Rules changes OK, says Doba

PULLMAN – The times, they are a-changin’. And they’re going right back to what they were two years ago.

The NCAA, after one year of modified clock rules that shortened games and drastically reduced the number of plays in the average college football game, has decided to go back to the old, 2005 timing rules.

And at least one Division I-A head coach is pretty happy about it.

“I think it’s good,” Washington State’s Bill Doba said. “I’d rather have it the way it was (two years ago). We have a pretty good product. Why change it?”

But change it the NCAA did before last season, starting the clock after changes of possession and when the ball was kicked off, not when it was first touched by the receiving team.

Although the effect wasn’t dramatic as far as game play, it did become more difficult to stage late-game comebacks and the rule change made it possible to intentionally kill the clock on kickoffs by committing penalties, as Wisconsin did in a game against Penn State last fall.

Doba said he didn’t think the rule change affected the result of a WSU game last season, but still emphasized his agreement with a move back to the old system.

“Other than (having) less plays, I didn’t really notice it,” Doba said. “I thought it was going to be atrocious. I thought it was going to be terrible. But it really didn’t have that big of an effect on the game.”

“There were too many glitches to it. You could have kicked off backwards or run the clock off.”

The NCAA is going to consider some additional changes, probably for 2008, that would involve using play clock rules similar to those in the NFL in an attempt to find a happy medium for game lengths.