OT - College Football

So there I was, 200 plus minutes into the recording of the LSU-Alabama
game and the bloody recording came to an abrupt end just as the LSU
kicker was about to make his attempt at a FG in overtime. I kid ye not!
By some quirk of fate, the repeat was on had another twenty minutes to
run so I watched that!

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. Some low scoring
games can be boring as hell, but this was the first American football
game I've watched for some time where the only bits I fast forwarded
were the ads. Even Mrs UD watched most of it. The dog slept.

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? I assume there is a rule about having to complete x downs before
you can attempt a FG? (I don't remember a two minute warning either -
is that just an NFL thing or did I miss them?!)

Secondly, is there an easy explanation to how the season is structured?
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.

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?

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?!

Cheers

UD

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

On 07/11/2011 07:32, Fredmaster of Brainerd wrote:

snip

Thanks for that excellent reply. I guess the roots of the schedules are
hidden way back in time and it would make sense they are region based.
So is the Ivy League a football thing or just a name given to the rich
old colleges? Do any particular leagues have an edge in the same way
that the AFC didn't win the Superbowl for a long time?

UD

In article ,
Uncle Dave wrote:

On 07/11/2011 07:32, Fredmaster of Brainerd wrote:

snip

Thanks for that excellent reply. I guess the roots of the schedules are
hidden way back in time and it would make sense they are region based.
So is the Ivy League a football thing or just a name given to the rich
old colleges?

The Ivy League is alive and well. For me the games
are as good as any, even though they do not and
cannot compete with the strongest 100 or so college
football programs. Though the players are typically
not a match for the best college players, they are
used to being the best in other ways, and it shows
on the football field.

http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/sports/fball/2011-12/standings

Do any particular leagues have an edge in the same way

The powerhouse conferences ebb and rise in relative power,
but not by much.

that the AFC didn't win the Superbowl for a long time?

The AFC won the third and fourth Superbowls.

Some notable college football rivalries are

Wisconsin-Minnesota, played every year since 1890,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Randall_Field.jpg

Harvard-Yale (The Game), played 127 times since 1875,

Lehigh-Lafayette (The Rivalry), played 146 times since 1884.
(Some years early on they played twice a season.
They did not play 1896.)

--
Michael Press

On 07/11/2011 19:06, Michael Press wrote:
In ,
Uncle wrote:

On 07/11/2011 07:32, Fredmaster of Brainerd wrote:

snip

Thanks for that excellent reply. I guess the roots of the schedules are
hidden way back in time and it would make sense they are region based.
So is the Ivy League a football thing or just a name given to the rich
old colleges?

The Ivy League is alive and well. For me the games
are as good as any, even though they do not and
cannot compete with the strongest 100 or so college
football programs. Though the players are typically
not a match for the best college players, they are
used to being the best in other ways, and it shows
on the football field.

http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/sports/fball/2011-12/standings

Do any particular leagues have an edge in the same way

The powerhouse conferences ebb and rise in relative power,
but not by much.

that the AFC didn't win the Superbowl for a long time?

The AFC won the third and fourth Superbowls.

Um, I didn't say they never won any Superbowls. When I first started
watching American football it seemed they would probably never do it
again. Rather like we all thought the Cold War would go on for ever.
Patriots, Browns, Colts and Chargers were joke teams and the AFC
contenders were very much second best. Only Tampa Bay - who were the
biggest joke of all - stopped the AFC scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Ah, but Montana, Rice, Payton, Taylor et al - those were good times to
get to know the game!

Thanks for the informative reply. I'll keep watching College games as
it feels a lot more natural watching a game around tea-time on a
Saturday rather than on a Sunday night!

UD

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.

It's not uncommon for a team to kick the winning field goal before 4th down in a game ending situation. This is if they are quite close to the goal line and the field goal is considered a "chip shot." The reasoning is a fumble on the earlier downs (it's been known to happen) and some mistake on the 4th down such as a bad snap from the center or the holder doesn't place the ball well, etc. If you kick on say 3rd down now you would have another opportunity. If this happened on 4th down, or you lost a fumble on an earlier down, you are SOL when you could've won the game with a gimme field goal.

Didn't LSU kick the winning field goal on third down? I thought they tried one run (off tackle?) to the left, and then a 2nd run to the right the purpose of which was to more center the ball wrt the goal posts, not really intended to gain yardage at all. The guy seemed to run pretty much parallel to the line and not very much forward and just about gave himself up, i.e., no fumble.

* 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.

Teams can play up to 12 games a year and it takes 6 wins against FBS opponents (the top division) to qualify for a bowl.

So a huge # of teams qualify and it's become a big deal even though most of these bowl games are worthless and even cost the schools more than they take in because of their expenses including being responsible for selling a LARGE # of tickets at their over inflated face value

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.

The bowls are run outside of the NCAA. I certainly agree with FB's characterization of the NCAA's self-serving fiction.

The BCS bowls feel they stand to lose a lot of money (though I don't see why if they host the playoffs) and power (true) and they more than lavishly wine and dine and junket university officials. In fact the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona was accused of violating tax law--which it did--by contributing to political campaigns, trying to launder the contributions by pressuring, uh, I mean making gentle suggestions to, employees to make the contributions. The Rose Bowl, in California, with its famous pre-game parade, seems a lone exception to this.

The universities are afraid, for no rational reason that I can see, that somehow the bowl games will disappear (why would they?) and they would lose $$$ and also that the conference season will be cheapened by having a playoff. This too comes down, as I see it, to a money. Less interest, less TV revenue. The previous president of the NCAA, Myles Brand, outright stated the bowls were all about money.) It seems to me a playoff would generate huge amounts of $$$$ more and even more craziness.

the new system [the BCS, for deciding the national champion] replaces this
by irritating a large percentage of fans every year.

Absolutely. Even Obama, a big time basketball fan, has asked why this is the only collegiate sport without a playoff (and the lower level FCS schools do have a playoff!) and the justice department is or was actually looking into it, although it's pretty dubious, my opinion, that anything will come of it.

Make no mistake, millions and millions of dollars are involved. The state of Utah is suing the BCS (bowl championship series--it's not run by the NCAA) on the basis that it unfairly excludes schools from a non-qualifying conference (there are only 6 qualifying conferences) and thus unfairly denies them increased revenue. Since some of these are state schools, i.e., governmental and public entities and in fact all schools of any size receive incredible government funding and tax breaks... Well, you get the picture.

FBS (upper tier) football completely runs college sports. It's become obvious beyond obvious the last couple of years with rampant conference realignment, which used to be fairly rare, where a school leaves one conference for another. The status of other sports at the schools is irrelevant, even those with championship and much more prestigious basketball programs than their football ones. It's all about the $$$$ TV revenues.

TCU (Texas Christian University) was set to join the Big East conference (right, I forgot, Texas is in the east) until it got a better deal. Colorado and Utah joined the Pac (i.e, Pacific) 10 now 12 last year, though they don't seem to be exactly abutting the Pacific. Neither did the arizona schools when they joined, years before though.

The Pac 10 (now 12) fired its hidebound commissioner two years ago who evinced zero understanding of what was going on and brought in the man who was in charge of the women's pro tennis tour to turn things around. In May it signed a 13 year TV deal with ESPN and Fox worth more than $225 million per year.

The whole thing, imo, is truly disgusting and a perversion of what I consider core values of a university or college which just happen to include teaching and education and research. The football coach can make millions while professors earn, let us say, exponentially less. I much prefer the club system of football (soccer) that exists in Europe. At least, in my slight understanding of it. It's hard to maintain values when so many dollars are at stake. I doubt I could.