Pac-10 Football Media Day Wrap

Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen began yesterday’s Pac-10 Football Media Day noting that 31 All-Pac-10 players would be returning for this season: 11 of the first team and 20 from the second team.

And a conference football attendance record was set for the second consecutive year with more than 3.6 million going to Pac-10 games, an average of more than 56,000 a game. Hansen noted that the average was larger than several of the conference’s stadiums!

The sixth-place Pac-10 team will play in a new bowl game for this year only, the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl in Ft. Worth on December 31, before a new agreement for the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl and San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl kicks in for the following two years for the sixth and seventh-place teams.

And the usually droll Hansen got off a good line before leaving the stage: "We have no plans to expand the Pac-10 at this time, unlike the Big Ten which is trying to get to12 so it isn’t 11."

A rules seminar that preceded the media session noted the return to most of the timing rules which existed prior to last season. Pac-10 Coordinator of Officials Dave Cutaia noted that the NCAA calculated that an average game had 19 less plays in 2006 than in 2005!

Cutaia also said that an average of 14.79 penalties were called per game in 2006 and that the most frequently-called infractions were for (1) false start, 211 times; (2) offensive holding, 163 times and (3) defensive pass interference, 89 times.

It’s also quite likely that the NCAA will adopt, in the next few years, a time-between-plays rule like the NFL’s, which permits 40 seconds between most plays but allows only 25 seconds after a stoppage such as a called or television time-out.