Buckeye Blogger Network
Yessiree-bob, the start of another week. With coffee in hand, let’s get right to it.
Football
A bit of a slow week, but not entirely dormant. For instance, Charles has an article on rules changes that he’d like to see implemented. They concern ability to return onside kicks, number of coach’s challenges and ball placement for overtime. You should read his article, but really need to for my comments to make sense. Go ahead, I’ll wait….
I did a casual study (I was wearing jeans at the time) of Division 1-A overtime games in 2012, research source being ESPN game recaps. There were 33 games that went into overtime. The game summary did not specify who actually won the overtime coin toss, so I assumed that in all instances, the coin toss winner chose to play defense in overtime. However, the following citation from a paper by Brams & Sanderson makes me think that’s a pretty solid assumption:
Between 1996, when the present college overtime rule was adopted, until 2007, there were 328 overtime games. In only four games did the winner of the coin toss choose to play offense (Rosen and Wilson, 2007). The fact that 99% of the teams that win the coin toss elect to defend first is prima facie evidence that there is an advantage to doing so.
Back to the 2012 overtime games. Of the 33 games, 22 (67%) were won by the team that won the coin toss and elected to play defense. There were 13 losses incurred by the ‘first offense’ teams due to some sort of offensive malfunction; 7 by missed field goals, 4 by interceptions and 2 on loss of downs. I just quickly eyeballed these drive results, so your mileage may vary; however, it still represents the gist of the offensive failings. Since these teams also ran plays from scrimmage to get as close as possible before attempting the FG, having an initial spot at the 25 yard line is still not a bad idea. Read More
Last week I took a look at the proposed rule changes for the 2013 college football season. As those of you who read the article can probably recall, I wasn’t a fan of many of the major changes that were proposed. That doesn’t mean that I think the rules of college football are perfect; while I do think the rules of the game are good as they stand, there are some changes that could be made to make the game even better. Today I propose a few of my own rule changes and talk about how they would improve the game.
Advancing Onside Kicks
The first rule I would like to see changed concerns what occurs when the kicking team recovers an onside kick. As the rule currently stands, the kicking team may not advance any kickoff that they recover, if the ball has gone the minimum ten yards the kicking team will take possession at the point where they recovered the ball while the receiving team may obviously advance any kickoff which they recover. The current rule creates an imbalance between the two teams in the case of kickoffs, or any free kick. The rules of a free kick consider any ball that goes at least 10 yards to up for grabs, able to be recovered by either team, yet what a team may do with the ball after recovery depends on whether they were the kicking or receiving team. By allowing the kicking team to advance the ball this would even out this rule disparity.
I’m not sure what it means either..
Well, here we are, yet another Monday morning. I’ll assume everyone has their coffee in hand, so let’s get right to it.
Personally, I’m ambivalent on bumper stickers, unless your rust bucket needs them to keep its fenders and bumpers in place. Well, you know at some point this had to happen, and in SEC country, no less.
A few days ago, Charles had an interesting article< on recommended football rules changes contemplated by the NCAA. Not that I think the recommendations are particularly interesting, but Charles’ interpretation of their impact certainly is. If you haven’t read the article, you should.
Women’s Basketball
In last week’s Musing’s, I thought that the team came off a couple games where I thought they showed substantial improvement. After the offensively inept Valentine’s Day loss (39-58) at Nebraska, I clearly was overly optimistic, or don’t know what I’m talking about.
Tayler Hill’s 20 points (7/22 FG, 32%) was probably the offensive highlight, such as it was. Her teammates combined shooting (9/41, 22%) didn’t take the pressure off her. The other eye-popping statistic was the team’s assist/turnover ratio of 3/13; you don’t need to go much beyond that to get the gist of offensive futility that night.
Hopefully, a week’s worth of shoot arounds before the Minnesota game will cure their ills.
