Leading with the head will draw penalties

CORVALLIS — Several rules have been put in place this season to speed up college football games, but an emphasis on an old one may have a bigger impact in the opposite direction.

Oregon State defensive coordinator Mark Banker predicts even longer games because officials will be looking to call more penalties for spearing, which is the act of a defender lowering his head and making a tackle with the top of his helmet and not the facemask or shoulder pads.

Banker saw the change in philosophy up close during the first OSU scrimmage last weekend with a penalty called for spearing, followed by a warning for the same player.

It surprised him because he can’t remember that call being made against the Beavers in his three seasons.

“That’s an officials’ thing,” Banker said. “Someone probably brought it up in an officials’ meeting. If they look for it this year, there will be more spearing called this year than in the history of college football. They called one in the scrimmage and it wasn’t even close. Then he told (trainer) Barney (Graff) he did it again. I watched the film and it wasn’t the case.”

Banker really supports the rule because he doesn’t want his players hurt or the opposition injured. The no-spearing rule is to protect athletes, mostly from themselves.

Leading with the head can hurt the tackler more than the ball carrier. The impact compacts the spinal cord and can cause long-term injuries, Graff said.

However, Banker sees an emphasis in calling it as an overreaction.

Graff looks at the game as a trainer. His main goal is to keep everyone safe, and then help them heal from the injuries.

“Some of the meetings I’ve gone to there are case study presentations about people using the helmet as a weapon and several football players from the professional level down through the high school level have been suffering neck injuries that change the way they spend the rest of their life,” Graff said.

A 32-member task force worked with the NCAA last year to clarify the rules. The penalty was rarely called because the wording said it’s against the rules if there’s intent to use the head as a weapon.

Officials said they couldn’t read the player’s mind as to intent. The word intent has been taken out of the rulebook, now saying if a player lowers his head, it is a penalty.

Change to the status quo began, but it was only minimal. There were 21 penalties called for spearing and 21 for butting or ramming in all Division I and I-AA games last season, according to NCAA statistics.

That more than doubled the 2004 stats, but the trainers felt that number was still too low.

“I personally don’t think it was called enough last year,” Graff said. “At the Pac-10 student-athlete health care meetings, as a conference we agreed it wasn’t called enough. Every school has an instance when our player was speared and it wasn’t called. We’ll see if more of them are called this year.”

Proper tackling is taught from the beginning in Pop Warner, and by the time players earn Division I scholarships they know how to bring down a ball carrier.

However, a refresher course is always good when making a jump to the next level.

“I think they are getting good instruction at the high school level,” Graff said. “But the game changes with the speed. There’s a lot more technique and skill taught to the new players because everybody is big and fast here.”

OSU coaches hound technique into the players at practice. If Graff or the coaches see someone putting themselves in danger it’s corrected on the field or in the meeting room with the help of the practice video.

So why are players still putting themselves in danger so that officials must step in?

“It’s big hits,” Graff said. “I don’t think they line up and see a ball carrier and try and bang the snot out of him with the top of their head. But when these guys are going and someone else is running just as hard at them, it’s all about delivering the big blow. I think it’s a natural thing to just drop your head. It’s part of the bowing-the-neck mechanism.”

Then there’s the false sense of security the helmet gives players. The latest line of head gear is better than before in preventing injuries, but it’s not perfect.

Graff believes rugby players are better tacklers because they don’t have as much protection without facemasks. The fear of losing teeth or breaking their nose forces proper technique.

Tackling safety is an ongoing course on the practice fields.

It’s just now the tests are being graded harder.

“We’ve always taught proper technique and it’s a non-issue,” Banker said. “That’s not even part of our vocabulary because it’s not a legal thing to do. So it doesn’t affect anything we do because it’s not new teaching.”

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