I’m sad that college football is over, mostly because we’ve officially entered the stretch where basketball highlights dominate SportsCenter, which will soon be joined by baseball highlights, which are really just bland permutations of:
Hbb = { [homerun + divingcatch + doubleplay] x (RedSox)(Yankees) } x ∞I get it. Anyway, look for even fewer college football highlights next year, when the NCAA’s expansion of the so-called “Reggie Bush Rule” takes effect.
The era of Reggie Bush’s somersaulting into the end zone the way he did during his heyday at Southern California is over. And next season, if a player in college football is penalized for excessive celebration while scoring a touchdown, the penalty will take the touchdown off the board. Through this season, a penalty was assessed on the kickoff.
“I think it changes the complexion of the rule,” Auburn Coach Gene Chizik said. “There is no question about it.”
This is insane; I’m almost at a loss. There are plenty of appropriate ways to penalize celebration without ripping a hole in the flow of the actual game. I’m not a fan of some of the demonstrative antics that we’re seeing in sports whenever some athletes wants attention for not getting a certain call or getting his only first down of the game. And this will effectively change that culture in college football in 99.9 percent of those instances, but the one time where a kid hops around in front of a camera in a close game next season will be absolutely tragic. It’ll be Kansas State-Syracuse to the power of ten, and that’s not a compliment.
