Please Stop F*cking With My Game

**Note: BW Roundtable Is Below**

Seriously. Every single one of these ideas is utter dogshit*. Among the stupidity (HT: WoO):

-The 40/25-second play clock, which was approved last year, will go into effect. After every play is whistled dead, the 40-second clock will start. When there is a stoppage of play, a 25-second play clock will be used. Previously, only a 25-second play clock was used and it did not start until the ball was marked ready for play.
-A coach gets an extra replay challenge if his first one is upheld. But he will be granted only the one extra challenge.
-The incidental five-yard facemask penalty has been eliminated. It's now strictly a 15-yard penalty. This eliminates a judgment call on the part of the officials and it appears that only when there is a pulling, twisting or turning of the head will a penalty be called.
-Horse collar tackles are now illegal and classified as a personal foul and 15-yard penalty.
-The receiving team will have the option of taking the ball on its 40-yard line on kickoffs that go out of bounds. Previously it was the 35.
-Sideline or bench warnings to coaches and players who crowd the field have been eliminated. It's now strictly a penalty.

I was going to get into a whole long drawn out rant but I'm going to save everyone the trouble of getting through something like that (or just ignoring it). Instead I'm just going to put up some quotes from the Rules Committee that I think tell the story.

"I hope the third time we got it right," said committee chair Michael Clark

Ya Mike, me too. Because I'm not still pissed off about this, or anything**.

He added:

"We wanted to find something the TV people are looking for without taking away plays from the game. The hope is we got it right."

Is anyone else totally blown away that the Rules Committee, the chair of the Rules Committee, is openly acknowledging that they are CHANGING THE RULES OF FOOTBALL BECAUSE IT'S WHAT "THE TV PEOPLE" WANT!?! There are two things that happen during a football broadcast: football and commercials. Unless you want to shorten the play clock to 20 seconds (which is not one of the proposed rule changes), the only way you are going to shorted the games without taking away plays is to cut commercials. But that's not one of the proposed rule changes either.

This is a far cry from the statement two years ago when the original clock rule changes were made:

"We weren't looking to take plays away from the game. We were looking to ... get away from some of these 3-hour, 45-minute games in hot weather or cold weather," said Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville, who is on the rules committee.

This implies that the rules are about the player and the fans. About their comfort. About how sitting outside for an extra 15 minutes is somehow bad for us...even though most of us drove hours and hours to get to our seats. Anyway, the point is this isn't an issue anymore. Or, more likely, this was never an issue but they gave up trying to convince us it was.

Delany, in the same story, continues to prove to me how big of a fucking idiot he is:

"In a perfect world, the games should be in the three-hour range, not the 3:30 range. If you look at the listening and viewing habits of the next generation, 3½ minutes is long; forget about 3½ hours," Delany said.

Let's get something straight: in a perfect world you would be unemployed and/or exiled to a shitty, uninhabited island. This doesn't even make any sense. You aren't running MTV, jerkoff, you are in charge of a football conference.

Regarding the facemask penalty:

"That's not a dangerous play when a player grabs and releases (the face mask) with no impact on the runner and no impact on the safety of the player. That's a non-entity," Redding [SEC coordinator of officials] said. "We feel like the real issue is grasping, pulling, turning and twisting. That is retained, but we felt the incidental contact (penalty) was nothing and decided to get rid of it."

So someone's really going to have to be fucked up for you to call this? Is that what you are saying? I'm no scientist, but I've watched a lot of football and I will tell you that every single time a player "grabs and releases the face mask" it has an impact on the run, so what you are saying doesn't make any sense. Instead of discouraging any hands to the face action, like the original rules do, you are opening up a huge can of worms where coaches and officials will be arguing about weather it has an impact on the runner, which is subjective as hell. Also, you are putting refs in a terrible situation where they have to decide, every time, weather it is a 15 yard personal foul or not a penalty at all. Stupid.


*Actually, there is one I don't mind, but because it will have not impact on the game I'm going to stick with the more dramatic line above. If a coach challenges a call, and is successful, he gets another challenge. The problem with this rule is that no one ever challenges anything. Instead, they just call a timeout, hope the replay booth decides to "take a look", and then they get their timeout back no matter what the outcome. That's why giving coaches another challenge, when they never used the first one anyway, is stupid.

**While digging, it turns out Joe actually called this whole thing the summer before:
Penn State coach Joe Paterno brought out another perhaps unintended effect of the new rule: "When you kick the ball, [the clock] starts. Kick it out of bounds with 8-10 seconds to go, the game's over," Paterno said to USA Today. "We've got to expose our kids to it in preseason practice."