I’ve written this article before, and it looks like I’ll not have to write it again until the summer of 2011. But NCAA, please hear me when I plead with you to stop tinkering with the rules.

Once again I point to Major League baseball. They revere their game, and in return, the rules are sacred. You don’t see new bat sizes surfacing every year, or extending or retracting innings, or increasing or decreasing the number of outs, or the distance from the pitcher’s mound to home…or…or…    You get the idea.

But every year in college football the NCAA feels like it has to give our game new twists, and like the late, great Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon, someone needs to step in and say enough. However, this year’s crop isn’t so bad, and even includes a few that I like. But for the sake of the game, I’d still like to see the knife left in the draw when they feel like it’s time to whittle again.

Nevertheless, here are this year’s tweaks:

1. Teams can now wear opposite dark colored jerseys in games, so long as the home team and its conference agrees to it.This is just weird. I know, I know…the novelty of it sounds neat. But when was the last time you saw this done? Exactly. Getting used to this novelty will be as annoying as tuning in to watch an NFL game, only to find it’s an “NFL throwback uniform game!” Is that Jess Lanier and Miles College playing? I thought this was the Bears and Redskins. Just give me what I’m used to, please.

2. Post-game, the NCAA will review plays where helmet-to-helmet contact was deemed dangerous.After review, the NCAA can impose further penalty against the player if it was deemed dangerous.  Somewhere Georgia’s Reggie Brown is jumping up and down, if he still has voluntary bodily function after Junior Rosegreen’s dirty hit at Cheapshot U.

3. Punters will lose special protection if they go outside the tackle box. Now this is a good rule, especially for those rugby style punters who leave doubt whether they are kicking the ball or pulling it down to run. That means outside the tackles, even if the ball is kicked cleanly, you can cleanly clean their clock.

4. If I read this one right, an illegal offensive formation now means having more than four players in the backfield, not seven men on the line of scrimmage. So if you accidentally have ten men on the field, you can run the play without penalty, as long as four guys are back (QB, 2 RBS and a receiver playing off the line…or 3 RBS…you get the idea). This makes sense if you want to play 10 on 11. Having one player too many is an advantage. Having one player too few just means you’re stupid and you’re about to pay with an unblocked defender going Derrick Thomas on your butt.

5. An end of quarter penalty that results in a loss of down (intentional grounding, etc.) won’t result in an extra play with :00 on the clock. Fair enough. No more Hail Marry’s at halftime because the penalized team has nothing to lose.

And the best rule change…

6. The NCAA will now only change rules every two years.That’s change we can believe in, to quote the Prez.

Some they missed were allowing video review of EVERY play and penalty, including facemasks and pass interference, and getting rid of the ridiculous horse collar penalty. Oh, and bringing back the 5-yd. incidental facemask call too. Tell me how a world class athlete can keep his hand from grazing a facemask of another world class athlete at the speed the game takes place on the SEC level 100% of the time, and I’ll tell you how we can end this recession by noon tomorrow. Both are ludicrous.

Oh well, there are your rule changes for ’09. What do you think?

12 thoughts on “NCAA Instills More Rule Changes….sigh”

  1. I LOVE going back to the old style of everyone wearing colorful jerseys–at least if you can get teams to agree to it. Much of the history of the Third Saturday in October was written with Tennessee wearing orange and Alabama in crimson.

  2. I like the NCAA doing away with the rule of on 7 men on the line of scrimmage. That was always a dumb rule.

  3. The NCAA couldnt care less about what you want, ITK. And, you’re wrong about baseball. Besides the fact it’s pretty boring anyway, they HAVE implemented rule changes in mlb. Did ya hear about the instant replay rule? How about adding a wild-card playoff team? Those are two fundamental changes that have happened just in the last several years. Since around 1877, there have been countless rules changes in baseball.
    Just because you dont agree with a rule change, dont go on record making it sound like you represent the masses. You sure don’t represent me.
    Do you randomly think crap up and type it just to read yourself talk, moron?
    If you have issues about rules changes, why dont you write an article asking people what THEY’D like to see changed or not changed? You can then read what everyone else has chimed in about and compare notes. THEN, you could do a follow-up blog about the results. But, I see that’s not possible. Narcissists don’t take other people’s opinions into consideration, do they? They only worry about their own… that’s right. Nevermind.

  4. Wow, BIDP. I guess baseball altering two rules “the last several years” means the same thing as the NCAA changing rules EVERY year. Oh, wait…no it doesn’t. You’re stupid.

    That was the point of my article, which yes, does reflect my opinion. I don’t recall going on record about anything. I simply gave my take both for information and entertainment purposes. I’m sorry you felt so misrepresented.

    But you did make a great point about asking people what they thought, which is why the last thing I wrote was:

    “Oh well, there are your rule changes for ‘09. What do you think?”

    Too bad somebody else beat you to the whole “blog” idea. You were really on the trail there, Copernicus.

  5. It would be pretty weird to see the Alabama -Tenn game with both teams wearing home uniforms. I guess I would have to see it in person or on TV to know if I like it…I have seen paintings and old photos of the old days.

    UT-Chattanooga wears yellow gold unis and on EA sports NCAA 2001 they play Alabama with Bama in Crimson and Chatt in their gold-yellow, which is almost orange…

    Auburn and Alabama used to play each other with Aubies in Blue and Bama in red… but I like the contrast of one or the other wearing white better. And I like the rotation, even when the game was still in Bham.

    UCLA and USC is pretty cool with USC in powder blue and old gold and USC in maroon and yellow gold… seems like they had a special deal to keep that dynamic grandfathered in for awhile after the original rulle change.

    Just don’t go back to the rule that says all home teams must wear dark jerseys. LSU in purple is just not right

  6. NCAA 2010 should have been the reference… which by the way the Erin Andrews debut was completely lame

  7. I agree Hunter. And who knows, I’m like you. I may see it and love it. Maybe I’m a purist; tinkering with unis drives me nuts, personally.

    But a concern would be no player is really use to that; from junior high ball, one team wears white, the other their colors. It’d be interesting to see if it had an effect on the game.

  8. i can’t see the color of alabama’s jerseys affecting a nick saban coached team.

    the color of saban’s eyes? yes.

    jerseys? no.

  9. Alabama wore white helmets until the early 60s. Then they wore crimson helmets some games and white in other games until the early 70s when they went to crimson hats for all games…Perkins brought back white helmets for some games in 83 and 84.

    But Bryant thought there was an advantage to wearing helmets that contrasted strongly with the other team’s … thought it helped QBs pick out receivers better. There were even some games where Most of alabama’s team wore crimson helmets while recievers only wore white.

    I read once where Kenny Stabler didn’t like changing helmets. He had his helmet repainted when the color swithces happened. He took his college helmet with him to the oakland Raiders and had it painted silver.

    Jersey color could make things confusing in a crowd if the contrast wasn’t great enough. What if Alabam played Arkansas or Miss State with both teams wearing dark…impossible

  10. Thats pretty neat Hunter. Could you imagine a player taking thier college helmet to the pros with a paint job in this day ? Thats old school man.

  11. I have always wanted to know why the home team wears the light colored unifoms in basketball? Any one know?

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