The NCAA News - News & Features

Survey shows no overwhelming support to change football stats

Postseason data remain separate from regular-season figures

All NCAA football-playing institutions and all conferences were canvassed last winter to see if a mandate exists to change the policy of not combining postseason football statistics with those from the regular season.

Of those responding, 53.2 per cent of the sports information directors and conference information directors felt that the policy should be changed. In Division I-A, 49 percent of those responding felt the postseason statistics policy should be changed.

The major stumbling block for many is that such a policy would go into effect immediately, and previous postseason statistics and records would not be retroactive. Changing the statistics would result in national rankings and even national statistical champions being changed, which many believe would not be fair to players who were ranked according to policies at the time.

Postseason play is included in final regular-season statistics in other sports for which the NCAA Statistics Service keeps statistics and records.

The Statistics Service began compiling football statistics in 1937 as the American Football Statistical Bureau in Seattle. It moved to New York during World War II and became the National Collegiate Athletic Bureau before becoming part of the NCAA in 1959.

Bowl-game statistics and other postseason games have been kept separate from regular-season statistics since 1937. A separate bowls record section was added to the NCAA Football records book in 1993.

Any changes in statistical policy must be approved by the NCAA Communications Committee.

Tiebreaker

In another matter involving football statistics, the Statistics Service is reminding institutions that all team and individual statistics count in all overtime periods.

The NCAA Football Rules Committee recently voted to require that the NCAA tiebreaker system be used in all NCAA regular-season games tied after four periods. The system, originally approved last year for postseason bowl games, has been expanded in 1996 to include regular-season games in all NCAA divisions.

The system is the same one that had been used in Divisions I-AA, II and III Football Championships since 1981. It gives each team a chance to score after regulation has expired.

In an overtime period, each team gets an offensive series beginning on the opponent's 25-yard line. A team's possession ends when it scores, turns the ball over, or fails to convert a fourth-down play. This untimed procedure is repeated until the score is no longer tied at the end of an overtime period. All team and individual statistics count in all overtime periods.

Any score by the defense wins the game, except the return of an extra-point attempt following a touchdown.