I consider myself fairly well-versed in all things college-football related, but I am unfamiliar with Craig James' past crimes against the NCAA.
Also, I agree with Brian - Bielema is a class-less prick and I hope he drags Wisconsin down to previously-unknown depths of ineptitude and obscurity, thus relegating him to a life time of bouncing from one assistant position to another. This has little to do with the offsides play, and much more to do with the punt return against Michigan.
Agreed completely on James. Scandalous.
He also grates with his "I'm just a country football player" act as much as Bradshaw does. He's a Fox employee -- Fox of the BCS sponsoring -- but lays into the BCS whenever he can strike this annoying pose. His "I guess I don't have the gigabytes" to understand why the fancy computin' machines downgrade Texas (how about North Texas, Iowa State, Baylor, Rice, and Sam Frigging Houston) was typical.
Does the receiving team even have the option to decline an offsides penalty? If so, they should obviously decline...If not then any team with the lead in the forth quarter should run out the clock this way no matter how much time is left.
A) The blockquoted scenario is ridiculous, as it assumes the 2006 Bowling Green team could be within one of anyone in the fourth quarter. (Though I guess they were within 7 in the fourth to Wisky, I think. Hmmm... Damn Taylor Milhouse...errr, Mehlhaff.)
B) I had to go search back for your asterisk after reading the footnote, I just assumed you were talking about Lou Holtz.
What Bielema did wasn't classless. It was damn cheap, but not classless. I was watching the game and let me tell you it was insanely boring to watch. Paterno drew it out by arguing for no reason. Like you said, he would have taken a knee anyway.
They should repeal the time rules next year. If they refuse to do that, they should penalize offsides on a kickoff like they do on a kick out of bounds. 1st and 10 on the 35 yard line. No way Bielema does it then.
You mean Craig "the Pony" James, the first man in history take a pay cut to go to the NFL? (Or maybe he was the 2nd ... when did Dickerson and Hart Lee Dykes turn pro?)
I the reason why this whole Bielema thing fired me up is because of the Breaston shenanigans and that s#@t-eating grin on his face while he pulled it off. I still think it was bush-league and will come back to bite him in the ass at some point.
Uh yeah could someone please explain the Craig James scandal? Not that I need any more reason to hate the twunt, but I've never heard of this.
What kind of scandal was Craig James involved in exactly?
Anon:
Any penalty may be declined if the offended team would rather take the play.
The problem is, under this scenario, Penn State was left with having to decide between:
(1) Take the penalty and have Wisconsin re-kick from their own 30 (and have another 10 seconds run off the clock),
(2) Take the penalty and get the ball 5 yards in front of where the kick returner was tackled, and
(3) Take the play, and get the ball where the kick returner was tackled.
There is no situation where (3) is better than (2), so no team will ever take the play here.
Let me get on this bandwagon. The only "scandal" on Craig James wikipedia page (and yes he has one, and yes that is sick) is him calling Joe Pa and old fart and what not. What did he do that was Bertuzzi-esque?
Anon 11:07, James was part of the SMU Pony Express teams that brought the death penalty down on SMU. As I recall, his major involvement had to do with a girlfriend - perhaps she was given a bogus scholarship, or something.
Brian, I think that the not-further-downfield aspect of the BielamaBall was camouflage. The play was set up to look as coincidental as possible. If the coverage team was further downfield, it would have invited an unsportsmanlike penalty or other immediate repurcussion, or alternatively led to PSU accepting the penalty.
I do think that the BielamaBall gambit is an issue, not for the risk of injury (which I think is nontrivial) but for the risk of ending a meaningful game with intentional, and intentionally anti-[on field]-competitive conduct.
um...i thought dead ball fouls were always enforced. isn't offsides a dead ball foul? penn state can't decline it.
brian, running your guys down to the 10 yard line might cause a riot.
Any abuse, if any, could potentially be resolved by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for committing an intentional infraction. That is probably why Wisconsin didn't just stroll down to the 10 yard line, as Brian suggested, but rather tried to make it appear as if they all "accidentally" jumped off-sides. That said, my guess would be that this will not happen again this year (as Brian points out, there is little to gain from it except under rare circumstances). If it was done in protest of the new rule, which I think that it was, I'll give Bielema some props. I am sure that this will be much, much more effective than any sternly worded email/letter about the rule would be. Plus it was funny to see Paterno going bananas on the sidelines.
Is it just me or when they did it the regular way, PSU coughed up the ball? If they did THAT with :24 seconds on the clock, its points. UW screwed, well, UW.
Offsides is a live ball penalty that can be accepted or declined. If you accept it you can either force a re-kick or get five yards on the end of your return. I looked it up.
Did anyone notice Paterno grab the side judge's arm to bitch him out. It's bull how that creaky, senile old bastard gets away with that crap, when you know that any other player/coach would get flagged or worse. But since he's "Joe-Pa," everyone yuks it up.
Offsides is a live-ball foul. A dead-ball foul stops the play immediately. For example, after a false-start, the center doesn't hike the ball, and everyone starts walking backwards 5 yards. If the false-start is just before the snap, you will notice that the play is stopped mid-way, and everyone walks backwards 5 yards.
On the other hand, when offsides is called, the play continues. You will often hear (hack) announcers say that it's a "free play." You can also tell that it's a live-ball foul, because sometimes you will see a lineman jump across, but get back in time to avoid the offsides call (assuming there is no contact - if there is contact, then it is a dead-ball foul). In other words, offsides doesn't apply until AFTER the ball is snapped (making the ball live).
Nick:
"Any penalty may be declined."
--NCAA Rule 10-1-1-b.
Why couldn't the NCAA just change the rules to make offensive offsides on kick-offs a dead-ball foul (and hence, no time run off) with fewer than 2 minutes in the half?
I'm going to disagree, Brian.
Mining the rulebook for loopholes that you can exploit may be great in the "by any means necessary" world of the NFL, but I think it *is* classless and unsportsmanlike in college football. Call me polly-anna, but this is still amateur ball where he's in charge of young kids and on top of winning games he's supposed to be something of a leader.
I love the fact that kids coming out of Michigan consistently say that they learned more than just football from Lloyd Carr. What lessons is Bielema teaching here? Search for the loophole?
And his talk about how his job is to win football games and graduate players ... ya, that explains why he didn't suspend the guy who tried to hurt Breaston. Suspending a thug isn't going to raise anyone's GPA and it won't help Wisconsin win, so why bother, right?
I think the offsides move was just good coaching. Like Brian said, if a coach can find a loophole in a rule that gives his team a better chance to win, he should take it. Hopefully this will result in a massive overhaul (or complete elimination) of 3-2-5-e, as the clock running after a kickoff or change of possession is just stupid.
As for Craig James, he was involved in the SMU pay-for-play scandal. I don't know exactly what information was discovered about him in the investigation, but the fallout led to the SMU football program being eliminated.
Simple solution: make offsides on a kickoff a dead-ball foul, and thus put time back on the clock after the play.
HELP ME OUT HERE: What was the deal with Tiller's 15 man huddles? Not sure how I missed that!
Oliver~
back about five/six years ago, Joe Tiller would send 14/15 players out for the offensive huddle, then only just before the play was to begin, the surplus players would head to the sidelines. This was done largely to prevent opposing defensive coordinators to figure out which package Purdue was actually running for that play and gain an advantage with say, five wideouts and empty backfield versus a four linebacker defense. The NCAA later made it illegal to break the huddle with more than 11 men.
Joe Tiller responded by sending Kyle Orton to Chicago.
One other idea: in many states, the high school football rules do consider offsides on a kickoff to be a dead-ball foul. The play is stopped immediately and no time is removed from the clock. I wouldn't be surprised to see the NCAA adopt this.
tiller would put tons of guys in the huddle, the idea being that the Defense can't tell what personnel groups are on the play (are they going jumbo-3 TEs or 5 wide?? wtf??). I think that lead, partly, to the "Hermann Manuveur" whereby 4-6 defensive players would stand at the yard marks after every play. then, herrman could see the opposing personnel and call in his own goups. when they 1st tried it (1999 maybe???) it looked like 8 guys crapped their pants and couldn't find a bathroom.
Oliver,
Joe Tiller would have about 15 offensive players in the huddle, then send 4 off just before the offense would line up. Doing this would ensure that the defense did not have time to adjust its personnel based on Purdue's offensive package, because the D couldn't tell which 11 players would actually be staying on the field to run the play.
I believe the NCAA adopted a rule that only 11 men can be in the huddle, which eliminated this scheme.
I think the best solution is eliminating rule 3-2-5e, as you said, Brian. Give the fans more football! As it stands, three minutes left on the clock isn't nearly enough time to get a turnover and march down the field--after all, the clock starts on the change of possession. Along with eliminating 3-2-5e, I'm all in favor of a collegiate 2-minute warning.
I can't believe people are complaining about this. The reason it was even possible is because the new timing rule is so ill-conceived. If the people who control college football actually gave a fuck about anything but the money, this rule wouldn't exist in the first place.
But that's no excuse for breaking it even further. Concocting special-case exceptions — such as making offsides on a kickoff a dead-ball foul, or changing the timing rules at the end of the game (might as well have the players shoot hoops in the last two minutes of the half) — would make things worse, not better.
Craig James IS a retard. However, I did not hear what he said about all this BielemaBall crap.
Also, I watched the UM/UW game & missed what happened to Breaston (I don't know how I did). Could someone enlighten me?
Crazy football world we live in.
cs: A Wisconsin defensive player tackled Breaston and while Stevie was pinned on the ground, he grabbed this foot/leg and gave it a good twist. It was caught on the cameras and everyone expected Bielema to at least make a public reprimand of the player. Bielema only stated that the action wasnt purposefully against Breaston and that it would be handled internally.
This seems to be the college football equivalent of the intentional foul in basketball. I'm not sure why it's grudingly accepted in college basketball, but constitutes a moral outrage in college football.
Burce Hooley article from yesterday on UM vs. OSU... decent read.
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/ne...tory?
id=2653738
Go blue!
My recollection re: Tiller's 15 men is very different than yours. The Big 10 coach who was guilty of putting extra men in the huddle was Gary Moeller. Bo used to shuttle players in with the play calls (usually a TE, sometimes an RB) and Moeller decided to start sending 2 or 3 in so that the defense didn't know what package he was using.
Other Big 10 coaches complained, and eventually a rule was implemented saying only 11 men could be in the huddle. What Tiller did was cheat the rule; the rule was too tightly worded, mentioning the huddle, so Tiller would send 13 men out but not huddle. You'd look up and they'd have a 4 WR set with 2 backs and a TE. Then before the snap 1 WR and a FB would run off the field.
He particularly did it against Michigan (can't remember the year) and it was a disaster. His team looked confused half the time - looked like they were executing a firedrill out there and Michigan didn't care.
Lots of people thought he was doing it specifically to Michigan because it was Michigan's controversial practice that brought on the rule.
Here's what Craig James had to say about the computers today on the Sportsnation chat:
Don (Ann Arbor): I saw that Richrd Billingsly called you out on his website regarding the BCS computer rankings. What were your thoughts after seeing that?
SportsNation Craig James: (2:26 PM ET ) Glad he's watching us...
God, what a moron....
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