The rules for XFL are intended to make the game more exciting for us as fans to watch and safer for the players on the field. As you'll see, they are set up to make this league an offense heavy league. Be prepared for a fast-paced game, speedy players and some exhausted defenses. For the full list of rules, you can check out the XFL homepage. I'll list a few of the main ones below.
The season opens for the Houston Roughnecks on Saturday at TDECU Stadium. Here is what you can expect:
PUNT
The most talked about rule that the XFL has is the kickoff/punt rule. How is this better for us at home? Less commercial time! No, but really… Players are not allowed to leave the line of scrimmage during a punt until after the kick. Out of bounds or kicks that end up in the end zone will be marked at 35yd line or the spot the ball went out of bounds at. This would essentially lead to more excitement, better known as… GOING FOR IT ON FOURTH DOWN.
DOUBLE FORWARD PASSING
This rule is one of my personal favorites that the XFL has tweaked. It's pretty self-explanatory. If your team completes a forward pass behind the line of scrimmage, they may attempt a second forward pass. Of course, the ball cannot cross the line of scrimmage. Hi, insert trick plays here.
POINTS
After a touchdown, the team has three options. A potential 1 point from the 2yd line, 2 points from the 5yd line or a ballsy 3 points from the 10yd line. The best part? No kicking an extra point. Are you having fun yet?
TOE DRAG SWAG
We can kiss this goodbye. The XFL is taking us back to college ball. Players only have to have one foot in bounds. This league should really be fun, especially for Saints fans… less ways for officials to "mess up."
TIME
XFL's play clock has 24 seconds versus the 40 seconds we're used to in the NFL. The pressure to call plays will be more intense. I can name a few NFL coaches/players who would not succeed in this league but that's unimportant. Each team's timeouts will be limited to 2 one minute timeouts per half making that 1 less than NFL and college. Halftime will also be shortened to 10 minutes versus the NFL's 12 minutes. These small changes affect the game more than you think. This gives you, as fans, more actual field action.
OVERTIME
This one is a little more confusing. Probably because we've never seen this in football. There will be five rounds. Yes, rounds… Teams will alternate single play possessions. Each round will display one offensive play per team. Possessions will start at the opposing teams 5yd line. The offense will have one shot to score. You guessed it, the guys with the most points after all five rounds win. Simple, right? Eh… I highly suggest reading more on the team's website.
For the full list and explanations of the new rules you can visit the XFL's homepage
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The NCAA selection committee will have some juggling to do before the bracket comes out Sunday to keep March Madness from looking like an extension of the Southeastern Conference's regular season.
With the country's deepest league in line to place between 12 and 14 teams in the tournament, some long-held guidelines drawn to help set the matchups will have to give way, bringing the possibility that conference rivals could face each other as early as the second round or the Sweet 16.
“We will move it to try to ensure they don't play each other too frequently,” the chair of the selection committee, North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham, said Wednesday in a call to preview the selection. “But it is a reality of where we are today.”
The reality is shaped thanks in part to a flurry of realignment that has left college sports with four megaconferences. Three of those will gobble up nearly half of the 68 spots in the tournament. The record for a conference came in 2011 when the Big East placed 11 teams in the bracket.
Some projections have the SEC earning up to 14 spots, the Big Ten getting as many as 10 and the Big 12 earning up to eight. Of those 32 projected spots, seven could go to teams that were in different conferences as recently as 2023 — programs such as Oklahoma, Oregon and BYU.
There will be some big-picture repercussions from all this realignment. In a notable development earlier this week, Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark got on board with an idea to expand the tournament to 76 teams in a move that would favor Power Four conferences.
More urgently, though, having so many teams from so few conferences will force the 12 members of the selection committee, who are holed up in a conference room in Indiana this week, to make some nontraditional decisions.
The NCAA bracketing principles frown on teams that have played three times in a season from meeting before the Elite Eight. Likewise, they urge the committee to avoid potential pairings between teams that have played twice coming before the Sweet 16. But, in a tweak that was put in for this season, the principles note that those rules “can be relaxed if a league has nine or more teams in the tournament.”
Cunningham said the committee's biggest priority will be getting the seedings right, an exercise that could make it more difficult to avoid these early matchups.
“We really try to keep everybody on the same seed line" they've earned, he said. “We don't want to move them to a different seed line because that really does impact the tournament. But it'll be a little bit trickier this year."
The SEC's dominance is showing up not only in the sheer volume of teams but also where they land. Auburn is a lock for a No. 1 seed, with Florida considered a slight favorite to edge out Tennessee and Alabama for another.
Among the biggest questions is whether the top overall seed in the tournament will go to Auburn or Duke, which this week supplanted the Tigers at No. 1 in the AP Top 25. The irony there is that Duke is one of only three teams from the ACC projected to make the field of 68, which would mark the hoops powerhouse's lowest total in 25 years.