Originally Posted by Texas Aggie (Post 1033269)

What I'm not understanding is how this will be any different for you than it is now? How many plays do you have that the ball ends up incomplete on the other team's sideline? A few, right? So, now, you go get the ball, reset, and blow the ready. Under the new rule you do the same thing.

What's the issue?

Originally Posted by Texas Aggie (Post 1033269)

The 40 second clock doesn't solve every problem but it also doesn't create a problem where none existed. You'll see the benefits on plays other than the ones you described.

Originally Posted by JRutledge (Post 1033274)

I do not see what is so special about the 40-second clock, but I digress. Since you asked, there is a possibility that it will take longer than 20 seconds or so to get the ball in play on certain kinds of plays. These are high school kids, they are not always very well taught or even instructed what to do with the ball well after a play. Combined with the fact that we will not likely have a clock on the field or visible to judge. I see many stoppages or resets to make this right multiple times during a game. If we have to do that at the small college level where we actually have ball boys and multiple football from each team on each sideline, we have issues there. At least with the old rule we are not rushing because the clock is running to get the ball in play. Now we have that as an issue.



I did not say is solved any issues, to me, it created one (or two). Again, not seeing how I will see anything differently if we have issues at the higher levels that have an entire system or policies to make things run smoothly and we still have issues with things in place. This is like when people try to advocate for a shot clock in basketball at the high school level, but do not seem to realize how many times we have to correct things at the college level with the shot clock. To me this just created issues that were not there before. Again you do not have to agree, been doing this for some time to have an opinion on what works and what does not. As a white hat, I know what issues we sometimes have to get the ball in play before. This rule does not automatically solve anything.

Peace

Originally Posted by bisonlj (Post 1033289)

I know several people who work in the D3 league where you work so I asked them about this. They have a vastly different experience on having to reset the play clock. Like our D3 conference it happens once or twice per season at most.

Originally Posted by Rich (Post 1033295)

And if you only have one ball in a game.....I don't know what to say. We don't work freshman games where there's only one football per team.

Originally Posted by JRutledge (Post 1033296)

Well, we do. The only time might be if we have weather issues and teams want to use multiple balls. But again, they have some coach's kid or some injured player that is bringing in the ball. Recognize I said, some coach's kid. That is not an adult or in many cases, not someone that is paying attention to the actual game. Also it is often when they do not even have the football and they have to go looking for it just during a change of possession (where it happens most of the time BTW) And it has been like that my entire 20 plus year career at the high school level no matter the kind of game, 1st through semifinal and even the State Finals. All games have the same basic situation.

Peace

Originally Posted by bisonlj (Post 1033304)

Also interesting because those are the same people serving as ball boys in our HS games (usually the 10-14 year old son of a coach and his buddies) and they don't have major issues doing it. They are far from perfect and we sometimes have to yell at them because they aren't where they are supposed to be or paying attention but they generally do an adequate job to keep the game flowing.

Originally Posted by bisonlj (Post 1033304)

We almost always check at least 3-4 balls from each team. I know your schools have them if needed. They just need someone (IHSA would be better than the officials) to request multiple balls checked so ball mechanics can be done efficiently. You could live with 2 but 3 or 4 is definitely better. It's not rocket science and most other states seem to do it that way. I know this one is beyond your control.

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman (Post 1033321)

Remember where this method of starting the play clock began? It was in the WLAF in 1991, which means the NFL was using it to experiment with.

What was the problem they were seeking to address? Variation of the amount of time a team that wanted to exhaust the period clock would have, due to variation in the amount of time officials took to ready the ball after a running play -- which for pro football wasn't much variation.

The amount of time a team that wanted to bleed off the clock could would differ only between plays that ended with a ballcarrier's going down bounds. When the period clock was running, the team on defense could delay the RFP a little by being slightly uncooperative to a degree the officials would not stop the clock. But if the offense wanted to hurry up, having a fixed amount of time between downs with the clock running did not help against such tactics by the defense. It helped only if the team on offense wanted to consume time and the officials were slow, and only when the preceding play left the clock running.

The amount of time the WLAF used at first for this, 35 seconds, produced a pace that was slightly faster than even Canadian football's and was difficult for offenses to use any plays where they had to get a good pre-snap look at the defense or to signal anything complicated, so the NFL never adopted that short a time; when they finally did adopt such a procedure, they made it 45 seconds, which proved in a few years to be a lavish amount of time for them.