On Nov. 30, Alabama suffered its first loss in more than a calendar year to Auburn, a team that employs a hurry-up offense. This week Nick Saban, who coaches Alabama, met with the NCAA rules committee to lobby for a change designed to slow the hurryin’ horde, which grows in number every year. (Arkansas’ Bret Bielema, another who prefers tortoises to hares, also offered his opinion.)
On Wednesday, the committee passed a proposal — it still must be approved by the rules oversight panel, which convenes March 6 — advocating a howler of an alteration: An offense must wait 10 seconds to allow defenses time to substitute; if the offense snaps the ball before the 40-second play clock hits 29, it will be penalized for delay of game. Really. Truly.
As you'd expect, this has stirred impassioned response from the hurryin' horde. Rich Rodriguez of Arizona tweeted: "When you snap the ball has always been a fundamental edge for the offense. What's next — three downs like Canada?"
From Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State, also via Twitter: "The 10-second rule is like asking basketball to take away the shot clock — Boring! It's like asking a blitzing linebacker to raise his hand."
As much as Saban and Bielema have sought to couch their advocacy in terms of player safety, and as much as the hurryin' coaches are appealing to common sense, this debate is a function of raging self-interest. To wit: TeamRankings.com informs us that Arizona ranked seventh in the nation in plays per game; Alabama was 116th. A defensive man by trade, Saban wants time to make situational changes; the hurry-uppers went to the hurry-up to keep the defense from having that chance.
For the record, Saban's objection to all the hurryin' predates the Iron Bowl loss. The initial gripe was lodged on an October 2012 teleconference after Bama played Ole Miss, which has led the SEC in snaps per game each of the past two seasons. Saban mentioned player safety and said: "I just think there has to be some sense of fairness in terms of asking, 'Is this what we want the game to be?'"
And now we ask: Fair for whom? For the up-tempo innovators, or fair for Saban, who would seem to have every other advantage there is?
Rogers Redding, the NCAA's director of officials who used to be the SEC's director of officials, told Ralph D. Russo of the Associated Press: "Coach Saban asked for the opportunity to meet with the (rules) committee and talk about this. It's not routine, but it's not unique, either."
For the record, Redding told Russo that the argument about player safety wasn’t data-based. “I can’t say there is hard, physical evidence,” Redding said. “It’s more common sense.”
The belief here isn’t that college teams and players play too fast; it’s that they play too long. Both the 2013 Georgia Bulldogs and the 2013 Falcons used hurry-up offenses. Georgia averaged 72.6 snaps per game; the Falcons averaged 64. (The Bulldogs did play two overtime games.) The difference is the clock.
The NFL clock doesn’t stop after every first down. Except at the end of each half, the NFL clock keeps rolling when a ball carrier runs out of bounds. This is done so NFL games can fit three-hour TV windows. The three-hour college game has gone the way of the Wishbone.
When two hurry-up teams — Auburn and Missouri — met for the SEC title, they ran 156 plays, scored 111 points and gained 1,211 yards. The game lasted three hours, 54 minutes. Even with its half-hour halftime, the Seattle-Denver Super Bowl took three hours, 23 minutes. (A normal NFL halftime lasts 12 minutes.)
Those who oversee college football have considered tightening their elongating games, but it’s invariably the offensive-minded coaches who fight any attempt. Those men don’t want running clocks. They want more time to run more plays and score more points and pad their stats and perhaps even win more games.
But it gets ridiculous when two top-five teams play for the championship of the nation’s best conference, and the whole thing takes nearly four hours and leaves you almost numb. If there’s a safety issue, mightn’t it have to do with how long players have to play, as opposed to how quickly they have to ready for the next snap?
Were I king of the world — and I’m not, though Saban might be — I would indeed change the college football rules. I just wouldn’t make this change. I’d adopt the NFL clock and go back to those days where a college game didn’t make you long for the brisk pace of a Yankees-Red Sox Sunday nighter on ESPN.
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