Off to work, so I just wanted to get a few things up for your viewing pleasure:
* The most important item of the entire weekend was the new 3-2-5-e rule supposedly designed to shorten games. I never got this to begin with. Who really cares about shortening games? Honestly. I pay all of that money to go to the game, why would I want it to be shorter and not longer? Additionally, college football has never been more popular than it is right now. If the old rules facilitated such an enormous rise to popularity, why would anyone want to risk messing that up? Well. you have got to check out this link and the links within it.
Saturday’s Alabama Birmingham-Oklahoma game featured only 110 offensive plays, the fewest for a Sooner game over the last 50 years! That bested the 112 offensive plays in the 1960 game against Colorado and the 1962 matchup against Missouri.
Here is where it gets interesting: The game lasted three hours 16 minutes. Last year, Oklahoma’s shortest game was three hours 13 minutes (against Kansas in Kansas City). As a point of reference, the shortest Oklahoma game in the Bob Stoops era was the 2004 affair against Nebraska, completed in two hours 49 minutes.
So the 3-2-5-e rule results in fewer plays and games that last just as long. Frigging brilliant!
Judging by this example, 3-2-5-e doesn’t work and officials are merely running circles around the real problem: Too many commercials!
Now if you haven’t checked out John Niyo’s fabulous piece in the Detroit Free Press we linked to Monday, you must take a look. The Vanderbilt-Michigan game had 125 plays. Last season, Michigan games averaged 145 plays. At this alarming rate, it can only be a season or two before we have more commercials than plays.
* Section Six has some quick Wolfpack hits of interest. (Link).
* Additionally, the N&O has some “Late Hits” on their ACC Now blog. (Link)
* Congratulations to Florida State for extending the Atlantic Division’s success this past weekend and emphasizing the imbalance between the strength of the ACC’s two divisions.
* Ron Cherry’s crew comes across as one of the worst in college football even when they are earning kudos from ESPN’s announcers.
* Stewart Mandel says the FSU-Miami game is losing is its luster (Link). $*#& Doyel actually wrote a similar piece that was very good yesterday on CBS Sportsline, but I do not dare link up a Doyel article here on SFN.
* Many Wolfpackers profess to being huge Pittsburgh Steelers fans because of Bill Cowher. Therefore, a lot of you should be very interested in this link.
* If you didn’t have the opportunity to visit SFN late last week or over the weekend then we encourage you to scroll down and do some catching up.
