If you want to know what is really important in any organization, don’t
look at what the leaders say: look at what is rewarded, and, conversely,
what will get you fired.
Whether you’re talking about a
Fortune 500 company or a college fraternity, the real culture of any
group can be found in the rewards and the punishments. A CEO can yammer
on for years about how important his people are, but if keeping payroll
costs low will earn middle-managers a raise you can bet the pink slips
will be on the way.
A social club can talk about all the good
work they do for various charities, but if their annual convention
includes the kind of drunken debauchery that would make Caligula blush,
you know what’s really important to them.
The same is true in
football. A coach can talk forever about the importance of grades and
curfews and conduct off the field, but until a player gets suspended for
a game or two or gets permanently separated from the team, the words
don’t mean much.
That is why the NCAA’s newly proposed rule on
high hits to defenseless players might be the best thing the normally
feckless organization has ever done.
Under the proposed rule,
which received unanimous support from the NCAA Football Rules Committee,
a player who hits a defenseless player in the head will be immediately
ejected from the game in addition to the 15-yard penalty already in
place.
“It’s a real problem in the sport, and we need to
eliminate it,” said Rules Committee chairman and Air Force coach Troy
Calhoun.
In reviewing tape from last season, Calhoun said that
there were 99 instances of high hits that would have resulted in
ejections under the newly proposed rule. In a lot of those instances,
the defenseless player left the game with a concussion or other injury.
It is those kinds of hits and injuries that were the crux of the recent
Rules Committee meeting in Indianapolis.
“It's not a gigantic
number,” Calhoun said. “Ultimately, our goal is zero. Is that realistic?
I don't know if zero is. But I know any time you involve an ejection,
we're going to see that number go down drastically immediately.”
More
than anything, the rule change lets everyone — players, coaches and
fans – know that the NCAA takes player safety seriously. Some might
claim that this “sissifies” a game that is, at its core, brutal, but
we’re not talking about a linebacker meeting a running back in the hole
or a defensive end lowering the boom on a quarterback. We’re talking
about blows to the head of defenseless men. Opposing that is like being
in favor of clubbing baby seals.
Players will learn quickly. No
one wants the stigma of being ejected for a dirty hit. It’s like beating
up the smaller kid on the playground. The shame lasts far longer than
the punishment.
And for those who think this rule is a slippery
slope toward two-hand touch, keep in mind that arguably the greatest
hit of the 2012 season came in the Outback Bowl when South Carolina’s
Jadeveon Clowney ran over Michigan back Vincent Smith. Under the new
rules, that hit would remain perfectly legal.
This is not a good
rule; it’s a great one. The NCAA should be applauded for taking the lead
in setting stiff penalties for hits that could cause traumatic brain
injury to defenseless players.
Hopefully everyone in football, including the fans, will see it that way.
