NCAA reverses course, moves up kickoffs

So this is old news by now, but the NCAA decided recently to move kickoffs from the 30- to the 35-yard line.

This was about as difficult of a decision to make as me deciding to go to sleep last night. I was tired. 

Why?

A) The NFL moved kickoffs to the 35-yard line last year.

B) The NFL rarely makes poor decisions or rule changes

C) College kickers look like fifth-graders out on the playground -- back during the days when kids had recess -- compared to NFL kickers.

(Can I go on a brief tangent here? As I followed the football season this past fall, I gawked at just how stark the difference is between college and NFL kickers. One game stands out -- Alabama vs. LSU, the one that was kind of interesting. On both sides of the ball, you had NFL players dressed in college uniforms. Probably 60 percent of guys from that game will don an NFL uniform within three years. However, the place kickers for each team, particularly Alabama, couldn't hold a jock strap to the kickers I remember covering at D-3 Albion College. Just atrocious! After that game, I paid closer attention the rest of the season to the performance of kickers, and I was flabbergasted by just how much better and consistent they are in the NFL -- with a few exceptions. Point of the story? If you have a good college kicker, kids, relish him, make him the BMOC, treat him like your QB, because he's a treasure.)

Anyway, the funny thing about the NCAA's no-brainer decision was that it being the NCAA, this was actually, people may have forgotten, the original rule until maybe two or three years ago. I still don't know what in the world of Sebastian Janikowski the NCAA was thinking when it moved kickoffs back to the 30, but that's what happened.

Then, last season, the NFL made a change. And we all know, especially ESPN Radio, that the NFL is God, so Lord knows the NCAA couldn't go on parading its anemic kickers to the 30, having their kicks not even reach the 10, and then watching the occasional sensationalized injury on a return.

Just not feasible. 

So now we're back to the old rule. And I still expect to see many more returns in the college game than in the NFL. 

However, the best part of the move is that touchbacks -- which have been associated with the 20-yard line since the days of Zeus -- will now come out to the 25 on kickoffs. I can't wait to watch refs in the first couple weeks forget this rule, walk out to the 20, then start hearing Nick Saban or some other irreverent coach in their ear, get all red in the face, and walk it up another 5 yards.

This should be good, and will make for some interesting decisions by return guys, too.

Scenario A: Kickoff goes 3 yards deep. Do you risk returning it at least 28 yards or take a knee? The knee seems like the smart play, but I bet plenty of return men will be too tempted, just 9 feet from that line, to stay put.

We shall see.

In the meantime, hundreds of mediocre, lucky-to-have-full-ride kickers at the Alabamas of the country are taking a deep breath, realizing they might not look as bad, now, as they really are.