Gus Malzahn, brave defender of the status quo, touches the last base in opposing the downfield lineman rule change.
“Scoring will be down. You’re not going to see teams scoring as many points, and when it’s getting harder all the time to get fans to come to games, is that something that college football wants?”
I dunno. I kinda enjoyed it when Georgia held Malzahn’s offense to seven points.
Seriously, I figured that was coming. And it touches on a nerve. There’s some point when you cheapen the ability to score so much that it debases the game. I’m not saying we’re at the point – although I don’t doubt there are plenty who would say otherwise – but arguing that the more pinball action to the game, the better doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies, either.
Besides, I thought you were Mr. Creative, Gus. Surely a little setback like a rule change won’t be an insurmountable block for a guy with your offensive vision. Even if you only finished fourth in the conference in scoring last season with the rule the way you like it.
Get The Picture 
Wow, what a sneaky snake. “When it’s harder all the time to get fans to come to games”. Really, Gus? It’s harder to get them to come to games because of teams aren’t scoring enough points? Not because I can get a 65 inch LED TV with deluxe surround sound system for $1200?
Now, if the fans who weren’t coming to games weren’t watching the games full stop, maybe he’d have a point, but that is clearly not the case looking at overall revenue trends. The issues are 100% orthogonal, and he knows it.
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You’re 100% plane right about that angle
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bravo
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Its hard to get them to come because Auburn is charging us $115 a pop to watch them cheat.
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This is a sorry excuse in my opinion. Why don’t we just make teams play with 10 defenders instead of 11 if you want more points. Or, you know, out scheme defense without breaking the rules.
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By the way, I hate soccer, but soccer teams score 0-3 goals per game and it’s by far the most popular sport in the world.
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Exactly–and each of those goals are for more valuable for it. Conversely, each basket is cheapened when 2 basketball teams score 300 points combined. I prefer Soccer thanks.
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“By the way, I hate soccer”
Who doesn’t?
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Me.
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Yep—I’ve gotten into soccer a bit over the last few years (Arsenal fan). Matches are only two hours with no commercials, no instant replay nonsense, no timeouts, and little stoppage other than halftime and an occasional injury (fake or legit).
I’ll never like soccer as much as football, but with the way CFB is heading, soccer ain’t all that bad at all.
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It is great excercise, and fun to play…
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Funny you said that. I just remarked to a friend the other day that, among the middle aged demographic, you rarely, if ever, see overweight guys in their 30’s and 40’s playing rec soccer. Perhaps that explains the bitterness among non-soccer types.
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I’ve heard doctors say that overweight people shouldn’t go out and play soccer or other strenuous cardiac sports without getting in shape first. My boys (and now my grandchildren) played soccer growing up and we went to see Chicago Sting games, yet I have never “dug” the sport and I wasn’t overweight at the time. When I was overweight later the pounds melted off in the winter cross-country skiing. I was the only guy that I perceived as overweight. Perhaps that explains the bitterness among non-cross-country skier types.
Different strokes got nothing to do with overweight.
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Hah. Well done sir.
and true.
Both my star athletes played soccer and were on the neighborhood swim teaMs. I credit all their HS letters and records to those early sports. Soccer is great. Swimming too. I just dont watch it like football. 🙂
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We see this over and over with these system guys. June Jones Syndrome. They’re wide-open offensive geniuses until you try to change a rule that messes with any small piece of that system. Then it’s going to “ruin football” if you take away that small piece. The Gus Bus ought to have better four-wheel traction than that, right?
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Yo Gus, note from the bleachers….Fuck you.
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Let’s go to my high school PE class rules, one hand touch, can throw as many passes on every play as you want, from wherever you want, and everyone is eligible.
Get real creative with that Gus.
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Take your gimmick and go back to high school Dbag
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It’s this stupid thinking that got us the DH. If you don’t like the game played as it was intended to be played then watch something else. Maybe bowling. There’s no defense in bowling.
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Will there be milkshakes?
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I drink your milkshake. And I’m finished.
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Gus to the NCAA; If you can’t do it for the Kids do it for the Fans, please.
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I was just getting ready to say next up is the “please think of the children” defense.
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Hee Hee Hee
Haw Haw!
Hee Hee Hee Haw Haw!
No Waffle House that night. ;-(
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Thanks, AHD! You made my day. We can’t beat them enough for me, and I hope we take the overall series back on the Plains next November.
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Why don’t they ever go to Toomer’s Grill?
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I love how Saban whines about rules changes to benefit the offense and Malzahn whines about rules changes that benefit the defense. One thing with Richt is that you don’t get much whining either way.
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Kristi asks that you please
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One thing with Richt is that you don’t get much winning either way.
BOOM…FIFY!
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If we want more scoring and more linemen downtown to make the games more interesting for fans, why not just implement arena football rules(I don’t mean that seriously). Arena football is fast, crazy with players all over the place and overabundance of scoring but fans are a lot less interested in the arena league. Gus is barking up the wrong tree ( no pun intended ).
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This is the kind of argument that marginalizes some of the spread guys whenever these rule changes come up.
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Gus Malzahn is a dick.
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Hah….you would know Mikey.
Late night Bluto. Youngest was participating in moot court..Oldest son came down and we took him out for dinner. Yikes tomorrow is already here … I’ll drag tomorrow I’m sure but…I won’t regret it.
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There’s always arena football.
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Poor Gus. He hasn’t figured out that the shelf life on a coach’s media “ethos” is about 6 months unless you win a national title or survive a decade at a known program.
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“There’s some point when you cheapen the ability to score so much that it debases the game. I’m not saying we’re at the point – although I don’t doubt there are plenty who would say otherwise”
We are without a doubt very close especially when two of the “best” teams in the country play a regulation-length game that ends 61-58 and everyone talks about it as an instant classic. If you can’t hold someone under 50, you have no business talking about how you should be in a playoff.
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+1000
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Of course he isn’t totally wrong about football needing offensive highlights to make the game more attractive, but it is a degree thingy. No one wants soccer type scoring, or even the offensive production like the SEC had in the Dooley era, but he is wrong that fans just want teams to march up and down the field with the last team with the ball prevailing. Total game scoring in the 40s and 50s is about the right amount for me, a good 27-21 type contest that includes defensive stops and the punting game playing a role. The rule changes have tilted the game too much toward the offense for my taste, and an offensive genius like Malzahn shouldn’t need lack of enforcement of downfield blocking rules to make his team better. As others above have stated, there are games like he seems prefer already available. That November evening was the highlight game of the season for me. Now lets’s GATA and take the series lead this fall.
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A 21-14 game is just fine, aka soccer type scoring
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Mac, you’re absolutely right. I don’t want to see 9-6 style of play like Bama-LSU ’11, but I love watching good defense as integral to the game. I’ll have to admit the UGA-Clem’s Son game in ’13 was a damn good football game even though we ended up on the short end of the stick.
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That 3-2 score between Auburn and Missy St in 2008 was a thing of beauty. It was ineptness at its best. The teams combined to go 3-for-30 on third down and punted a total of 17 times.
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Ugh! We beat Auburn that year, but we didn’t smash them like we should have. That Auburn-MSU game was football at its worst.
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+100 nothing wrong with a well balanced game.
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In a lot of games, we seem to have reached a point where the D plays the part of the Washington Generals to the O’s Globetrotters. It’d amusing to new audiences. And then it gets old in a hurry.
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ok, been reading you since Joe Cox was the starter. Don’t think I’ve ever needed a reason to comment. So, let me say first you are one hell of a blogger. Definitely the first links I click on the dawgbone, daily. Now, this:
“Besides, I thought you were Mr. Creative, Gus. Surely a little setback like a rule change won’t be an insurmountable block for a guy with your offensive vision. Even if you only finished fourth in the conference in scoring last season with the rule the way you like it.”
This I bit I love! My girl is a die hard auburn fan. The kind that legitimately yelled at the TV every single time Nick Marshall threw a pass. She is one of the few non-disillusioned auburn fans. I say all this, because; she had no response to your statement there, whatsoever. I’ve never heard this woman go silent about auburn. You sir, I owe you a drink. Or a gallon.
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if she’s an AU fan and you want her to go silent, just ask her to calculate the area of a circle with a 3.2 inch diameter. That should hush her up until Christmas.
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Ha!
Thanks for the blog praise and the story. And feel free to jump in here more often.
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I am far more concerned with how this rule might mess up our own play action passing game.
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Since we are typically passing from the pocket, you have to retreat to pass block even in play action. I’m not worried about it. We run the sprint draw enough to make run like a pass and do enough play action to make the pass look like run.
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I hope you’re right! 🙂
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The play action could be an issue. The way I understand it. The OL blocks as though it is a run even though it is a pass. How much of a push does it take to push a DL 1yd? Or if a DL spins to get past the OL, does the momentum carry the OL past the 1 yd. The 3yd rule that’s in place may be good enough if they just called it correctly and consistently. I’m curious to see just how consistent they will be if they do go to the 1 yard limit and the effects it will have on everyone’s O. I’m sure it will cause more problems for some.
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The OLman is legal in your scenario…
“Steve Shaw, the SEC’s coordinator of officials, said the new rule would stipulate that an offensive lineman could still be 3 yards downfield as long as he was engaged with a defender, but that offensive linemen would no longer be able to free release beyond 1 yard and a team legally throw a pass.”
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Well Gus, that rule wasn’t in play this year and we curb stomped you! Didn’t bother us much.
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