News & Info/Headlines

Each spring, the NFL Competition Committee puts before league officials a handful or proposed rules changes for the upcoming season. This year's proposals were discussed, debated and voted on -- for the most part -- at last week's NFL Owners Meetings in Phoenix.

Among the issues addressed were replay, celebrations, the "K Ball," (aka the Tony Romo Rule), roughing the passer and touchdowns scored near the sidelines. Now that the dust has settled, a quick review of the changes made (along with some that weren't) and the potential impact on Fantasy owners is in order.

We'll start at the top. ... As Associated Press football writer Barry Wilner framed it: "Replay is here to stay in the NFL. ... Or at least as permanently as any rule can be in pro football."

League owners voted 30-2 last Tuesday to make the video replay system a permanent officiating tool.

All but three stadiums will be equipped with high-definition equipment and will be recabled before the upcoming season, at a cost of as much as $300,000 per club. The three stadiums exempted -- in Irving, Texas, Indianapolis and East Rutherford, N.J. -- are being replaced. The team's new facilities will obviously feature the hi-def gear.

"It's a long time coming," said Falcons general manager Rich McKay, co-chairman of the competition committee. "It made sense to us this year to do it. Instant replay is an accepted part of the game. It's what we are. There was not really much discussion about it."

Cincinnati and Arizona voted against the proposal, as they nearly always do on replay issues.

A proposal to make all penalties other than holding reviewable was removed from the table before it could be voted on. ...

In terms of Fantasy impact, replay will continue to have a major role -- in my opinion, to the positive. The bottom line here says anything that helps officials get it right is the best way to go. ...

Meanwhile, unnecessary celebrations are over.

Owners approved a rule that will penalize a player 5 yards for spiking the ball in the field of play next season. Twenty-six owners were in favor of the ruling; five voted no and one owner abstained.

According to Buffalo News reporter Allen Wilson, the spiking rule was put in place to stop players from slamming the ball to the turf after the most routine plays.

Such actions demonstrated poor sportsmanship, said McKay.

"We were having celebrations on a 3-yard slant play, where the receiver decided to get up and throw the ball 30 yards downfield in celebration of this great achievement," he said following the vote. "We just felt like we needed to try to clean that up."

The rule does not apply to plays out of bounds and players can still spike the ball after scoring a touchdown, provided they observe the existing rule against taunting opponents.

"We really do believe this is something that when you tell the players 'Hey, there's a penalty for this on the field of play,' it will go away," McKay said.

Although I personally agree with the move to limit individual celebrations -- especially those addressed by this rule, I did find it very interesting that Washington Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs, an "old-school" guy if there ever was one, voiced rather passionate opposition to this one during the pre-vote debate.

Gibbs' concern was that the league might be legislating emotion out of the game -- making it less fun for the competitors.

It's a reasonable argument.

Nonetheless, I certainly won't miss what have seemingly become obligatory celebrations tacked onto each and every positive offensive play (especially those made by wideouts).

Concerns? It remains to be seen how much this rule leaves open to interpretation by the on-field officiating crew. Consistent calls will play a critical role in how the application of the rule affects teams. ...

Moving along. ... As Fort Worth Star-Telegram NFL writer Charean Williams suggested, "It took a quarterback for NFL rulesmakers to listen to kickers."

Specialists have complained about slick footballs since the NFL began using special kicking balls -- or K-balls -- in 1999.

Now, thanks to the so-called "Tony Romo Rule," slick balls should not be as much of an issue.

Beginning this season, equipment managers will be given 45 minutes to prepare the kicking balls. The 12 K-balls also will be numbered, and officials will do their best to ensure that the balls are used sequentially, with the No. 1-marked ball being kicked with as long as it's available.

According to Williams, a local official -- not a team ball boy -- will be charged with getting the balls into the game on special teams plays.

And the manufacturer, Wilson Sporting Goods, is making a K-ball that is "tackier out of the box," according to Mike Pereira, the league's supervisor of officials. To prevent what the NBA went through with players' complaints about its new ball, since scrapped, each NFL team will receive six of the new K-balls next week to work with in the off-season.

"I'm tired of getting blamed for the ball being too slippery," Pereira said, joking.

As Williams noted, some believe a Seahawks ball boy intentionally gave the Cowboys a slick, unused ball, leading to Romo's botched hold in Dallas' playoff loss in Seattle. It denied Martin Gramatica a chance for a 19-yard field goal that would have given the Cowboys a 23-21 lead with 1:14 remaining.

The NFL introduced K-balls eight seasons ago after the competition committee decided specialists were doctoring balls for additional height and distance. Twelve balls each marked with a "K" are delivered from Wilson to officials the night before a game.

Two hours before kickoff, a representative from each team -- usually an equipment manager -- is allowed to rub down the K-balls. ...

Two other key changes: The league modified roughing-the-passer so that a defender engaged with a quarterback who simply extends his arms and shoves the passer to the ground is not penalized; they also eliminated a player scoring a touchdown without the ball going over the pylon at the goal line in the corner of the end zone.

According to San Francisco Chronicle beat writer Ira Miller, the change to the roughing penalty came after league officials decided too many ticky-tack penalties were being called when a pass rusher just thrusts his arms out and the quarterback falls backward and to the ground just after releasing the pass.

It still will be a penalty if it's done way late or maliciously, but defensive linemen may have just gotten their first rules break in years. Supposedly, as long as it's close, no penalty will be called.

On the second point, Miller explained it quite simply: "The goal line no longer extends around the world."

As Miller noted, that's a phrase we heard on a regular basis last year when it seemed that players perfected the art of leaping from inside the five-yard line, crossing the goal line out of bounds, but not hitting the ground until they were past the goal line.

Under the old rule, this was a touchdown.

Under the new interpretation, if the ball is out of bounds, even in the air, before crossing the goal line in the arms of a leaping runner, it will not be a touchdown.

This won't affect a runner racing down the sideline in bounds but holding the ball in the air out of bounds. But it will prevent touchdowns when a player leaps and lands yards out of bounds beyond the goal line.

Of all the changes, these two could have a significant impact if they are interpreted as explained. Both will merit close scrutiny this summer. ...

Moving on a change of lesser interest. ... The owners also voted unanimously to allow a second interviewing window for assistant coaches on Super Bowl teams who are in the running for other head coaching jobs. Previously, only during the week after the season ended could an interview be conducted.

The coach's current team would have to grant permission for the second interview, which would take place during the bye week after the conference title games.

"We wanted to make sure that coaches on Super Bowl teams didn't feel it was a disadvantage," McKay said. ...

Moving on to some rules proposals that didn't pass muster. ...

A proposal by the competition committee to move kickoffs in overtime from the 30-yard line to the 35 was tabled by the owners. In his research McKay said teams that receive the ball first win 62 percent of the OT games.

He felt that moving the kickoff to the 35 would reduce the receiving team's drive start and give the kicking team a fairer shot at getting a possession in the extra session.

Colts head coach Tony Dungy, a member of the competition committee, said he didn't favor changing the rules for overtime.

McKay said there is some sentiment for a two-possession rule -- each team being guaranteed getting the ball once -- but no interest in the college system or in continuing the game from where it ended in regulation.

And there's another pertinent point on this one -- a point that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stressed.

"The focus needs to be on winning the game in regulation," Goodell explained.

For what it's worth, McKay doesn't expect another vote on the overtime issue this year. ...

The NFL also removed a rule that allowed officials to penalize teams for excessive crowd noise. "Nobody had called such a penalty in years," McKay said. "We've now deleted it from the book. ..."

Another proposal that was defeated: Defenses will not be allowed to have a coach-to-player communications device similar to what quarterbacks use. McKay said owners and coaches were concerned about who would be allowed to wear the device with defenses using multiple formations, and the possibility that more than one player could wind up on the field with such a device.

"Conceivably, we'll bring it up again," McKay said. "We haven't seen its last discussion."

Also. ... San Francisco withdrew its proposal to make defensive pass interference either a 15-yard penalty or a spot foul, depending on the severity of the infraction.

The league also deleted the provision in the rules where quarterbacks can ask the referee to reset the play clock because of crowd noise; defeated expanding the game-day roster from 45 players and a third quarterback to 47 and a third QB; made a pass that unintentionally hits an offensive lineman no longer a penalty. ...

And a few final notes. ... There was no decision -- or at least no announcement -- on whether to alter the weekly injury report. The change is under consideration by Goodell.

Rather than have a detailed report that appears on Wednesday and Thursday indicating whether a player is probable, questionable, doubtful or out, there has been a push to have teams simply report if players participated in practice.

A standard injury report, with the customary categories, would be issued Friday.

McKay said the theory behind a new reporting policy would be keeping coaches from being put in situations where they were hurting their "integrity" in discussing the injury report.

"We feel as if the coaches don't have as good a feel as they should early in the week," McKay explained. "So we think oftentimes they're subject to a lot of criticism from an integrity standpoint that we don't really necessarily like, and we think also that it would be better to give more detailed information on practice, which, quite frankly, goes more to the heart of whether a guy's going to play than categorizing the player."

The idea, said NFL vice president of communications Greg Aiello, is to "strengthen the credibility of the reports" and to provide "more detailed and more factual information."

That would be interesting. ... I'll continue to follow the status of that possible change closely and report back further as developments warrant.

And last but not least. ... McKay said the committee will move the umpire in the officiating crew in NFL Europe games to the offensive side of the ball rather than the defense. McKay said the league will study that change for possible implementation in the league someday.

Meanwhile, Pereira is looking into outfitting the umpires, who currently stand immediately behind the defensive line, with helmets, perhaps as early as the 2007 season.