NCAA pushes back kickoff yard line, hopes to speed up games

Thursday, August 30, 2007

The 2007 college football season kicks off Thursday night. And it will be kicking off from an all-new location.

A new NCAA rule, number 6-1-1, moves the ball to the 30-yard line on kickoffs. Before this year, every college football kicker booted the ball from the 35-yard line. The NFL implemented the same change in 1994.

Five yards may seem like a minor adjustment, but the rule could significantly alter games because more kickoffs should be returned. The rule has forced coaches to spend more practice time on special teams.

“We’ve put a lot of emphasis in training camp on our kickoff return unit,” coach Mark Mangino said. “Because there will be more opportunities, we feel like we have some people who have the chance to return the ball really well.”

Those people are junior wide receiver Marcus Herford and sophomore running back Jake Sharp, the Jayhawks’ starting kick returners this season. Herford and Sharp combined to return 34 kickoffs last season.

An increase in the number of returns may result in more big plays, but it also increases the risk for injury. Mangino said the injury factor was the frightening part of the rule change.

“With less kicks in the end zones, there will be more collisions — maybe five or six a game that you really wouldn’t like to see,” Mangino said. “But that’s part of the game, and we’ll live with it.”

The kicker is the other player the rule will affect.

Senior kicker Scott Webb recorded 35 touchbacks last season, but might not come close to that number this year. Webb said he sees the rule as a challenge.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Webb said. “It’s a thing that will help me improve myself. Kickoffs are something I’ve always been pretty good at.”

The NCAA reported that the rule was part of an attempt to add more action and speed up the game.

In 2006, the NCAA made similar efforts to speed up games by implementing controversial rule changes. These changes included starting the clock when the ball left the kicker’s foot, instead of waiting until the returner caught it, and not stopping the clock for first downs.

Those changes eliminated an average of 16 plays and 15 minutes per game, numbers too titanic to win coaches’ approval. So, the rule change was reversed and will return to how they were two years ago for the this season.

That left the NCAA still searching for ways to quicken the games and resulted in the new 30-yard line kickoff. Mangino said the new rule could help the Jayhawks because of the caliber of players they had on special teams.

“It’s just like any other position on the field,” Mangino said. “We put our best people on special teams. Our kickoff coverage unit for years has been filled with starters.”

— edited by Chris Beattie

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