On Nov 6, 11:21*pm, Uncle Dave wrote:

Great game - that LSU defense is something else isn't it? *In truth,
both defenses were excellent and it wasn't because the offenses were
bad, high grade stuff all round except the kickers.

A little secret of pro football is that there aren't really enough
good kickers for all the pro teams (of course, "good" is arbitrary,
but ...) so just imagine how the situation is for the many college
teams. A college player at any other position can look good w/o
being up to pro standards because the opposition isn't up to
standard either, but the kicker's only real opposition are the
goal posts, the wind, and his own snapper.


Anyway, I have a couple of questions as this is my only ng where there
are plenty of yankees ;-)

Firstly, why do they start OT on the 30 yard line rather than with a
kick?

College rule - OT is different in the pros. College rules have been
revised to minimize the advantage that winning the OT coin toss
gives you in sudden death OT, as in the pros. Start at the 30 to
keep it from taking forever, I guess.

I assume there is a rule about having to complete x downs before
you can attempt a FG?

No, but there's no point to kicking a FG on any down but 4th,
unless you are in regulation time and worried about the clock
running out. Before 4th down you can try to get a 1st and
prolong the drive.

(I don't remember a two minute warning either -
is that just an NFL thing or did I miss them?!)

No two-minute warning in college football.

Secondly, is there an easy explanation to how the
[college] season is structured?

No, absolutely not. This is like me asking you to explain
both the rules of cricket and the structure of international
competition in 25 words or less using only adverbs.

* They seem to play games on an almost arbitrary basis - much was made
of this being the top two ranked teams meeting, but in other sports they
would meet every year. *From what I recall about last year's ESPN
America listings (when I wasn't watching college games), just about
everybody competes in a bowl game.

I can't even really explain this, but the colleges are
organized into conferences of say 8-12 teams that are
sort of regional. Conferences vary in strength and most of
the strong ones still have some powerhouses and a few doormats.
Teams play both in and out of conference, and the schedules
are made up before the season (or even further in advance).
But there are far too many colleges for all of the good teams
to play each other in the out-of-conference games, even if it
wasn't scheduled before one knows which are the good teams.

There are no playoffs because (a) there haven't been and
tradition is powerful, (b) the prolongation of the college football
season would further expose the NCAA's self serving fiction
that athletes are students and amateurs.

Bowls vary in prestige and there are a few that attract the
top ranked teams, and a bunch that are sort of season cappers
for the second-rank (but still winning records).
It used to be that one of the bowls would
sometimes be identifiable as a de facto national championship
game, but not always and that system led to oddities, so now
there is a complex ranking system that tries to create a
champion. Predictably, the old system enraged a small percentage
of fans every year, and the new system replaces this by irritating
a large percentage of fans every year.

Thirdly, I noticed when I used to record college highlights they
screened in the 80s in the UK in the middle of the night as a filler,
that pitches are much more prevalent in college games than in the NFL.
Hardly ever see a pitch, or a lateral, in NFL games except out of
desperation. *Why is it such a staple of the college game? *(On the same
tack, I noticed a screen forming late in the game and, thinking about
it, I don't recall seeing any others. *Are screen passes rarer or is
that just me?) *Skill levels maybe?

IMO, it's because defenses are much faster, relatively speaking,
in the NFL. Plays that are slow to develop, like screen passes,
laterals, end-arounds, and various kind of trick plays, tend to get
cremated in the NFL and dropped for a loss. They only work
occasionally when the offense can get the defense to bite on
something else and thus be out of position.

Lastly, that is some stadium. *How on earth does a city with a
population of 90-odd thousand manage a crowd of 100,000 plus?!

College football game days are nuts. Fortunately, a third of the
attendees are mostly concerned with finding a good spot to
park their RV for tailgating, a third of them are students that
will get drunk/fall asleep/live close to campus and will **** off
after the game to a house party, and a third will spend most of
the time before and after the game sitting in traffic. US sports
fans are oddly restrained compared to some stories from
Europe: even at the craziest places there's usually nothing like the
football-hooligan aspect to crowd control. Riots and overturning
cars and burning sofas in the street (this DOES happen) are
usually reserved for winning/losing a NCAA national championship.
I live a mile and a half from a college stadium and have not
yet had to use the rubber bullets.

Fredmaster Ben