Timing changes could roll back

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Excellent piece by Steve Wieberg in USA Today today. Or tomorrow. Or whatever, shoot, it’s online now. 🙂

Point being, there is indeed talk about rolling back some of the speed-up changes foisted on us by the big-money level of college football.

Voting at the recent AFCA convention overwhelmingly called for the speed-up rules to be rescinded. One quote from the story was especially telling:

“Some of them even said they played games in two hours,” says Adams, a former supervisor of officials for the Western Athletic Conference and secretary-editor of the rules committee since 1992. “One coach called me, and he was almost in tears. He said, ‘I’ve got 70 guys on my squad, and they work their fannies off all week and I can’t get them in the game.’ “

Thank you! This was a ridiculous rule change that cost student-athletes opportunities in Division III in 2006.

It’s a long road to the NFL

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I had the good fortune to be sent to cover the Colts/Ravens game on Saturday, and watching this game gave me a reminder of exactly how long the distance is from Division III to the NFL.

Even the highest level of Division III is still quite distant from the top pro league on the planet. Maybe it’s hard to appreciate the size of a Ray Lewis or an Adalius Thomas on paper. Todd Heap? Yeah, he’s a heap and then some. Speed? This game is played at a frenetic pace.

Those Division III players fortunate enough to have a shot at the big time have to fight all sorts of preconceptions about D-III, that’s true. It’s somewhat unfair. But they also have to conquer their own shortcomings in many cases when it comes to competing on this level. Because it’s not just the next level — it’s two or three levels up.

Good luck to Whitworth’s Michael Allan, the first D-III player to be invited to the NFL’s scouting combine since Ryan Hoag was in 2003. Good luck to former Dubuque receiver Daunta Peterson, who recently signed with the Bills and has been allocated to NFL Europe. Represent us well.

By the way, the Ravens emptied out a luxury suite to accomodate the extra media interest in this game. They didn’t seat anyone in the stands outside (though it was a decent day) or on the roof. Someone in the organization gave up their room to accomodate the media.

If only some D-III schools would do the same.

Another WIAC coaching change

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Another week, another WIAC coaching changeover that threatens to become rancorous. Although the school’s release says that Todd Strop resigned and does not make any reference whatsoever to the recent arrest of an outgoing Stout football player on drug charges, it’s hard from the outside not to draw a direct line and suggest that he was forced to resign over the actions of a couple of people in the program.

Justified? Who knows. None of us has inside knowledge. Is it a reaction to the five games the team lost by four points or fewer? Seems unlikely — the last game was played two months ago. Why wait until now?