FanHouse Get The Picture

Every Monday during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

The Obvious -- The 2009 NFL Draft is now in the books and what's emerged from countless hours of coverage is a recurring theme of late: USC and SEC dominance. The Trojans had 11 players chosen in this year's draft, including a kicker and eight total defensive players from one of the better collegiate defenses of this era.

Meanwhile, 37 SEC players were chosen, topping last year's 35 and besting the second-place ACC's 33. USC also tied a draft record with four linebackers selected in a single draft. Their 11 overall selections bested last year's 10-player performance and again paced all colleges in the draft.

Every Monday during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

Maybe They'll Twitter er Tweet Their Decision -- USC has begun spring practice, headlined by a four-man race for the starting quarterback job. They're doing this with SarKiffian 2.0, newly hired offensive coordinator John Morton and quarterbacks coach/playcaller Jeremy Bates. Bates departed Denver just in time to avoid the mess that is Cutler vs. McDaniels while keeping a low, low profile.

There's a lot going on, which leaves Pete Carroll skeptical if he can settle on the next American Idol quarterback by the end of spring. Our hunch is it'll be the slightly scrawny Aaron Corp, kid can move.

Quote the Penn State coach last week:

"To be frank with you, I don't know what the reasons are not to have a playoff," Paterno said during a speaking appearance in Pittsburgh. "You can talk about missing class and all that kind of stuff, (yet) you see basketball go on forever. You have a lot of bogus excuses.

Now, far be it from me to lay into one of college football's most decorated coaches, but Joe Paterno's argument itself is bogus. First of all, he cites exactly one argument against a playoff here, that of the game becoming a two-semester event and taking student-athletes away from the classroom.

I don't personally buy into that argument either, since there are much better ones against a playoff. But it isn't "bogus". I hate to bring up that childhood example but it fits so we'll run it: if your friends go and jump off a bridge, do you jump as well? The answer is of course not. Just because college basketball's jumped off that bridge doesn't justify college football doing the same.

Furthermore, Paterno's being patently dishonest. Most of the time I see public arguments against a playoff, they have little to do with the academics. Even the conference commissioners are starting to cite other quite solid reasons besides the academics charge.

Examples? After the jump.

Holy hoodwink, Batman! Remember me?

From the venerable Sunday Morning Quarterback:

Make no mistake: fifteen extra seconds on the play clock is a dramatic, terrible change, and will fail miserably at its attempt to maintain plays and scoring at 2007 levels. Lengthening the play clock produces less plays, and therefore less scoring ...

...a conservative estimate - the number drops to 120 plays, 60 per team, a loss of something like three full possessions every game. If it allows enough of a slow down to average 35 seconds per play, the average drops to about 51 plays per team, almost a full 30 percent decline.

That's a staggering decline in actual football in favor of standing around (and commercials, which of course will not be cut), and also in favor of taking knees: 15 more seconds of standing around between every play means 45 extra seconds per three-down series if the clock is running, extending the amount of time that can reasonably be run off by kneel-downs from a little over a minute to a full two minutes. The committee should be devising rules that encourage last-second drama, not choke it out of existence

This is bad for college football. I stand with EDSBS, The Wizard of Odds, Get the Picture and others in opposing this specific piece of legislation that takes away from the college football experience instead of adding to it.

For the more active citizens among you, please take the following message from EDSBS to heart:

Previously at FanHouse
Rule Changes Proposed for College Football