College Football Thread -- The Fun Never Ends

[Drake Tungsten]

He's right, though.

[asleepathewheel]

As much as I hate the 5th downers, I agree completely with Hawkins.

Its the friggin big 12, not your frats flag football or ultimate team.

[gjramsey]

The Arkansas saga continues. Reports from many TV stations in Ark are AD Broyles will retire today, or be canned tomorrow by the Board of Trustees. The board is having a special meeting on Saturday.

Broyles became AD in 1974 and was Arkansas' football coach from 1958-1976.

My only hope is that Nutt and Heath are included in collateral damage from all this....

[Lord Avalon]

Matter of time
Unpopular college clock rules will go away in 2007

There are a whole bunch of smiling faces in coaches offices around the country today. Those widely despised game-clock changes the NCAA instituted last year -- the changes that chopped off an average of 14 plays per game, that Texas Tech coach Mike Leach called "stupid" and Michigan coach Lloyd Carr called "the worst rule in the past 50 years" -- are all but gone.

The NCAA Football Rules Committee, which convened this week in Albuquerque, N.M., announced a proposal Wednesday to revert to 2005 standards: No more starting the clock when a ball is kicked or on a change of possession. No more teams having to burn a timeout in the final minutes before they even run a play. No more intentionally lining up offsides on a kickoff to run the clock out as Wisconsin's Bret Bielema did against Penn State last year.

"The changes we made last year, overall, did not have a positive effect on college football at all levels," said committee chair Michael Clark, the head coach at Division III Bridgewater (Va.) College.

You think?

Last year's clock changes had a most dramatic and visible effect on college football games of any rules since the adoption of overtime in 1996. But while college's overtime format has sometimes drawn criticism, coaches seemed to universally loathe these rules, which unintentionally penalized high-scoring offenses (teams' average scores dropped from 26.9 to 24.4) and made it harder for teams to mount last-minute comebacks. "It's awful," Florida coach Urban Meyer said last October. "It changes the way you call a game; it cheats the fans; it cheats the players; it cheats everyone involved in college football."

Clark's committee, however, has not given up its goal of reducing the length of games (last year's average was 3:07, down from 3:21 in 2005) in what is believed to be a television-driven decision. Wednesday, they announced a new, more reasonable set of changes that, according to their plan (which should be formally adopted March 12), would still shave 11 to 14 minutes off a game's length without affecting the outcome to the extent last year's did.

"We feel with the changes in 2007 we're going to restore plays but at the same time diminish the dead time in games," said Clark. "We're going to work to maintain the game length we achieved in 2006."

Most of the changes seem fairly insignificant -- starting the play clock at :15 coming off a TV timeout (anyone who's sat through enough of them knows teams have more than enough time to get their play ready), reducing teams' timeouts by 30 seconds (again, TV networks usually tack on their own timeouts to these anyway), etc.

There is one proposed change, however, that should have coaches around the country raising an eyebrow -- and devoting a whole lot of practice time this spring to kickoff coverage.

Remember when Ohio State's Ted Ginn Jr. returned the opening kick of the national championship for a touchdown? That rarest of plays could soon become a whole lot more common as the committee has proposed moving kickoffs back from the 35- to the 30-yard line. The goal: Less touchbacks, resulting in more returns and, in turn, more elapsed time on kicks.

"We're trying to introduce a very exciting play back into football, particularly at the Division I level," said Clark. "We also think it will add more scoring back into the game."

Wednesday's news was music to the ears of Indiana coach Terry Hoeppner, whose team happens to include the nation's top kick returner, rising junior Marcus Thigpen. (Thigpen was the only player in the country last season to return three kickoffs for touchdowns). "Now they just need to add a rule that the kicker can't try to kick a moon ball or squib it," Hoeppner joked Wednesday afternoon. "Because by the end of the season [last year], no one would kick to him."

You don't have to be a coach to see the obvious impact this rule could have next season. Unless every kicker in the country manages to add 5 yards to his distance by the start of September, there are going to be a whole lot more returnable kicks next season, which means a whole lot more drives starting at the 35 of 40 yard line instead of the 20.

"It will put the onus on the kicking team to really be prepared," said Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, a member of the rules committee. "And it's going to put a lot of pressure on the defense."

Said Hoeppner: "You're going to see a whole lot more starters on kick coverage."

Several programs had already been moving in that direction prior to this latest change. Virginia Tech and Texas, among others, have long been noted for their emphasis on special teams. Hoeppner, along with Ohio State's Jim Tressel, are among the rare coaches who hold a scrimmage in the spring devoted entirely to kicking plays.

There are plenty of others, however, that either don't place as much emphasis on that area or, for whatever reason, struggle to execute. Arkansas' three straight losses to end last season (vs. LSU, Florida and Wisconsin) all involved special-teams breakdowns. Bowl teams Michigan, Georgia Tech, Southern Miss, Florida State and Iowa all ranked 75th or lower nationally in both kick-return yardage and kick-return yardage allowed.

Under the new rules, it stands to reason that teams that either possess an elite return man or happen to be particularly adept at that aspect of the game may be able to better use it to their advantage.

"It's kind of the hidden yardage in a game," said Hoeppner. "Special teams is an area we emphasize. For a program where we are right now, maybe we can make that next step by being exceptional in an area that's somewhat neglected."

Wednesday's proposed changes resulted in large part from surveys about last year's rules filled out by the nation's coaches -- not that we couldn't have guessed how they felt from some of their public comments last season. "All coaches at all levels of football were against those rules," said Bellotti, who replaced Auburn's Tommy Tuberville this year as the I-A coaches' representative on the committee. "These changes have restored the opportunity for football players to play football. I'm very satisfied as a coach."

Between now and the formal vote by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel, coaches and other parties will be afforded an "open comment period" to voice their opinions. This begs an obvious question: If last year's rules changes were so widely unpopular, how did they get adopted in the first place? Many coaches indicated last season they felt blindsided by the changes. "They didn't ask the coaches to vote on it," South Carolina's Steve Spurrier said at the time. "They just said, 'Here is the new rule.' "

Clark said the committee did a poor job last year making coaches aware of the open-comment period. This year there should be no such problem -- not to mention there appears to be little about these changes that would merit opposition.

But coaches are also notorious for remaining largely mum about an issue until it actually affects them. Prediction: The first time a prominent coach loses a game next season due to an opponent's kick return, he'll start railing about the unfairness of the new kickoff line.

Coaches, consider yourself warned this time. Might want to spend some extra time on kick-coverage this spring.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/stewart_mandel/02/14/new.rules/index.html

WOO HOO!

[reismark]

Rutgers extends Schiano, again

Four more years, and another half-million per season on top of the million he already makes, starting now.

Hunker down, Imran. He ain't going anywhere, and you'd do good to start appreciating what he's brought you the past two years. The Scarlet Knights' success is no accident.

[Guynemer]

Kickoffs from the 30

Removing the new clock rules

Still no playoff

[Drake Tungsten]

Kickoffs from the 30

Removing the new clock rules

Still no playoff

[Guynemer]

Come on, Drake. I mean MY playoff. Not anything those idiot comissioners would come up with.

[Drake Tungsten]

Guy's playoff

[mrmitchell]

So long, Frank.

The best thing he has done is made athletics independent. The Arkansas department is one of few in the country that is self sustaining, and nonrevenue sports are among the top ranks.

The (better) good news is we have no shortage of time to choose a successor.

[mrmitchell]

Stealing this thread for basketball.

Stan Heath should not be fired. Not just saying that because the Razorbacks trounced South Carolina tonight, but a reason that is difficult to say:

Houston Nutt could not recruit and dug a hole where Arkansas lost its best home players to out of state colleges and the University tries to scrape the bottom of the Texas barrel for recruits. This "diamond in the rough" strategy has not worked, and recruiting under Nutt has become like an annoyance to the program, an obligation, one that they don't want to fulfill. As a result, Arkansas football had two losing seasons in a row. Instead of canning him then, Frank Broyles decided to give Nutt the infamous "two-year pass."

Stan Heath's coaching ability is debatable. My jury is still out on whether he is out of his league or not; I like how he talks plainly and flatly but maybe that is just because it's a joyous respite from Nutt's "they played with heart"s. Either way, Heath is clearly a decent recruiter. Arkansas has some honest-to-goodness talent that Heath brought here. More importantly, our basketball team is young and getting better. I think that our window on the NCAA tournament is still very possible if we don't put any of our own bumps in the road.

They have proven that they can win against good teams, the biggest problem has been inconsistency. That can be grown out of. Next year there can be no doubt about our opportunity, given the performance of the young team this year.

Now, to the point: if Houston Nutt got a two-year pass, Stan Heath deserves a one year pass even if Arkansas does not make the tournament. He has not adequately proven his dismalness like Nutt has, and he still has the window to prove his quality as an SEC coach.

[DanS]

No let's not steal this thread for basketball.

[Drake Tungsten]

Agreed. It's not our fault that the NCAA tournament makes the college basketball regular season so pointless and boring that you can't even maintain a single thread on the subject until March Madness starts...

[DanS]

A 48-page fan-prepared dossier on Houston Nutt and the other nuts at Arkansas based on FOIA'd phone records...

http://www.shannews.com/

Executive Summary

The following document provides detailed analysis of source documents obtained from the University of Arkansas under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) including the cell phone records of Houston and Danny Nutt. These records were requested and subsequently analyzed by Razorback football fans concerned about incidents that have taken place in the program during the past year. The topics covered include:

*Communications between Teresa Prewett and Houston and Danny Nutt – cell phone records show there were frequent phone calls and text messages immediately before and after disturbing emails that were sent to Mitch Mustain and Wally Hall in December, despite Nutt’s statements that he had no knowledge of the emails until January.

* The David Lee hiring – records show communications between Lee and Nutt that contradict Nutt’s public statements regarding the timeline in Lee’s hiring.

* Houston Nutt’s connection to other head coaching vacancies – the records obtained contradict Nutt’s previous public statements regarding his lack of interest in other head coaching jobs.

* Houston Nutt’s connection to Donna Bragg – the records show voluminous phone calls and text messages between Nutt and Bragg, a Northwest Arkansas news anchor, during November and December, including a text message 19 minutes before kickoff in the Capital One Bowl.

* Use of text-messaging in recruiting – text-messaging has become a popular recruiting tool due the lack of restrictions by the NCAA on this type of communication. Despite the volume of text message sent to/from Houston and Danny Nutt, Teresa Prewett, and Donna Bragg, there were no messages to two of the state’s top recruits: Kodi Burns and Lee Ziemba.

* Emails and threatened legal action by Houston Nutt – the Razorback fan who requested the records under the FOIA subsequently emailed the UA Board of Trustees, Chancellor White, and Dr. Sugg regarding what he found in the requested records. He subsequently received a letter from Houston Nutt’s personal attorney threatening legal action (copy of letter included).

[mrmitchell]

I was going to post this but I figured it would hit national news as fast as I could post it anyway. I can only describe myself as "shocked" that it hasn't. The whole charade is going to come down in days, you guys. Count on it.

PS. Dunno if I did it on this forum, but I apologize for defending Houston Nutt at the start of the football season. The facts were not fully out.

EDIT: I mean, house will be cleaned. I would not be surprised if fallout hit everything short of track.