It's not surprising that Alabama football coach Nick Saban tried to run a backdoor play by quietly meeting with the NCAA football rules committee in Indianapolis recently.
What's shocking is he didn't try to persuade the committee to propose a ban preventing missed field goals from being returned.
Can I have a rimshot please? Thank you, you're a great audience. Stick around for my late show.
Seriously, Saban's clandestine meet with the committee, resulting in successfully persuading it to propose a defensive substitution rule that would slow down no-huddle, uptempo offenses, shouldn't raise eyebrows.
The Nicktator has been complaining about this since coaches Kevin Sumlin of Texas A&M and Hugh Freeze of Ole Miss showed up in the SEC two seasons ago. Their frenetic pace of play was apparently too uncomfortable for Saban's extremely talented defenses to handle at times.
Saban surely got completely pushed over the edge last year when no-huddle-lovin' Gus Malzahn set up shop nearby as Auburn's coach, and came within seconds of guiding the Tigers to the BCS national championship.
The rules committee proposal, which must be approved by the playing rules oversight panel that meets March 6 and would be effective in the upcoming season, would allow defensive players to substitute within the first 10 seconds of the 40-second play clock, except for the final two minutes of each half.
Offenses snapping the ball before 29 seconds remain on the play clock would receive a 5-yard delay-of-game penalty.
Current rules state that defensive players aren't guaranteed the opportunity to substitute unless the offense first substitutes. Under the proposal, this policy would remain when the play clock starts at 25 seconds.
The constant argument of Saban, Arkansas' coach Bret Bielema and other coaches that don't like defending no-huddle is that the lack of the right to substitute defensively causes fatigue that leads to increased injuries.
The instantaneous reply of coaches like Freeze is, "Where's the data that proves this?"
Actually, there is none supporting Saban and his cronies who want to slow play Sumlin, Freeze and other coaches like Arizona's Rich Rodriguez who enjoy playing fast-break football.
Interestingly enough, there is data on a website called cfbmatrix.com that supports the fastbreak coaches more so than the slowhands like Saban, Bielema and the rest of the steady-as-she-goes crew.
Dave Bartoo, a 42-year old who works in bank and credit union mergers, is an analytical expert who apparently spends all his free time breaking down college football.
Some of the things Bartoo found studying injuries in relation to pace of play blows Saban's and Bielema's argument out of the boat.
A smidgen of Bartoo's data revealed:
•From 2010-2012, Saban's Alabama teams and Bielema's Wisconsin teams (before he came to Arkansas last season) were both in the bottom 10 nationally of plays per game generated on offense and faced on defense. Saban and Bielema lost a combined 95 starts to injury, with 44 of those, less than half, on defense.
•From 2010-2012 Alabama lost a total of 30 starts to injury. Twenty-one of those were players on Alabama's bottom five slow pace of play offense. The nine games that Alabama defensive players lost to injury in that three-year period was the lowest total on any defense of teams that automatically qualified to play in a BCS bowl.
•The other five teams (before league expansion) in the SEC West, that all played against the physical and methodically punishing Alabama offense, averaged 25.2 starts lost to injury over the same time period.
•From 2009-2010 an SEC team played in an average of 162 snaps per game. In 2011-2012 the average dropped to 160. In spite of the slower pace, SEC teams lost 184 more starts to injury from 2011-2012 than they did in 2009-2010. Exactly 55% of the '11-'12 starts lost were on offense.
So considering all this, will the rules oversight committee send the message to Saban and other coaches sharing his view that their argument has no legs? They should shoot down the proposal, shouldn't they?
What has made most coaches hot under their whistles is this proposal was never discussed during last month's American Football Coaches of Association convention.
Not one peep. Nothing.
Bielema was at the rules committee meeting in Indianapolis as a representative of the American Football Coaches Association.
Saban was there representing Saban.
In Saban's heart, he truly believes the reasons for his concern, his willingness to fight the good fight.
But to most of college football, it appears extremely self-serving.
