New Rule Set For Massive Impact

You may or may not have heard about it yet, but there is a new rule change in college football for the 2007 season. Kick-offs, which had previously taken place from the kicking team's 35-yard line, will now be moved back to the kicking team's 30-yard line.

On the surface, that may seem like the textbook definition of a minor, insignificant change. But you would be very wrong.

In fact, Kentucky head coach Rich Brooks was quoted as saying, "It’s going to be one of the most significant rule changes to come about in recent years, maybe in a decade in college football."

So how exactly will it change things? Well, Coach Brooks had something to say on that as well. Specifically, he had the following musings:

"You’re gonna see offenses starting with a lot better field position. You’re gonna see scoring averages go up because of this rule change. You’re gonna see a lot more gimmicks on kickoff coverage. By gimmicks I’m talking with pooch kicking, possible squib kicking. There may be some people that decide they want to kick it out of bounds and give it to the team on the 35-yard line rather than kicking it deep and having a return out to the 40 or 45."

Florida Coach Urban Meyer later agreed with Rich Brooks' comments. In fact, he specifically mentioned a study that has concluded that the average kick-off will now be fielded at the nine-yard line.

Georgia Coach Mark Richt even went as far as stating that last year his team returned approximately 25 per cent of all kick-offs, but that now he expects his team to return somewhere between 75 and 90 per cent of all kick-offs.

The are no two ways about it. This rule change may seem minor on the surface, but it is not. This is a massive rule change that will have a massive effect.

So exactly what will be the end result?

Well, I don't know for certain, of course, but we can speculate to a great degree about what the effect be.

For starters, at Mark Richt noted, a much higher percentage of kicks will be returned in 2007. In fact, it will be very much a rarity for a kick to not be returned, and honestly it will still even be a rare occurrence when kicks are not returned even when a great distance kicker is handling the kick-off duties.

Moreover, the starting field position is, of course, going to be much higher. Considering historically the average kick return generally hovers somewhere between twenty and twenty-five yards per return -- if the Meyer-referenced study is correct in their projection that the average kick will be fielded at the nine-yard line -- the average starting position for teams will be somewhere between the twenty-nine and thirty-four yard lines. And again, that's just the average. Teams that struggle in kick coverage and kick distance will routinely see opponent's starting beyond their own forty-yard line.

The better field position, of course, will also greatly increase the chances of scoring. It goes without saying that the further advanced the ball is, the greater the odds of scoring are. For example, take this into consideration: When the NFL kicked off from the 35-yard line, teams that got the ball first in overtime won 50% of the time, and teams that kicked won 50% of the time. When they moved the kick-off back five yards to the 30-yard line, however, it made a big difference. Since then, teams that get the ball first in overtime win 60% of the time, and teams that kicked won only 40% of the time. Again, moving the ball five yards further back can make a massive difference in the chances that the receiving team will score on the ensuing possession because the odds are scoring are much higher due to better field position.

And, of course, the greater chances of scoring on each drive following a kick-off will result in higher scoring games. In 2006, the average SEC team scored 20.6 points per game, and that number is likely to creep up towards, if not beyond, 22 points per game in 2007.

Coaches, as alluded to earlier by Rich Brooks, will compensate in a variety of ways. To begin with, we'll see more pooch kicks and squib kicks, and we'll see much more complex kick cover schemes in an attempt to limit returns. In the past, kick cover schemes have often times been pretty vanilla, but that is likely a thing of the past now. Beyond that, you are almost certainly going to be see much better players on special teams. In the past, many coaches have opted for lesser players (often freshmen and others buried on the depth chart) when composing their special teams unit, but 2007 will see, generally speaking, much higher quality players on both the kick coverage and kick return teams. The much higher potential reward / potential loss simply dictates that coaches will be forced to take more risk in that sense.

Of course, having better players on special teams will impact the rest of the game in yet another big way: injuries. It's no secret that the two most dangerous plays in all of football are the kick-off and the punt (massive men hitting each other at top speed, going in opposite directions, you do the math). And with much better players on special teams, it's inevitable that those much better players will occasionally get hurt. Again, that could make a huge difference when, for example, a star player who before 2007 wouldn't have even been playing special teams goes down for the year with a torn ACL on a kick-off. Say, for a more concrete example, Demeco Ryans would have broken his ankle covering a kick against Southern Miss in 2005, when he would have otherwise been sippin' Gatorade on the sideline; exactly how do you think that would have impacted our season? I'm pretty sure you get my point now. The injury impact of the move could be very significant, and likely will be very significant for the unfortunate few teams that lose a key player in the process.

All told, it's going to greatly emphasize both kick coverage and kick returns. Both coaches and players are going to focus greatly on kick coverage and kick returns, and you'll quickly see the difference when you watch games either on television or at the stadium.

The bottom line is this: teams that can cover kicks and return kicks well will be in great shape, and teams that can't cover kicks very well or return kicks very well are going to find themselves losing a lot of football games.

This is a major rule change, and it will have a massive overall impact. How well each team adjusts its performance to the rule change will likely have a significant impact on the team's final win-loss record. At bottom, if you are looking for a good season in 2007, you had better get your kick-off team in tip-top shape, or it's going to be a tough road to hoe.