherd's radio show that since he has gone to the up-tempo offense, it has changed the culture of the entire program. 340-pound offense lineman are now 290-310. Everyone is eating healthier, his players are leaner, they have better overall health and fitness. How is any of that bad for our college athletes?
If it's true that more plays means more injuries, I'm quite certain we can find other ways to reduce the number of plays. In the NFL the clock doesn't stop on every first down like it does in college. There is one simple way to reduce the number of plays and speed up the three and a half hour games in the process.
I have a hard time believing that injuries are truly what concerns guys like Nick Saban and Bret Bielema. If that's the case, why does Alabama play Southern Miss, Florida Atlantic and Western Carolina in 2014. Bielema's Arkansas team plays games against Northern Illinois, UAB and Nicholls State. All of these schools have athletes that are vastly inferior physically to the Crimson Tide and Razorbacks. Odds are Saban and Bielema will run 70-80 plays offensively against them. I'm sure the health and safety of their opponents won't be paramount to them on those Saturday afternoons.
Odds are that the truth behind the justifications for a rule change are much less sophisticated and much more selfish. I don't think they want to change the style of play that has been working for them. Their rosters are made up of guys that are not built that way. Their schemes are not designed for it. Frankly, it would take a lot of work!
From a competition stand point, below is my problem with the proposed rule.
Situation: Alabama is driving for the potential go-ahead touchdown in the national championship game. The clock is running after they complete a pass that is short of the first down. They have zero timeouts and it's 4th and inches. They run to the line and execute a QB sneak that picks up the first down and temporarily stops the clock. Knowing that the game clock will restart as soon as the ball is set, they immediately line up for what will be the last play of the game.
The huddle clock is 40 seconds in college and starts at the end of the previous play. When the huddle clock starts, there are four seconds left on the clock. The ball is set quickly by the officials and the game clock starts. The huddle clock is still at 35 seconds, so Alabama isn't allowed to snap the ball and the game is over because they haven't let ten seconds run off. What does Nick Saban think about that?
Knowing the new rule, they simply wouldn't be able to rub the QB sneak. Alabama's QB would need to know that in this situation their only option is to go straight to a long pass into the endzone on 4th and inches.
The way the rules are currently structured, Alabama could get to the line, QB sneak to pick up the first down and then spike the ball to stop the clock. This would give them time to get a proper play called and increase their odds of winning the game. What justice would be served if they weren't given that opportunity? Is someone going to get a concussion because of that?
I'll leave you with a video of one of the most hated coaches in the states of West Virginia and Michigan, which means we love him in Ohio. Rich Rodriguez is running a fast paced offense at Arizona and he's clearly taken a few cheap shots at Nick Saban and Alabama.
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