CFN Viewer's Guide: Lining Up Properly

Watching college football on television is a joy, especially when everything begins anew in late August and early September. However, when your favorite team gets jobbed by poor calls, you'll feel something other than joy.

College football fans, another season is upon us, which means that when you pull up a chair and catch the Thursday night game of the week or a Saturday full of competition, you're going to be upset at some of the things you see on the tube. Today's item concerns the neutral zone, the area of the field that gets violated all too often by linemen or blitzing linebackers on the edge (and the occasional defensive back).

This really isn't an aspect of competition (and the TV-viewing experience) that requires a great deal of elaboration. Just know that when you look at the line of scrimmage, game after game and week after week, you will see a helmet – usually on the end of the line, not the middle – sticking into that void between the two rows of bodies, the void where only the football is supposed to reside. A defensive lineman doesn't have to touch the offensive lineman or draw the offensive lineman offside. If he's lined up over the ball and not behind it, it's a neutral-zone violation and an automatic five-yard penalty.

If you haven't paid attention to this minute (but significant) detail in the past, give it a whirl in 2012. You might be surprised how frequently the neutral zone is violated with impunity by defensive linemen and linebackers in Football Bowl Subdivision contests.