AUSTIN, Texas — Brace yourself, college football fans. I could be wrong — as I was once, in 1993 — but you may witness possibly the biggest rule implementation to affect the game since the rules-makers basically legalized holding.
Baylor safety Jordan Lake, at first notice, called the change "ridiculous."
Texas coach Mack Brown admitted he is petrified of the possibilities.
Former Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum proposes a well-thought-out alternative solution.
What's the cause of all this potential consternation?
Starting this season, refs are going to start ejecting players for cheap shots to the head area.
Good rule, you're thinking, right? We're all about players' safety. Nothing is paramount to assuring the health and well-being of the players in such a violent sport, not even covering the spread.
However, we don't want to rob the game of the charm of those TV network-loving, high-impact collisions. And this from a guy who broke his neck playing high school football.
Walt Anderson, the fourth-year coordinator of Big 12 officials, downplays the significance and cautions against overreaction. He reviewed the tapes of every Big 12 game played last year and sees no reason to expect massive ejections.
"We'll not see a big, wholesale change in the Big 12 in what we're doing," Anderson said. "I can think of only one or two plays from last year that would have supported ejection."
Hopefully, he's right. Anderson has officiated games for 35 years and begins his 14th season as an NFL arbiter — his seventh as a referee — and notes that last February, the 12-member NCAA rules committee chaired by outgoing Oregon coach Mike Bellotti unanimously endorsed this point of emphasis to a rule that was already on the books.
The committee also supported moves to continue flagging as unsportsmanlike-conduct personal fouls what I consider innocent celebrations. For example, Washington's en masse party in the end zone with a ball flipped in the air — UW missed the long-distance, game-tying extra point in a 28-27 loss to BYU — and Quan Cosby's dive into the Fiesta Bowl end zone after the Longhorns' winning touchdown. Spike a ball or flip it up, still a penalty. Officials will also flag those impromptu first-down gestures by players as taunting fouls.
But the ejection penalty will either go unnoticed — or change Western civilization as we know it.
As Anderson points out, only 15 players were ejected in 1,381 Division I and Division I-AA football games last season, for all sorts of reasons. So he thinks alarmists should put on the brakes with their unfounded fears.
But how about the application of this tougher Rule 9-6, which will be spelled out in videos sent to every Big 12 team this month?
That's "the gray area," as the Longhorns head coach said.
The intent is to rid the game of deliberate, violent hits to the heads of unprotected, defenseless players with the purpose of causing injury. No reasonable person save maybe Skip Bayless would argue against that mission.
So what happens when, on the third play of the game, Texas' Sergio Kindle unintentionally whacks a falling Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford above the shoulders a few seconds after his release, and one well-meaning official flags the Longhorns' best defensive player for a personal foul and ejects him from the game?
Or if OU's Auston English did the same to Colt McCoy long after the whistle, not that that would ever happen (read: 2007 game), and is escorted to the Sooners' sideline for the rest of the game.
I can hear the howls now. Obvious officiating conspiracy. Where did the offending line judge go to school? Who had money on the game?
Slocum doesn't want to impugn the integrity of officials, who have impossible jobs, but it's not exactly crazy to think college football might have its own Tim Donaghy.
"I've got nothing against officials," Slocum said, "but we've got politicians who have less than perfect integrity. Bankers, doctors, preachers, lawyers all have problems, but we've got no crooked officials?
"We've got TV ministers and priests, some of them proven not to be (upstanding), and it's unthinkable that a whole group of officials have total integrity? It's an insult to our intelligence."
Slocum makes a point.
There will be as many diverse interpretations of the rule enforcement as there are college football officials, and 73 Big 12 officials — eight of them newbies — will carry a whistle this fall. A pass interference in the Pac-10 might be outstanding one-on-one coverage in the SEC. Why should this be determined any different?
"This one is huge," Brown said. "This one scares me to death."
Me, too. Why? Because it could well shape how defensive players play the game. It undoubtedly will deter some aggressiveness, not that that's all bad.
As Lake said at Big 12 media days in Dallas last month, "That's unbelievable. The goal of major-college football is gone. We should also put flags on. (But) people are trying to protect people more. People's lives are at stake, and it's probably for the best."
The rule change could affect the play of reputed headhunters like Lake more than others. He hadn't heard of the new emphasis and wanted to learn more.
"At the same time, it takes some of the fun away from it. That's how I've played since I knew what football was," Lake said. "In the front yard, I used to deck my brother. I had no remorse for hitting people. I guess I have to curtail it a little bit."
Slocum has a better idea. He proposed flagging the offending player on gameday, but leaving any further punishment — like suspensions — until more extensive review is done by the conferences' offices.
"I would put it on conference officials and commissioners and make them accountable," Slocum said. "If they think it was a flagrant, deliberate attempt to hurt or maim a player, then suspend him. But don't do it on the spur of the moment. Give it some thought."
Some deliberation, in other words, to figure out if something was deliberate.
Kirk Bohls writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: kbohls(at)statesman.com.