Kirby Smart weighs pros, cons of changing NCAA challenge rules

The topic of changing college football’s rules seems to be on the menu this week, in part thanks to the sign-stealing scandal unfolding at Michigan. But even things like a challenge system have been asked about this week.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart faced a question about the latter and whether he’d be in favor of giving coaches a couple challenges per game, potentially speeding things up with fewer overall plays being reviewed than under the current system.

He had a funny answer.

“You can’t criticize me now because they review every play,” Smart told a roomful of reporters.

In other words, coaches aren’t exactly leaping up and down over more responsibility and more things that fans can pin on them if things go poorly.

As to the desired effect of such a proposal, it would theoretically cut down on the overall number of reviews.

“Yes, 100% it slows down the game,” Smart said of the current setup. “That argument is correct. But the flip side of that for the coaches is so you want me to decide, and you want me to decide when to do it, and you want me to burn one of my timeouts and I don’t have the same information that you have. They have the information out there. They have the ability to review every play.”

The real question comes at the balance point of what’s worth reviewing and what’s not, as well as when. Some things are naturally more impactful depending on where they fall in the game.

Others are not.

“Now should they review every play?” Smart said. “A 1-yard spot in the first quarter for five minutes? They give us the numbers, it’s 53 seconds average review time. Is it worth that, for that one yard? Probably not.”

Still, Kirby Smart would be no fan of implementing a coaching challenge.

“But if you’re telling me I’ve got to go throw that flag or not, like the NFL does every time? I don’t know,” Smart said. “It would definitely speed the game up to not review, but you’ll have a lot of controversy after the game is what you would have. They’re getting reviews on the critical plays, inside two minute, scoring plays, all those things. Once you add all that in, every turnover, it’s kind of like they’re reviewing the ones anyway.

“Then it gets off the challenge flag. It would just keep us from having to review things that aren’t relevant, but things that might not affect the outcome of the game.”