[NU Sports] More on rule changes

[Jeff Beamsley]

Clearly it is going to put more emphasis on special teams.  That wouldn't
have been good for the RW teams, but it might be good for the Fitz teams who
seem to pay more attention to special teams. 

It will take a while for the kickers to catch up to this extra five yards.

It even puts the pooch kick into question because there is a big difference
between starting on the thirty and starting on the forty.

I think you are going to see coaches put more of their first string kids on
special teams to either prevent the big run back, or create the big run
back.

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On
Behalf Of Mike Nolan
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 3:03 PM
To: nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com
Subject: [NU Sports] More on rule changes

Note:  The first paragraph is from another list):

> According to the Denver Post, the NCAA rules committee has proposed 
> undoing a couple of unpopular rules changes. They recommend going back 
> to starting the clock at the snap after a change of possession and 
> upon receipt of the ball on a kickoff. To shorten the length of games 
> they further propose to have a 15 second play clock (rather than 25) 
> after a time out, move kickoffs to the 30 (to reduce the number of 
> touchbacks), and reduce timeouts to 30 seconds (from 65). That last 
> might not be too popular with the networks.

I predict the TV guy will still be able to step on the field and keep the
refs from starting the game, meaning the number of TV commercials will not
be affected.  This will deal more with the timeouts where the network
doesn't go to a break.  

The most significant of these changes will probably be moving the ball to
the 30 on kickoffs.  That will probably help the team that is behind as much
than the clock changes will, and in an example of the law of unintended
consequences that may increase scoring enough to actually make the games
slightly longer!.  

It may also cause teams to move away from trying to kick the ball near the
sideline, because unless they also change where it gets spotted the ball
will be closer to their goal line if it goes out of bounds.  Thus it could
increase the number of long kick returns, which may in turn lead to slightly
higher scores and longer games.

In NU's case, will it mean more pooch kicks on kickoffs or less?
--
Mike Nolan

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