New Rules Analysis

Never let it be said the CFL is staid.  With each new year comes a few more tweaks to the league rulebook, and 2010 is no different. 

The rule getting all the attention is the revised overtime format - teams will be required to attempt two-point conversions after touchdowns in OT.  Everything else remains the same: each team gets a possession at the 35-yard line.  If that doesn't solve anything, they switch ends and try again - and after that, it's a tie. 

Analysis: I'm not necessarily opposed to this, but to be honest, didn't see the need.  It's not hard to score points in the CFL, so ties are rare. If two teams play dead even for 60 minutes plus two possessions each, a tie is a perfectly appropriate result, in my humble opinion. That said, this should make already-rare overtimes even more exciting, now that the dullest play in football - the single convert - is eliminated. 

Much less attention is being paid to the other tweaks, which is a shame.  I'm cutting and pasting the explanation from the TSN story, but the analyses are my own. 

-- A team that gives up a field goal (during regulation time) will have the option of scrimmaging from its 35-yard line instead of receiving a kickoff.


Analysis: I like this.  This will create additional incentive to gamble on third downs and play for touchdowns.  Is it a huge change?  Hardly.  But minor tweaks are almost always superior to huge changes, especially in a sport with so much history. 


-- When a ball is punted, hits the ground and hits a player from the covering team, the ensuing penalty will be five rather than 15 yards.


Analysis: A correction of what was an unfair penalty.  Once the ball hits the ground, it's near-impossible to guess how and where it will bounce.  15 yards for a bad bounce was far too great a swing for a random bounce. 

-- There will be no penalty for pass interference if a forward pass is deemed uncatchable.

Analysis: In my humble opinion, this is the most significant of all the changes.  Pass interference penalties are easily the most frustrating single aspect of the CFL.  Despite what the league says, there are simply no clear or (crucially) consistent parameters as to what constitutes pass interference.  I'm not talking about obvious ones, where the receiver is literally hauled down several seconds before the ball arrives - those are simple common sense.  Far too often, entire games swing in the balance of what comes down to a split-second judgement call by an official who might be 30 yards away from the play. 

To be clear: that's not the officials' fault.  Despite media grousing, CFL officials actually do a very good job,  under the circumstances.  Those circumstances, of course, involve observing and judging the action of 24 players moving at top speed on a huge playing surface.  And if they make a mistake, TV is right there to show the audience.  Things that seem simultaneous from a distance in real time can (and often do) look very different in slow motion, zoomed in. 

What does that have to do with this change?  It will eliminate one or two PI calls per game, for starters.  That's a good thing.  It also discourages quarterbacks from taking "cheap shots," where they deliberately underthrow or overthrow a ball - with no risk of interception - and the receiver barrels into the DB, possibly resulting in a call.  That call, if it comes, can literally move the ball the length of the field. 

So yeah, I'm in favour.  :-)