planomateo
Member
It's over folks, they've found a way to beat Saban by limiting the number of headsets during the game...
By ANDY STAPLES
May 21, 2018
Major college football can’t have a commissioner because schools colluding to cap the compensation of their athletes can’t very well hire someone to be in charge of said collusion while they’re being sued in federal court. But if there comes a day when it is possible to hire a college football commissioner, that commissioner should be Paul Johnson.
The Georgia Tech coach spent a portion of last week’s ACC meetings chuckling as his colleagues discussed the potential impact of a new NCAA rule that will limit the number of people allowed to wear headsets on gameday to 20 per team and the number of sideline passes to 60 for each team. Johnson’s operations director informed him that the Yellow Jackets only use 17 headsets on gameday, so the rule won’t affect him at all. Still, he cracked that it should go further.
“How about no headsets?” said Johnson, an option coach who might suddenly find himself with an advantage if it wasn’t so easy for opposing coaches to communicate. (When those words left Johnson’s lips, the agent for notoriously headset-averse coach Brady Hokeprobably sprung into action to try to get the Carolina Panthers’ defensive line coach back into the college game.) Johnson couldn’t help but make fun of the rule, because he knows why the rule was passed. And he also knows it isn’t going to matter.
Why did the NCAA’s football oversight committee make this rule, and why did it get rubber-stamped this month by the NCAA’s Playing Rules Oversight Panel? Because of Nick Saban. And just like every other rule designed to slow the march of Saban’s team toward more national titles, this one will fail to achieve its intended purpose.
Saban is so deep inside the heads of some of his fellow coaches that their inner monologues include the word “aight” and the phrase “positive self-gratification.” I wrote last year that coaches and athletic directors would waste a year trying to blunt Saban’s staffing advantage, and the proof of that waste was in evidence last week as ACC coaches tried to remember how many people on their staffs used a headset last year. “I don’t listen to that many people,” first-year Florida State coach Willie Taggart cracked. “I don’t think we have that many headsets. I want everybody to be quiet.”
Ever since coaches and administrators realized that Saban might be the most prolific job creator in Alabama, the less imaginative among them have tried to figure out how to keep Alabama from hiring every person who has ever watched a Hudl clip. This, those coaches and administrators contend, will finally be the magic bullet that puts Saban’s Alabama on the same playing field as former employer Toledo. In the process—no pun intended—perhaps Saban disciples such as Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher will find themselves hamstrung as well. They also tend to win a lot of games when given resources and turned loose in fertile recruiting areas.
Athletic directors know the schools shouldn’t make an NCAA rule capping staff size because the NCAA will get slaughtered in court the way it did when the schools tried to cap assistant coaching pay in certain sports. It’s one thing to allow only 10 on-field assistants or five full-time weight room staffers. There are still other jobs in the organization. But the moment the schools use an NCAA rule to attach a finite number to the jobs available in an organization, they’d become an easy target for an antitrust suit because they’d be colluding to cap the number of available jobs in a particular labor market.
But don’t worry, they have a solution. HEADSETS.
The days of Saban’s dominance apparently are over because only 20 people can wear a headset that only gets three channels (offense, defense, special teams), on which only four people (head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coordinator) usually are allowed to talk. (It’s actually 19 headsets because the phone that allows the quarterback to talk to a coach in the press box also counts as one.) Before we eulogize the end of this era, let’s take a look back at the rules that have been passed specifically because of Saban and count how many national titles Alabama has won since their passage.
2008 — The Saban Rule
Head coaches aren’t allowed to go on the road to evaluate prospects in the spring anymore. This was a direct response to Saban’s first full recruiting cycle at Alabama, which resulted in a No. 1 class.
National titles won since passage: 5*
*Urban Meyer, then at Florida, was the other target of that rule. Meyer has won two national titles (one at Florida, one at Ohio State) since the rule was passed, meaning the targets of this rule have won seven of the past 10 national titles. Way to level the playing field, boys.
2011 — The oversigning/processing package
This was a necessary set of rules passed by the SEC to keep some of the league’s coaches—including Saban—from signing players when they didn’t actually have scholarships for them. This set of rules also curbed the practice of medically disqualifying players whose malady was not being good enough to keep occupying a scholarship. (Thus allowing to keep giving the player a scholarship but freeing up a spot to sign a newer—and hopefully better—player.) But while the non-oversigning coaches in the SEC assumed this would stymie Saban at least a little, he began cranking out titles at an even faster pace.
National titles won since passage: 4
2014 — The 10-second rule
Wait, this one wasn’t designed to stop Saban. This was one pushed bySaban to slow down hurry-up offenses by forcing offenses to wait at least 10 seconds between the start of the play clock and the snap of the next play. When this proposed rule change got tabled, Saban simply sped up his own offense. Even when the rules he wants fail, Saban keeps winning titles.
National titles won since blockage: 2
2018 — No more former players at practice
The Crimson Tide can no longer use former players such as Blake Sims or John Parker Wilson to run the scout team. They’ll have to settle for four- and five-star recruits.
National titles won since passage: N/A
2018 — The Headset Rule
This one is going to the one that finally gets him, guys. I’m sure of it.
National titles won since passage: N/A
Continue reading
By ANDY STAPLES
May 21, 2018
Major college football can’t have a commissioner because schools colluding to cap the compensation of their athletes can’t very well hire someone to be in charge of said collusion while they’re being sued in federal court. But if there comes a day when it is possible to hire a college football commissioner, that commissioner should be Paul Johnson.
The Georgia Tech coach spent a portion of last week’s ACC meetings chuckling as his colleagues discussed the potential impact of a new NCAA rule that will limit the number of people allowed to wear headsets on gameday to 20 per team and the number of sideline passes to 60 for each team. Johnson’s operations director informed him that the Yellow Jackets only use 17 headsets on gameday, so the rule won’t affect him at all. Still, he cracked that it should go further.
“How about no headsets?” said Johnson, an option coach who might suddenly find himself with an advantage if it wasn’t so easy for opposing coaches to communicate. (When those words left Johnson’s lips, the agent for notoriously headset-averse coach Brady Hokeprobably sprung into action to try to get the Carolina Panthers’ defensive line coach back into the college game.) Johnson couldn’t help but make fun of the rule, because he knows why the rule was passed. And he also knows it isn’t going to matter.
Why did the NCAA’s football oversight committee make this rule, and why did it get rubber-stamped this month by the NCAA’s Playing Rules Oversight Panel? Because of Nick Saban. And just like every other rule designed to slow the march of Saban’s team toward more national titles, this one will fail to achieve its intended purpose.
Saban is so deep inside the heads of some of his fellow coaches that their inner monologues include the word “aight” and the phrase “positive self-gratification.” I wrote last year that coaches and athletic directors would waste a year trying to blunt Saban’s staffing advantage, and the proof of that waste was in evidence last week as ACC coaches tried to remember how many people on their staffs used a headset last year. “I don’t listen to that many people,” first-year Florida State coach Willie Taggart cracked. “I don’t think we have that many headsets. I want everybody to be quiet.”
Ever since coaches and administrators realized that Saban might be the most prolific job creator in Alabama, the less imaginative among them have tried to figure out how to keep Alabama from hiring every person who has ever watched a Hudl clip. This, those coaches and administrators contend, will finally be the magic bullet that puts Saban’s Alabama on the same playing field as former employer Toledo. In the process—no pun intended—perhaps Saban disciples such as Georgia’s Kirby Smart and Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher will find themselves hamstrung as well. They also tend to win a lot of games when given resources and turned loose in fertile recruiting areas.
Athletic directors know the schools shouldn’t make an NCAA rule capping staff size because the NCAA will get slaughtered in court the way it did when the schools tried to cap assistant coaching pay in certain sports. It’s one thing to allow only 10 on-field assistants or five full-time weight room staffers. There are still other jobs in the organization. But the moment the schools use an NCAA rule to attach a finite number to the jobs available in an organization, they’d become an easy target for an antitrust suit because they’d be colluding to cap the number of available jobs in a particular labor market.
But don’t worry, they have a solution. HEADSETS.
The days of Saban’s dominance apparently are over because only 20 people can wear a headset that only gets three channels (offense, defense, special teams), on which only four people (head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coordinator) usually are allowed to talk. (It’s actually 19 headsets because the phone that allows the quarterback to talk to a coach in the press box also counts as one.) Before we eulogize the end of this era, let’s take a look back at the rules that have been passed specifically because of Saban and count how many national titles Alabama has won since their passage.
2008 — The Saban Rule
Head coaches aren’t allowed to go on the road to evaluate prospects in the spring anymore. This was a direct response to Saban’s first full recruiting cycle at Alabama, which resulted in a No. 1 class.
National titles won since passage: 5*
*Urban Meyer, then at Florida, was the other target of that rule. Meyer has won two national titles (one at Florida, one at Ohio State) since the rule was passed, meaning the targets of this rule have won seven of the past 10 national titles. Way to level the playing field, boys.
2011 — The oversigning/processing package
This was a necessary set of rules passed by the SEC to keep some of the league’s coaches—including Saban—from signing players when they didn’t actually have scholarships for them. This set of rules also curbed the practice of medically disqualifying players whose malady was not being good enough to keep occupying a scholarship. (Thus allowing to keep giving the player a scholarship but freeing up a spot to sign a newer—and hopefully better—player.) But while the non-oversigning coaches in the SEC assumed this would stymie Saban at least a little, he began cranking out titles at an even faster pace.
National titles won since passage: 4
2014 — The 10-second rule
Wait, this one wasn’t designed to stop Saban. This was one pushed bySaban to slow down hurry-up offenses by forcing offenses to wait at least 10 seconds between the start of the play clock and the snap of the next play. When this proposed rule change got tabled, Saban simply sped up his own offense. Even when the rules he wants fail, Saban keeps winning titles.
National titles won since blockage: 2
2018 — No more former players at practice
The Crimson Tide can no longer use former players such as Blake Sims or John Parker Wilson to run the scout team. They’ll have to settle for four- and five-star recruits.
National titles won since passage: N/A
2018 — The Headset Rule
This one is going to the one that finally gets him, guys. I’m sure of it.
National titles won since passage: N/A
Continue reading
