Kickoff change not as dire as coaches say

HOOVER, Ala.

RULES CHANGES RARELY have their desired effect. A year ago, the tee for kickoffs was reduced by one inch and no one noticed. Several years ago, college football narrowed its goal posts with few consequences.

Now comes a rules change that appears to have some teeth to it, but in time will prove to have little bite. Kickoffs will be moved back 5 yards this season, to the 30-yard line.

“It’s going to be one of the most significant rules changes to come about in recent years — maybe in a decade — in college football,” said Kentucky coach Rich Brooks. “Very few teams will have a guy who can kick it into the touchback area or out of the end zone.”

There are two parts to figuring how this new rule will or will not change the game. First, the general belief among coaches is that fewer kickoffs will sail into the end zone. Second, as a result, coaching staffs will spend much more time working on kickoff coverage and kick returns.

My guess? More kickoffs will be returned, and the impact will be great at the outset, gradually diminishing over the next five seasons. Eventually, college football will move kickoffs even farther back, perhaps to the 20-yard-line.

The reasons for this alteration in the game are two-fold, according to the coaches who served on the NCAA football rules change committee. First, the NCAA was seeking another way to trim the length of games. When a kickoff goes into the end zone for a touchback, the game clock does not run. If it is returned, the clock starts when the receiving team touches the ball.

More importantly, forcing more kickoff returns injects more excitement into the game, according to the committee. Rogers Redding, the supervisor of officials for the SEC, said there is no more boring play in football than a touchback on a kickoff.

It is interesting to note that coaches talked this week at SEC Media Days as if the kickoff return had become a dinosaur. The fact is that only 32.9 percent of kickoffs in the SEC during the 2006 season were touchbacks.

Only two SEC kickers had more than 50 percent of their kickoffs go for touchbacks, and neither kicker is back this season. Matt Clark of Auburn was far and away the best at getting touchbacks at 79 percent. Next was James Wilhoit of Tennessee at 50.7 percent.

South Carolina’s Ryan Succop was fourth in the league at 36.9 percent, and he is the only one of the SEC’s top five kickoff specialists to tee it up again this season. Mississippi State’s Adam Carlson was the worst in the league with only two of his 32 kickoffs going for touchbacks.

Despite the numbers that say otherwise, most SEC coaches went into overstating mode, even pulling out numbers that could not possibly be true.

“It will be very significant,” said Georgia coach Mark Richt. “It will be, I wouldn’t say it’s doubly important, probably three or four times as important.

“I say that because we just were having meetings with our staff yesterday. We were talking about that very thing. I asked (assistant) coach (Tony) Ball, our kick-return coach, about how many kicks were we returning percentage-wise last year. He said we only really returned about 25 percent of the kicks. Now, we predict we’ll be returning 75 to 90 percent of the kicks.”

Actually, nearly 70 percent of SEC kickoffs were returned a year ago, and the extra 5 yards might push that percentage to the 80-85 percent range. That’s just a guess, but it should tell you that it is a rule change that does not merit the kind of attention coaches are giving it.

Urban Meyer, Florida’s coach, must have a lot of time on his hands these days because it appears that he has put an inordinate amount of time into finding ways to deal with the new rule.

“We’re still evaluating,” he said, and he was just getting started. “We kind of charted where that kick’s going to land. That kick’s going to land about the 9-yard-line now. That’s significant. That’s when you start talking about the field position, opportunity to score, percentages to score, things that most teams take very seriously, it’s going to have a major impact on.

“I think you might see better personnel on kickoffs. You might see more starters. You might see better schemes. You might see, a lot of times it’s generic and you hope your kicker kicks it out of the end zone and you move on. But you have to have a horse to kick that thing out of the end zone now.

“That’s going to have a major impact. I know we’re spending a lot of time on that. Myself, I’m spending a lot of time on it. I’m also evaluating how we defer, take the ball, whatever we do to maintain the plan to win, which we obviously take very seriously.”

Let me recap, then. The kickoff is moving back 5 yards. Most kickoffs were returned a season ago. It would stand to reason that the average starting position for an SEC offense will increase by 5 yards, which does not seem particularly significant.

If, indeed, the rule was intended to put more juice into the game, it will not happen. It might have the opposite effect by removing the onside kick, the most exciting play in football. By kicking off from the 30-yard line, teams now will be less likely to attempt an onside kick for fear of giving the opposition a certain chance at a field goal.

So, don’t buy the hyperbole of SEC football coaches.