The NCAA's War on Shorts: CFB Newsletter
A roundup of the week in college football and the week at Split Zone Duo.
Welcome to the College Football Newsletter, where we stick it to the NCAA by showing as much thigh as possible this spring.
On Thursday, the NCAA Football Playing Rules Committee proposed a new set of rules for the upcoming season. Among them are reasonable changes pertaining to the game itself. Even if you didn’t necessarily agree with making offensive pass interference calls a 10-yard penalty (one of the proposals), you can at least see where the conversation started: The NFL has a 10-yard rule rather than college’s 15, and it’s worked fine in the NFL.
A more ticky-tack proposal deals with enforcing a rule that’s already on the books: Call it the too-much-leg rule, violated flagrantly by many players over the years. Last season’s most notorious shorts criminal was Oklahoma’s Lou Groza Award-winning kicker, Tate Sandell:
What gives, then? As The Athletic’s Chris Vannini points out, college football does not have specific officials to enforce these uniform violations. In the likely event that this new proposal becomes the law of the land, officials will make players leave the game if their pants don’t cover the knees. One offense is a warning, followed by five- and 15-yard penalties. That should do it.
If anything, we need more leg in football. Show off more thigh! What else are the squats for, then? It feels like the real machination behind all of this is professionalizing more facets of the college game to make them more NFL-like. That can be fine—like when players get paid instead of working for scholarships—but do we need it here? Just two seasons ago, the NFL fined Jalen Hurts for wearing mismatched shoes.
I’ll let Alex and Richard tell you their thoughts in a future SZD episode. (There are some early concerns that Alex may support the shorts crackdown.) As far as this week is concerned …
Here’s what Alex and Richard dropped into your feeds this week:
What would you do with the power to add or subtract 24 points across the history of college football? Do you help a team who was on the cusp of greatness but eventually came up short? Or would you channel your inner hater and retroactively make a great team disappear into the ether of the college football almanac? Alex and Richard talked about how they would change the fates of teams, including Florida. Think of this exercise like the old Madden Rewind feature but even bigger.
Godfrey stopped by for a subscriber episode where he talked with Alex and Richard about the 2012 coaching carousel. They chat about the surprising run of coaches at Arkansas State in the 2010s. Godfrey also tells the story of how Todd Monken, current Cleveland Browns coach, abruptly quit Southern Miss because the administration failed to keep a promise.
Some more recommended reading and listening:
At the top of this week’s free show, Alex talked about the history of hockey for a minute. If you want an extensive conversation, check out this week’s Hang Up and Listen, where he explains how the United States men and women’s teams captured Olympic gold.
For Slate, Alex wrote a major tech fight: Anthropic vs. the Defense Department.
Last Friday, Richard published a YouTube video explaining why Sacramento State’s economic impact number for its move to the MAC was inflated. He reported out the specific details over at CBS Sports, which resulted in the college consulting company doing a lot of explaining.
Friend of the show Mike Craven wrote about DJ Lagway’s new yet familiar journey as the Texas native heads to Baylor to play quarterback.
As always, thanks for reading and we’ll see you here next week. Only 20 days until spring.