Post by CrimsonPhantom on Oct 16, 2018 15:22:24 GMT -7
Safety is the common ground motivating officials from the NFL and NCAA to convene in New York later this month for an unprecedented in-season summit aimed at aligning player protection rules.
No, the NFL isn’t angling to institute college football’s wild overtime system. Defensive pass interference will remain a spot foul in the pro game. But power brokers on both sides sense a need for consistency when it comes to measures — chiefly rules and techniques — needed for a safer game.
“It’s long overdue,” Troy Vincent, NFL executive vice president for football operations, told USA TODAY Sports. “I think we can learn from each other. That’s the intent.”
It’s been a tough season for the NFL on the officiating front, with numerous controversies stemming from how rules — namely an emphasis on the roughing-the-passer foul and a new helmet rule that bans lowering the head to initiate contact — are interpreted and applied. That will surely be a topic of discussion when league owners meet Tuesday and Wednesday in New York.
Yet there’s little debate that the rules in question are fueled by efforts to minimize football's inherent danger. The meeting at NFL headquarters on Oct. 30 is an extension of such objectives. It will include representatives from the NFL and NCAA officiating departments and competition committees, and likely other invested parties — including the NFL Players Associations and delegates from various conferences.
Vincent said the goal is to establish standards that apply on all levels of football, creating consistency that extends to a player’s earliest days playing the sport. Vincent expressed frustration that players too often ascend to the NFL needing to learn new techniques, given the pro game's specific rules. He used the chop block, now outlawed in the NFL, as an example of how the rule book's goalposts move depending on the league.
“We just eliminated the chop block two years ago,” Vincent said. “Well, on the high school level and in Pop Warner, it never existed.”
Increased focus in recent years on the effects of head injuries have prompted numerous rule changes and officiating standards throughout football — including the college game's “targeting” rule and NFL's new emphasis on its pre-existing roughing-the-passer penalty and those helmet-to-helmet blows that occur all too often among all players.
“There is so much focus to do better at health and safety,” Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson, who chairs the NCAA’s Division I Football Competition Committee, told USA TODAY Sports.
“If the rules need to be tweaked or changed ... we just need to get this right.”
No, the NFL isn’t angling to institute college football’s wild overtime system. Defensive pass interference will remain a spot foul in the pro game. But power brokers on both sides sense a need for consistency when it comes to measures — chiefly rules and techniques — needed for a safer game.
“It’s long overdue,” Troy Vincent, NFL executive vice president for football operations, told USA TODAY Sports. “I think we can learn from each other. That’s the intent.”
It’s been a tough season for the NFL on the officiating front, with numerous controversies stemming from how rules — namely an emphasis on the roughing-the-passer foul and a new helmet rule that bans lowering the head to initiate contact — are interpreted and applied. That will surely be a topic of discussion when league owners meet Tuesday and Wednesday in New York.
Yet there’s little debate that the rules in question are fueled by efforts to minimize football's inherent danger. The meeting at NFL headquarters on Oct. 30 is an extension of such objectives. It will include representatives from the NFL and NCAA officiating departments and competition committees, and likely other invested parties — including the NFL Players Associations and delegates from various conferences.
Vincent said the goal is to establish standards that apply on all levels of football, creating consistency that extends to a player’s earliest days playing the sport. Vincent expressed frustration that players too often ascend to the NFL needing to learn new techniques, given the pro game's specific rules. He used the chop block, now outlawed in the NFL, as an example of how the rule book's goalposts move depending on the league.
“We just eliminated the chop block two years ago,” Vincent said. “Well, on the high school level and in Pop Warner, it never existed.”
Increased focus in recent years on the effects of head injuries have prompted numerous rule changes and officiating standards throughout football — including the college game's “targeting” rule and NFL's new emphasis on its pre-existing roughing-the-passer penalty and those helmet-to-helmet blows that occur all too often among all players.
“There is so much focus to do better at health and safety,” Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson, who chairs the NCAA’s Division I Football Competition Committee, told USA TODAY Sports.
“If the rules need to be tweaked or changed ... we just need to get this right.”
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I'm all for player safety, but there are reasons why the NFL is called the No Fun League. Its getting to the point where the NCAA and the NFL are just passing rules, just to pass rules for no rhyme or reason.