College Football Instantly Replayed

The NCAA just releases the news rules regarding instant replay for next season. Some major changes have occurred that Irish fans everywhere will love.

• Coaches are now granted one challenge per game. Coaches first call a timeout and then signal that they will be challenging a "challengeable" call. If the challenge succeeds, they retain the challenge and can use it again and again until they lose a challenge (and the timeout comes back too!).
• Home teams in non-conference games have the choice of whether or not to use replay.

That means that Charlie Weis will be deciding every ND home game whether or not to use instant replay. Unfortunately, we play at USC this year, so Pete Carroll will most likely opt out of instant replay again (coward).

It'll be interesting to see how this affects the NCAA game now. Replay officials up in the booth will still be able to stop the game at any time for a review, but in addition to that, the coaches challenge was also implemented. Hopefully, it'll stop some home-town conference refs from making a crappy PAC-10 look good at home against non-conference teams.

Also, the NCAA enacted some measures to shorten games.

• Hafltime will be 15 minutes (shortened from 20) when both teams agree to it. You can bet Grambling and Southern will stick with the 20 minutes halftime.
• Clock starts on kickoffs as soon as the ball is touched by the kickers foot (the 5 seconds save really add up!).
• Also, the kicking tee is shortened by 1 inch (from 2 inches). This reduces touchbacks and adds more kick returns. It also means that kickoffs by ND kickers will now land at the 20 instead of the 10.
• On change of possession, the clock is started when the ball is set (as opposed to the snap). This doesn't concern ND during home games, as NBC takes TV timeouts after every change of possession.

The average college football game last 3:26, so hopefully this will reduce it to around 3:15. Personally, I'm just excited about Charlie using those challenges. The trouble is, if you use one early and lose, you don't have one for later in the game when you might really need it. Oh well, it makes things a little more exciting.