“Everybody wants expansion.”

‘Cause, you know, it’s all about doing it for the kids ($$).

The ACC’s Phillips said Wednesday that the number of potential games remains a problem. He recounted visiting with Clemson players, who said they wouldn’t want to play 17 games to win a national title.

Sankey pointed out that the rapid increase in the number of plays following the clock rule change in 2008 has forced players to face more in-game contact exposures than at any other point in the game’s history. He said it might be possible to tweak the clock rules to reduce exposures so that teams who did go deep in an expanded Playoff might be facing fewer plays than those participating in the current one*.

*This also might solve another issue commissioners face throughout the season. TV networks want three-hour games so they can tighten their windows and maximize ad revenue. Those rule changes might get proposed under the guise of player safety, but they also could wind up making the leagues’ TV deals more valuable.

Man!  I mean, what a coincidence, right?

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Pressure drop

Here’s the thing about Stetson Bennett:  yes, his legs will save you on a play or two when there’s pressure, but…

How do the college football playoff quarterbacks compare in their ability to handle pressure?

Here's how they stack up based on adjusted net yards per attempt pic.twitter.com/MOZm4ekAp8

— CFB Film Room (@CFBFilmRoom) December 9, 2021

It’s a tradeoff that Smart and Monken have to factor into the equation.

Seemed like a good idea at the time

Do you ever get the feeling that the law of unintended consequences was created with the NCAA in mind?

In the ever-changing landscape of college sports, a potentially massive domino is being discussed at the highest level that would drastically impact the lifeblood of any athletic program: recruiting.

Speaking Wednesday at the Sports Business Journal Learfield Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said the college football oversight committee was debating whether or not to eliminate the December early signing period, per SI‘s Ross Dellenger. Also on the table was moving the early signing period back to January.

The late-December signing period was instituted in 2017, and has had a massive effect on the sport at large. This year’s uptick in midseason firings can be tied directly to the early signing period, as schools feel a heightened sense of urgency to have a new head coach in place in time to salvage a recruiting class.

Of course, there was a reason they created the early signing date in the first place.

Roughly 80% of FBS prospects sign during the early period, while the rest do so in early February.

I’m sure whatever they come up with this time will work flawlessly.  Or not.

The real problem is that they can’t come up with a rule to prohibit athletic directors from panicking.

The comedic stylings of Mark Emmert

Shot.

Mark Emmert on big coaching contracts: "The marketplace for people in sports is hard to articulate but it's the marketplace. As long as people have resources, they're going to pay them."

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 8, 2021

Chaser.

Mark Emmert on NIL: "We still badly need Congress to act. They're not very optimistic that anything can be done."

— Ross Dellenger (@RossDellenger) December 8, 2021

It’s not hard to understand how a brain that can come up with those two concepts in the space of less than ten minutes could lead an organization to the brink of disaster.  What is hard to understand is why Emmert’s bosses still pay him to lead the organization.

Nick Saban on Stetson Bennett

I just noticed this exchange from Saban’s presser after the SECCG:

Q. This is for Coach Saban and Jordan: What did you guys do to really fluster Stetson Bennett tonight and obviously force him into a couple of huge mistakes?

JORDAN BATTLE: I think the main thing in this game was our disguises. We put in a lot of disguises this week. That was the big thing. Just have his eyes wandering around before the play. I think we did a good job on the back end and linebackers stemming and disguising. So I think that was a big part of the game.

NICK SABAN: I think that you try to change the picture as much as you can and make the quarterback try to make decisions after he gets the ball in his hand. Stetson Bennett to me is very instinctive, very good player. If he knows what the picture is — and I couple times tonight when he knew what the picture was, that’s when he made plays, and several big plays.

So I think us changing the picture on him a little bit helped. We have to play the ball better in the deep part of the field. We’ve had a couple of those the last couple of weeks that are things that we need to do better, but all in all, I think that was probably the one thing that helped it the most.

Pass rush always helps you. If you get good pass rush. We affected him in the pocket. He scrambled some, which is — you hate, but you’re also affecting a guy when you do that because you’re not throwing the ball on time.

What Saban is saying there is that Bennett isn’t as effective when a defense changes the post-snap picture on him.  Nick’s not as smart as the comment section of a football blog, obviously, so there’s some hope that Michigan’s defensive coordinator will ignore his game plan.

Musical palate cleanser, up pops the wife edition

Written by Allen Toussaint, backed by Little Feat and the Meters, Robert Palmer’s “Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley” is quintessentially funky.

Impossible to sit still listening to that song…