Details Matter - Big Issues Going Into 2012

In college football's competitive context, the "how" matters as much as the "what." In a sport defined by field position and physical punishment, the notion of earned prosperity needs to count for something.

Yesterday, the concept of "getting ahead of the debate" was explained, in order to ensure that the beginning of another college football season will not accelerate beyond our ability to comprehend it. Hopefully, the clamorous and cluttered nature of the shortest regular season in sports (in terms of games played) will not offer ambushes and stealth attacks that lead to impoverished debate and excessive appeals to emotion. Be equipped now. Be forewarned today.

No, you don't have to see things "one way and one way only," but if you want to get ahead of the debate, you do need to realize that in college football, the "how" of situations is just as important as the "what." Any overview of this sport's on-field product is substantially incomplete if it doesn't hold a healthy level of respect for the details that underlie a million different scenarios.

Please think about these and other tension points before the arrival of the first college football Saturday of 2012:

How much do conference championships mean? How much should they mean? Conference competition represents at least two-thirds of a team's schedule (unless you were in last year's Big East, Mountain West, or WAC, in which case a team played 7/12 of its schedule in a league). Conference play also involves an annual process of encountering known foes, adding a bragging rights dimension to any league conquest. South Carolina and Clemson both attained rare heights last season. Shouldn't the "how they got there" comparison determine whether the Gamecocks or the Tigers had the better season?

How much should division championships mean? The Weekly Affirmation argued in the offseason that divisions should be done away with. LSU should have played Alabama, not Georgia, in last year's SEC Championship Game… at least, if the SEC wanted its two best teams to compete for the conference crown (a rational and reasonable notion, correct?). Auburn should have played Arkansas, not South Carolina, for the 2010 SEC title in accordance with that same strand of thought. UCLA was obviously not the second-best team in the Pac-12 last year. Clearly, divisions often create imbalances in conference championship games, and for that reason, it's hard to take them too seriously.

However…

…since divisions still exist, they still force teams to play five (in this year's SEC, six) locked-in games, a majority of a conference schedule. Teams might focus on their conference championship, but the structure of a division does involve a competition for another (albeit lower-level) title. If you reside in a division-based conference, winning your division is the first building block of national legitimacy; it offers proof that you have reigned in your own back yard, your own sphere of geographical familiarity. By all means, loathe the reality of divisions – they should be eliminated. Yet, when a team with 7-5 chops is able to secure a 9-3 record because it resided in a cushy division of an imbalanced conference, don't knock the team or what it did during the season. Knock how that team was allowed to climb higher because of the structure imposed by its conference leadership. Let the mantra of the "how" continue to penetrate your evolving college football consciousness.

Should BCS rankings determine three-way or otherwise not-immediately-soluble conference (or division) ties? This is yet another issue that brings about heated debate, and yet again, the "how" has to be considered as much as the "what." Is it important for conferences to try to put their very best teams in showcase bowl games? Of course it is. That's the obvious reason why coaches in the Big Ten, Big East, and Big 12 have allowed BCS rankings to decide three-way ties in which head-to-head results were unavailable for all matchups. So, if you want your conference to put its best foot forward, you're being reasonable, sensible and logical. It's clearly in a conference's best interests to win more showcase bowl games; the prizes gained in terms of prestige and (more significantly) television rights fees are evident – ask Mike Slive at Southeastern Conference headquarters.

However, let's look at the current system. A tiebreaker in a division or conference, by definition, decides that division or conference. A divisional or conference competition is resolved based on performance within that division and conference, particularly in head-to-head matchups. BCS rankings or other national metrics have no connection to a conference contest. That's not an opinion; that is fact. If Cincinnati had lost to Syracuse or Connecticut near the end of the 2011 season, a 7-5 Louisville team would have been taken by the Big East over 9-3 West Virginia for the Orange Bowl because of a head-to-head win against the Mountaineers. Louisville would have been the Big East champion, and there wouldn't have been any dispute about the matter. If one were to use the logic of "putting your best team in a showcase bowl game," West Virginia would have been selected instead of Louisville in the first place, but Louisville would have won the conference fair and square.

The question emerges: What is it about inconclusive or quirky three-way ties that is so different from a two-team tie? What is it about a messy three-team scramble that necessitates a national (or non-jurisdictional) solution whereas a two-team tie is always and immediately accepted as a matter which should be decided by conference-only (or division-only) measurements? By all means, you should be concerned with the "what" surrounding conferences as they attempt to put their best teams in big postseason games. However, the "how" governing the process must possess integrity in order for the "what" to have any meaning, heft or – most of all – legitimacy.

If 2011 Louisville was going to be the rightful Big East champion in a two-team tie, 2010 Michigan State should have been that year's Big Ten champion in a three-way tie, based on a 1-0 record against Wisconsin and Ohio State compared to UW's 1-1 record against MSU and OSU and OSU's 0-1 record against MSU and UW.

If you want your conference to send its best team to a bowl game, demand that your conference (if it lacks divisions) separate its "champion" from (in this season and the next, before the postseason is altered in 2014) its "BCS bowl representative." Unless or until that split is achieved, though, a conference champion cannot be a conference champion for reasons not pertaining to in-conference competition. That is not opinion or speculation, but definitional truth. (It's not political truth, of course, since politics is precisely what does allow teams to be designated as conference champions for reasons other than in-conference performance.)

Moving along, there's another set of what-and-how issues to explore in terms of the on-field product of college football. Let's start with the need to protect vulnerable players, especially punters. No sane person would disagree with the contention that punters need to be protected. When a punter kicks a ball and extends his leg on the follow through, lifting his body completely off the ground, he is supremely vulnerable for that brief period of time. Getting whacked in that position could very easily lead to a significant injury. Punt rushers who ram into punters, creating crash-bang sequences because they either whiff on the punt block or show no body control, should be flagged for their offenses. To put the matter plainly, punters who get hit hard through no fault of their own should have nothing to worry about. The referee is there to throw the flag on a wayward rusher. Player safety needs to be given first priority.

With that having been said, college football needs to make sure that the unassailable "what" of player safety is supplemented by the "how" of proper enforcement. If punters are going to merit legitimate protection when their bodies are clobbered, they cannot then sow seeds of deception to serve their team's needs.

In last December's inaugural Big Ten Championship Game, it was true that Michigan State punt rusher Isaiah Lewis never looked up when he was rushing Wisconsin punter Brad Nortman in the final two minutes of that wild contest in Indianapolis. Lewis definitely looked foolish as he kept his head down throughout a punt-rushing process, and Nortman – like a straight-A student toying with an inferior intellect – took full advantage. Nortman clearly kept his kicking leg extended well after he drove the ball downfield. The contact was unrelated to the actual process of kicking the ball and therefore had no effect on the play.

If Nortman had brought his leg to the ground in a normal physical act, there would have been no penalty. However, because Nortman made sure Lewis looked as foolish as possible – Lewis's eyes were still focused on the ground, so it was natural to think that the punt rusher was out of control – it was almost impossible for the official to keep the yellow handkerchief in his pocket. A running-into-the-kicker penalty was enough to give Wisconsin a first down, nullify a Michigan State punt return inside the Badger 5, and seal a Rose Bowl berth for Bucky's Boys.

Policing punts should be so simple: Before anything else, punts (and other plays not currently allowed to be reviewed) should be subject to instant replay video scrutiny, precisely because punters – most memorably, Tennessee's David Leaverton in the 1999 Fiesta Bowl against Florida State – will flop to draw draw flags the way basketball players draw charges. On replay, an official can see whether contact is legitimate or embellished, thereby serving notice to punters that they can't seduce refs into calls by doing what Leaverton, Nortman, and so many others have done through the years. If college football then imposes a 15-yard penalty on punters for flopping, these incidents will decrease even more.

Ultimately, roughing (or running) penalties should be called if and only if a punter gets hit during or due to punt-related actions. Keeping the kicking leg (artificially) extended after the punt is not a punt-related action: the punt had been released, the follow through concluded. If punters get hit, they should be protected and their team should be rewarded, by all means. However, if punters embellish contact, they are making the statement – right then and there – that the contact they're receiving is either insubstantial or unrelated to the process of punting. Said embellishment should bring about a penalty against the punter.

Here's the simple point about subjecting punters to 15-yard penalties for flopping: When a punter flops, he is crying wolf. He is using his genuine vulnerability as a weapon, luring players such as Isaiah Lewis into penalties and baiting officials into making calls when his safety is in fact not endangered. The flopping punter creates the appearance of violence done against his body to earn an undue reward. That's vile… no, not to the extent that murder or tax fraud is vile, but vile on its own small scale. When a punter manufactures contact, he is attempting to condition referees to expect contact on every punt, even when contact doesn't exist. In no way does this promote player safety; if the punter is unwilling to acknowledge when punt rushers play straight and fair, how can he complain when punt rushers decide to flatten him?

The "what" of player safety with respect to punters would be substantially enhanced, not reduced, by the "hows" of adding replay review and a 15-yard flopping penalty to college football.

Finally, one needs to examine the rewards and punishments for fumbling the ball out of an end zone. Notice the word "an," as opposed to "the." In other words, there are two end zones on a field, not just one. It is a very simple concept that any fan can recognize: fumbles – displays of careless, deficient ballhandling – should be punished. Another concept that should lie beyond all dispute in college football or any other sport is this: The same offense should be punished consistently, whether a set of punishments is light or harsh. That's the "what" of the matter.

"How," though, should college football honor these principles? At the moment, it plainly doesn't honor them at all.

Someone in charge of revising the rules needs to make this point plain before the 2013 season, since the 2012 season has arrived without the changes the rulebook so badly needs: If a fumble at one end of the field brings about a benign result or a severe game-changing result, a fumble at the other end of the field should bring about the same thing. If a fumble at one end of the field is punished harshly, there should be a harsh punishment at the other end of the gridiron as well.

The current rules of college football are inconsistent and unfair in so many ways, never more so than in these two respects:

1) When the offensive team fumbles (not muffs; fumbles!) out of its own end zone on a kickoff, it gets the ball at its own 20 on a touchback. When the offensive team fumbles out of the defense's end zone, the defensive team gets a touchback.

2) When the offensive team fumbles the ball forward and out of bounds with the ball not going out of the end zone, the offensive team is not assessed a penalty. When the offensive team fumbles the ball forward and out of bounds with the ball going out of the end zone, it forfeits possession and gives the defensive team the ball on the 20 (via a touchback).

If college football wants to punish fumbles in equal measure, it will have to move off its dime in at least one way if not more. Either fumbles out of an offense's own end zone on kickoffs must be punished with safeties, or fumbles out of the defense's end zone must not be punished with touchbacks. Either forward out-of-bounds fumbles that do not go out of the end zone should be given 20-yard penalties, or forward out-of-bounds fumbles that do go out of the end zone should not be punished with a touchback.

Yes, college football should punish fumbles and punish the same act consistently. Yet, as in so many other instances, the sport fails to uphold sound principles through its rules, policies and procedures. The solid content of a necessary "what" means precious little if the "hows" of infrastructure, process and policy are unable to back it up. Keep this point firmly in mind as you prepare for another four months of collegiate gridiron madness.