Owners Meeting

The NFL team owners are meeting in Palm Beach, Florida. Bet it's nice. It's a far cry from a bunch of guys sitting around Ralph Hay's Canton Hupmobile dealership. The owners have a few meetings throughout the year. All are in nice, warm places catering to wealthy folk, like NFL owners. This one is the Annual Meeting, the big one. This one handles the new rule proposals. The rules that pass inspection by the owners go on to the aptly named Rules Committee for the final "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." The owners will also hand out the 32 compensatory picks. These picks in the NFL Draft are meant to compensate team for free agents lost the year before. The losses are balanced by the quantity and quality of free agents signed. So even if a team lost a bunch of free agents they may not get much or any compensation if they signed a bunch of free agents. The important thing is that the Minnesota Vikings were awarded two fourth round picks this year for the loss of defensive end Ray Edwards and receiver Sidney Rice. Losing quarterback Tarvaris Jackson and linebacker Ben Leber may have guaranteed the two picks. The owners dicuss many other matters but the rules discussions likely have the greatest visible impact. I wonder if there has ever been a year when they just left the rules alone.

Here's some of the rules that will be discussed:

1) Overtime-the league is looking to expand the new playoff overtime rules to the regular season. It was idiotic to not include the regular season in the first place. It made no sense. Even if it was an experiment, you do not experiment with the playoffs.

2) Replay-to follow the automatic review of scoring plays, they will look into making calls involving change of possession an automatic review as well. This sounds nice if the replay officials are quick about it.

3)Too many men on the field penalty-the New York Giants "inadvertantly" made this a concern. The Giants gained an unfair advantage at the end of the Super Bowl when they were called for "too many men on the field". The most precious thing in the world to the Patriots at that moment was time. They lost some with the play that didn't happen due to the penalty. The Patriots may have gained five yards but they lost at least five seconds.

4) Injured Reserve-players no longer have to be out for the entire season if they are placed on injured reserve. They can be activated at some point during the season.

5) Trade Deadline-Roger Goodell is envious of the hoopla over the trade deadline in other sports. They think that moving it two weeks later in the sesaon would increase the trade activity. I have my doubts. I don't think that in-season trades in football can have the same impact as other sports. It takes too long to get a player integrated into a new system. I don't think that two weeks will make a difference but I see this passing.

6) Quarterback Horse Collar-currently quarterbacks can be pulled down by a horse collar while in the pocket. I was actually I little surprised when I saw quarterbacks taken down like this without a flag. With all the protection provided to quarterbacks this rule will easily slide through.
7)Concussion concessions-with the warranted concern over concussions this rule would allow teams to declare players with concussion symptoms inactive before game day. This allows time for teams to promote a player from the practice squad or sign a player.

8)Replay again-I doubt this one has a chance. It calls for replays to be decided from the booth rather than by the on-field official. The overhaul is too great to really have a chance.

There it is.