Quote:The NCAA rules committee proposed the change—with lobbying from Alabama’s Nick Saban—in the name of player safety.

Richt is skeptical of that.

“I feel like if you can train offensive players to play five or six plays in a row, you can train defensive players to play that many plays in a row, too,” Richt said. “I personally don’t think it’s a health-issue deal, but if there’s some evidence otherwise, it will be interesting to see it. …I think it’s somebody’s assumption. I don’t think there’s any hard evidence on it.”

Indeed, committee chair Troy Calhoun from Air Force has said there may not be evidence of a safety issue and if not “there should not be any adjustment,” to the rule.

Quote:Only 25 of the nation's 128 FBS head coaches are in favor of a rule proposal that would slow down college offenses, according to a survey conducted by ESPN.

Of the 25 in favor, only 11 are coaches at a "Power 5 Conference" school in either the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC, plus Notre Dame. Of the 128 coaches overall, 73 percent (93 coaches) are opposed to the proposal while only 19.5 percent (25 coaches) are in favor. Seven percent (nine coaches) are undecided.

One head coach refused to participate, indicating he "did not wish to be part of the conversation on this topic."

Quote:Of the 65 "Power 5 Conference" FBS programs (based on 2014 memberships) -- from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12 and SEC, plus Notre Dame -- nearly three-fourths are opposed to the rule proposal. That's a higher percentage than the 63 "non-power" programs from the American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences, plus Army, BYU and Navy.

Of the 65 "Power 5 Conference" schools, 74 percent (48 coaches) were against the rule proposal, 17 percent (11 coaches) for the proposal and 9 percent (six coaches) undecided/didn't vote. Of the 63 "non-power" schools, 71 percent (45 coaches) were opposed, 22 percent (14 coaches) in favor and six percent (four coaches) undecided.

Quote:One other coach, who was for the proposal, added: "The most outspoken guys are unbalanced offensive guys." This coach believed because the votes wouldn't be disclosed, he thought the vote would be nearly a 50-50 split.

It wasn't even close.

None of the conferences had more than one-third of its teams that favored the rule, although none of the 10 conferences were unanimously against it. Among the biggest concerns for a coach opposed to the rule was that "the reason of player safety was being given without any legitimate data. If legitimate data existed, I could feel differently," he said. Added another coach: "I'm all for anything that promotes student-athlete safety, but this isn't the rule to do it."

Because the proposal only would allow the ball to be snapped in the first 10 seconds during the final two minutes of each half, a coach opposed to the rule suggested it could eliminate fourth-quarter comebacks.

"So if you're down by 15 with four minutes to go and you can't play fast? Game's over," he said.

Quote:If passed, the proposal would prohibit teams from snapping the ball until at least 10 seconds run off the 40-second play clock, which would allow defenses time to substitute. The exceptions would be in the final two minutes of each half or if the play clock began at 25 seconds.

“Oh, so now all of a sudden we don’t care about them in two minutes?” Swinney deadpanned.

Quote:“And how about the offensive guys?” he said. “Most of the time, when you look at defenses, they rotate their defensive line the whole game. We do it, most teams do it. Those offensive linemen play just about every snap. So we’re going to sit here and cry for guys who are playing 30 snaps when you’ve got guys on the other side playing 70? Give me a break. It’s an agenda, that’s what it is. If we’re going to talk about player safety, then when they’re going to blitz seven and we’ve only got six, is that extra guy going to hold his hand up before he comes so we know where he’s coming from and that kind of stuff? The whole thing is ridiculous.”

Quote:Rhoads pointed out that there’s already an “absolute mandate” for officials to stop the game and send a player out if he thinks the player is injured or fatigued. At the FBS level, Rhoads said teams are averaging close to 180 plays per game, the highest it’s ever been. A few years ago, he said teams were averaging 130-140 plays.

“There’s no way you see a fatigued guy, a guy down on one knee,” Rhoads said. “Whether he asks for that injury timeout or not, that’s part of our management of the game -- detect anything to do with player safety, stop the game, let the trainers look at him.”