Picked this little gem up on cbssportsline.... I thought it was a humorous article....
Leave it to the geniuses in charge of college football to consistently adopt the most ludicrous rules to advance the game.
First we got the BCS, a system so convoluted and impractical that actual mathematical geniuses differ on the likely results from week to week. Now, for the 2006 season we have changes that are designed to shorten the game itself. Never mind that in my entire life I have never heard a college football fan complain about the length of the games themselves; this was an issue that demanded a gathering of the greatest minds of college football. It was like the Manhattan Project, minus any smart people.
Predictably, rather than adopting a simple and straightforward method like, say, not stopping the clock on first downs, the geniuses behind college football have decreed that the game clock will run on every change of possession and as soon as the ball is struck on kickoffs.
What? Exactly.
First of all, what's the deal with not being able to have guys in charge of the yardsticks move quickly enough? I just don't understand this at all. Rather than remedy the situation by actually putting fit people in those jobs, the entire game is altered so that the unfit can participate. This makes no sense on a fundamental level. It's downright un-American.
Imagine if you told Dell computer that its entire assembly line operation was going to be regulated based on how quickly I could install a hard drive. Do you think Dell would go for this, the weakest link in the supply chain (me) becoming the de facto time keeper? Of course not. Dell would fire me and outsource my job to Mexico. So why can't we do the same with the yardstick guys?
As is, we've allowed the absolute incompetence of the yardstick people to actually be written into the college football rules. "No, no," the college football geniuses have effectively said, "we can't actually employ people who can properly do the job, we've got to change the game to keep the people who can't do the job employed." It's like being in France.
Plus, this job isn't rocket science. The NFL seems to somehow get by without stopping the clock on first downs. I guarantee you there are hundreds of fit men and women on every college campus in America who would welcome the opportunity to stand on the sideline of a game and move the yardsticks rapidly. Hell, I'd be willing to do it without the clock getting stopped. It's not a complicated job. The chain is 10 yards. One guy stops at the ball and the other guy keeps walking until he can't walk any farther. Bingo, the yardsticks are set.
It's not like the yardstick guys have to solve quadratic equations in their heads while attempting to disprove Einstein's theory of relativity in a postgame news conference. They have sticks of a proscribed length and they move them. Being a parking lot attendant on a college campus on game day is infinitely more complicated, yet you don't see the college football rules reflecting this difficulty as well.
So basically, ClayNation doesn't understand college football's infatuation with adopting the impractical, imprecise and unfathomable when the practical, precise and fathomable is an option. If college football geniuses ruled the ruled the world, a quick jaunt from Nashville to Atlanta on the interstate would include stops in Birmingham, Orlando and New York City.
Not convinced? This year, college football allowed teams to play a 12th game while restricting the number of plays occurring on the field. The result? Now 12 college football games will have about the same number of plays as 11 college football games already had. Again, what?
Already we have had teams starting drives late in the game by having to call timeouts. (Witness Florida State and Miami). There's nothing better than a team actually beginning a late drive by racing onto the field and grounding the football. And I'm still not sure this rule is applied evenly.
My question is, what's the rule when the same team calls a timeout before a punt and then receives the ball? Do they have to call another timeout to stop the clock? Or, miraculously, in this situation does the clock run for 10 seconds or so during the kick and then resume the timeout once the possession has been changed? Either way is absurd and infinitely more complicated than it needs to be.
The willingness of college football geniuses to adopt ridiculous rules left me wondering what ideas to streamline the games were rejected as being too absurd or complicated. Thankfully, ClayNation is, at times, all-knowing. That's how I was able to bring you 12 other brilliant, but rejected, ideas by the college football brain trust to shorten the game:
1. Product placements. Have each coach dress in the apparel of a particular advertiser. OK, OK, I know. Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer in a Kentucky Fried Chicken employee uniform would be perfect. I'm interested in other suggestions from you guys. What products would fit other coaches most perfectly? E-mail them to us.
2. Speed talkers. Have that guy from the old Micro Machines commercials announce all penalties and instant replay review decisions.
3. Shorten the field. The college football geniuses were extremely close to announcing this as their panacea until someone pointed out that this would not have any impact at all.
4. Replace all punting with the release of a wild rabbit. Wherever the rabbit goes out of bounds, the opposing team takes possession with the clock running. (Note: The rabbit was excised from this rule but its universal brilliance was hailed and adopted.)
5. Don't show Chili's commercials. I'm not 100 percent sure of this, but I don't believe Chili's has any advertisements that don't air during the course of televised college athletics. Remove these and we're talking serious shortening of the game.
6. Stop televising games. Anyone who has actually been to a televised college football game can tell you that there is an awful lot of time when a guy with a red glove is standing on the field, the teams are completely ready to play, and nothing is happening. This made a ton of sense until the college football geniuses realized where their salaries came from.
7. Stop instant replay review. God decides the outcomes of all games by way of his servant, the referee, and God is never wrong. Hence, referees are never wrong, either. The SEC genius failed to carry this argument although he was supported by the ACC genius.
8. Down rearrangement. Call first down, second down, second down, third down, third down, fourth down, and then claim to all the fans that each series still had four plays, they just went by different names. (Note: College football geniuses never call a spade a spade, for instance, they call BS the BCS instead.) Sadly, it was also noted that this did not offer any likely change in time.
9. Every game begins with sudden death. The first team to score wins. This was rejected as out-of-hand because then the people who only came to watch their sons and daughters march in the band would be upset there was no halftime show.
10. Outlaw the forward pass. After all, the forward pass had its hundred years in the sun. Sure, sometimes teams manage to complete passes, but what about all those incomplete passes when the clock is stopped? Plainly, this is a travesty of gridiron justice.
11. Overtime is too complicated and can grossly extend the average length of a game. The worst possible thing that can happen to college football is to keep the fans engrossed for too long in a very competitive ballgame. So replace overtime with mascot death duels at midfield. If the team is not willing to risk their mascot, then a fight to the death between the two fattest male cheerleaders is a suitable replacement.
12. Replace the out of bounds line with a large brackish moat filled with cobras, alligators, sharks, lions and tigers. Sure, you could still stop the clock, but you would probably die. After all, isn't college all about making the right choices? This was rejected because cobras don't always inject their venom. And everyone knows a cobra bite without venom is not really a deterrent.
Thankfully ClayNation is not alone in this indignation. There is actually an online petition and I hope you'll join me in signing up to let your displeasure be known. Until then keep enjoying the frenzy of your favorite team's two-minute offense beginning with a spiked football or a timeout.
:mj07: :mj07:
Leave it to the geniuses in charge of college football to consistently adopt the most ludicrous rules to advance the game.
First we got the BCS, a system so convoluted and impractical that actual mathematical geniuses differ on the likely results from week to week. Now, for the 2006 season we have changes that are designed to shorten the game itself. Never mind that in my entire life I have never heard a college football fan complain about the length of the games themselves; this was an issue that demanded a gathering of the greatest minds of college football. It was like the Manhattan Project, minus any smart people.
Predictably, rather than adopting a simple and straightforward method like, say, not stopping the clock on first downs, the geniuses behind college football have decreed that the game clock will run on every change of possession and as soon as the ball is struck on kickoffs.
What? Exactly.
First of all, what's the deal with not being able to have guys in charge of the yardsticks move quickly enough? I just don't understand this at all. Rather than remedy the situation by actually putting fit people in those jobs, the entire game is altered so that the unfit can participate. This makes no sense on a fundamental level. It's downright un-American.
Imagine if you told Dell computer that its entire assembly line operation was going to be regulated based on how quickly I could install a hard drive. Do you think Dell would go for this, the weakest link in the supply chain (me) becoming the de facto time keeper? Of course not. Dell would fire me and outsource my job to Mexico. So why can't we do the same with the yardstick guys?
As is, we've allowed the absolute incompetence of the yardstick people to actually be written into the college football rules. "No, no," the college football geniuses have effectively said, "we can't actually employ people who can properly do the job, we've got to change the game to keep the people who can't do the job employed." It's like being in France.
Plus, this job isn't rocket science. The NFL seems to somehow get by without stopping the clock on first downs. I guarantee you there are hundreds of fit men and women on every college campus in America who would welcome the opportunity to stand on the sideline of a game and move the yardsticks rapidly. Hell, I'd be willing to do it without the clock getting stopped. It's not a complicated job. The chain is 10 yards. One guy stops at the ball and the other guy keeps walking until he can't walk any farther. Bingo, the yardsticks are set.
It's not like the yardstick guys have to solve quadratic equations in their heads while attempting to disprove Einstein's theory of relativity in a postgame news conference. They have sticks of a proscribed length and they move them. Being a parking lot attendant on a college campus on game day is infinitely more complicated, yet you don't see the college football rules reflecting this difficulty as well.
So basically, ClayNation doesn't understand college football's infatuation with adopting the impractical, imprecise and unfathomable when the practical, precise and fathomable is an option. If college football geniuses ruled the ruled the world, a quick jaunt from Nashville to Atlanta on the interstate would include stops in Birmingham, Orlando and New York City.
Not convinced? This year, college football allowed teams to play a 12th game while restricting the number of plays occurring on the field. The result? Now 12 college football games will have about the same number of plays as 11 college football games already had. Again, what?
Already we have had teams starting drives late in the game by having to call timeouts. (Witness Florida State and Miami). There's nothing better than a team actually beginning a late drive by racing onto the field and grounding the football. And I'm still not sure this rule is applied evenly.
My question is, what's the rule when the same team calls a timeout before a punt and then receives the ball? Do they have to call another timeout to stop the clock? Or, miraculously, in this situation does the clock run for 10 seconds or so during the kick and then resume the timeout once the possession has been changed? Either way is absurd and infinitely more complicated than it needs to be.
The willingness of college football geniuses to adopt ridiculous rules left me wondering what ideas to streamline the games were rejected as being too absurd or complicated. Thankfully, ClayNation is, at times, all-knowing. That's how I was able to bring you 12 other brilliant, but rejected, ideas by the college football brain trust to shorten the game:
1. Product placements. Have each coach dress in the apparel of a particular advertiser. OK, OK, I know. Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer in a Kentucky Fried Chicken employee uniform would be perfect. I'm interested in other suggestions from you guys. What products would fit other coaches most perfectly? E-mail them to us.
2. Speed talkers. Have that guy from the old Micro Machines commercials announce all penalties and instant replay review decisions.
3. Shorten the field. The college football geniuses were extremely close to announcing this as their panacea until someone pointed out that this would not have any impact at all.
4. Replace all punting with the release of a wild rabbit. Wherever the rabbit goes out of bounds, the opposing team takes possession with the clock running. (Note: The rabbit was excised from this rule but its universal brilliance was hailed and adopted.)
5. Don't show Chili's commercials. I'm not 100 percent sure of this, but I don't believe Chili's has any advertisements that don't air during the course of televised college athletics. Remove these and we're talking serious shortening of the game.
6. Stop televising games. Anyone who has actually been to a televised college football game can tell you that there is an awful lot of time when a guy with a red glove is standing on the field, the teams are completely ready to play, and nothing is happening. This made a ton of sense until the college football geniuses realized where their salaries came from.
7. Stop instant replay review. God decides the outcomes of all games by way of his servant, the referee, and God is never wrong. Hence, referees are never wrong, either. The SEC genius failed to carry this argument although he was supported by the ACC genius.
8. Down rearrangement. Call first down, second down, second down, third down, third down, fourth down, and then claim to all the fans that each series still had four plays, they just went by different names. (Note: College football geniuses never call a spade a spade, for instance, they call BS the BCS instead.) Sadly, it was also noted that this did not offer any likely change in time.
9. Every game begins with sudden death. The first team to score wins. This was rejected as out-of-hand because then the people who only came to watch their sons and daughters march in the band would be upset there was no halftime show.
10. Outlaw the forward pass. After all, the forward pass had its hundred years in the sun. Sure, sometimes teams manage to complete passes, but what about all those incomplete passes when the clock is stopped? Plainly, this is a travesty of gridiron justice.
11. Overtime is too complicated and can grossly extend the average length of a game. The worst possible thing that can happen to college football is to keep the fans engrossed for too long in a very competitive ballgame. So replace overtime with mascot death duels at midfield. If the team is not willing to risk their mascot, then a fight to the death between the two fattest male cheerleaders is a suitable replacement.
12. Replace the out of bounds line with a large brackish moat filled with cobras, alligators, sharks, lions and tigers. Sure, you could still stop the clock, but you would probably die. After all, isn't college all about making the right choices? This was rejected because cobras don't always inject their venom. And everyone knows a cobra bite without venom is not really a deterrent.
Thankfully ClayNation is not alone in this indignation. There is actually an online petition and I hope you'll join me in signing up to let your displeasure be known. Until then keep enjoying the frenzy of your favorite team's two-minute offense beginning with a spiked football or a timeout.
:mj07: :mj07:
