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SALT LAKE CITY — The actual games might be over this season, but that doesn't mean that the football minds have stopped working to make the game of football better or at least safer.
This week the NFL and NCAA have started discussions to change up some rules and start discussions on other rules including moving the Super Bowl to a Saturday and making the field wider.
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The NFL is looking at changes that could change the landscape in the coming years. The first and biggest might be involving the big game. With the Super Bowl being played in New York next year with cold weather the NFL is starting to worry about what might happen.
The NFL is looking at moving the game to Saturday to battle a potential storm. This would probably only happen if a storm like Nemo rolled through and would hit right on Sunday. It would take a lot to move it which was called an "ominous forecast" by a league source according to Sports Illustrated.
The other potential idea is the NFL widening the field of play to encourage safety. They are kicking around the idea to make the field an extra 35-feet wide like the width of a CFL field. According to some this would lessen head-on collisions by simply spreading out the players over a larger area.
Dan Pompei of the National Football Post wrote about this and quoted former competition committee member Bill Polian about the idea.
I'm not so sure we shouldn't think about widening the field. It's a radical idea, but I think it's worth thinking about. You would have more space and perhaps a safer game. I say that based on my CFL experience. There are less collisions of that type in the Canadian game.
–Bill Polian
"I'm not so sure we shouldn't think about widening the field," Polian said. "It's a radical idea, but I think it's worth thinking about. You would have more space and perhaps a safer game. I say that based on my CFL experience. There are less collisions of that type in the Canadian game."
This could solve it or it could add to more high speed collisions by adding more room for defenders to run. This might get more traction in the coming months and could be brought up again when the owners meet in April before the combine.
The NCAA has announced that the Football Rules Committee has voted unanimously to start enforcing a stricter penalty for intentional above-the-shoulder hits. It is already a 15-yard penalty and now it would include an automatic ejection.
The committee chairman Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun said that there were 99 such penalties that would have resulted in ejections last year.
"It's not a gigantic number," Calhoun said of the 99. "Ultimately, our goal is zero. Is that realistic? I don't know if zero is. But I know any time you involve an ejection, we're going to see that number go down drastically immediately."
The committee met mostly for player's safety and this was one of the big areas they wanted to address.
The new rule would include a video replay that would decide whether or not to enforce the ejection, depending on whether or not they deem it was intentional. The ejection would be for the current game if the penalty occurs in the first half. If the penalty happened in the second half or overtime it would carry through to the first half of the next game.
There will also be new rules against wearing the same color full uniform as the color of the field, ie Boise wearing a full blue on their blue turf, but could include Oregon not wearing a full green uniform or Eastern Washington wearing all red on their red turf.
There is also a rule where clipping or blocking low will be enforced if the blocker hits him from the side or back, but any low block from the front is legal.
