NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

If you’re planning on playing college football this fall, or even if you’re a casual fan of the college game, you need to be aware of a few rule changes that are being implemented:

1. Horse-collar tackles will result in a penalty. These type of tackles were previously allowed in college football, but now, much like the NFL, they’re a no-no.
2. A chop block is more consistent. Rogers Redding, NCAA football secretary-rules editor and coordinator of football officials for the Southeastern Conference, saidto the AP that “the chop block will now be defined as any high-low combination block by any two players against an opponent other than the runner, anywhere on the field, anytime in the game and with or without a delay between the hits.”
3. Gone is the 25-second play clock, and in comes the 40-second play clock. Previously, the play clock started on the referee’s signal. Now, as soon as the ball is ruled dead, the 40-second clock begins counting down.
4. After a running back or a receiver goes out-of-bounds, the game clock starts when the referee signals for it to begin. The old procedure for starting the game clock was on the subsequent snap, and this will still be the case during the final two minutes of each half.

 My take on the rules:

1. Glad to see no more horse-collars going unpenalized. If you’ve never been horse-collared, ask someone, preferably bigger than you, to grab you by the back of your shirt and slam you down to the ground. OK, don’t really do that. Trust me, though, it really hurts and can cause serious damage to your back. With the penalty now being enforced, we’ll hopefully see a lot less injuries as a result of these tackles.
2.  Another fantastic rule designed to eliminate injuries. Chop-blocking has always been kind of subjective for the officials, and this puts it in plain English. Now if we could only have a consistent ruling on holding!
3. The new 40-second clock is pure genius! My qualm with football is that it tends to move kind of slowly in between plays, waiting for the players to get off of each other, get the ball in the right place, etc. This rule will definitely speed up that game, but I think it would be better if this rule was implemented in the professional ranks. I’ve never understood why their play clock is so much longer than college … shouldn’t it be like the shot clock in basketball and be less time?
4. This rule is also designed to stop the unecessary lollygagging that slows down the game. Now obviously, there’s strategy to running out-of-bounds during the final closing minutes of the half, and I’m glad the NCAA keep the old ruling for the last two minutes. But every other time, chances are is that the player is running out-of-bounds because someone knocked him out or he doesn’t want the big linebacker to clean his clock (that was always me).

All in all, kudos to you NCAA. These rule changes are definitely going to improve the game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 4:23 pm and is filed under College Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.