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BIG TEN CONFERENCE FOOTBALL MEDIA DAYS

July 19, 2019

Bill Carollo

Chicago, Illinois

BILL CAROLLO: I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today. A couple things I'd like to cover. Number one, 2019 is an off-year for rule changes. The only time we'll make changes to a rule, unless it has to do with player health and safety, and there's five significant areas this year that we made changes to, and I want to cover those quickly and I'll give a little more time in the Q & A area if you want to dive into it a little bit deeper, and we have a breakout session afterwards that can cover the new rules in detail.

The player health and safety, maybe the most important one is the targeting area. We've made a couple changes in targeting that are significant. All elements of targeting have to be confirmed, meaning that there won't be a stance -- ruling on the field last year, if we weren't sure, the play would stand, and that player would be disqualified. This year, all elements have to be confirmed. If not, the player stays in the game. That might be about 10 percent of plays last year, based on the numbers last year, we'll have 10 percent possibly less targeting calls this year.

And here's the idea behind it and the thinking and the rationale. We want to get this play correct. It's a very important play as far as health and safety, but it's also the penalty is our largest penalty, so we want to make sure that we get that correct, and if we aren't sure, the player will stay in the game. On the flipside of it, if a player commits three targeting fouls in one season, we call this a progressive penalty. He'll be disqualified for that game when he commits his third targeting call, but he also will sit out one full additional game. It's a pretty heavy penalty. So we're going to be working with the teams and with the players, especially after they get the first one, and we're going to give them warnings, but if they end up with a third targeting penalty it will have to be a progressive penalty and one full game from there.

The next area that we made a change to is two-man wedges. About four or five years ago we got rid of the three-man wedge, and our data tells us, and we've collaborated with the NFL as well as with the FBS games, that two-man, three-man wedges are very, very dangerous. Number one, kickoffs, when we have those wedge plays, are our most dangerous play as far as injuries, and we get a lot of concussions trying to break up that two-man wedge. So when two players intentionally come together to form a wedge it'll be a 15-yard penalty for an illegal wedge block.

The only exception to that rule is if we have an obvious onside kick, the kickoff goes out of bounds, there's a fair catch involved on the kickoff, or if the ball goes in the end zone it will be a touchback. So we're going to eliminate that type of play there.

The third area is a blind side block. You cannot, with force, attack an opponent and put a block on that player in open space. That will be considered a blind-side block, a 15-yard penalty, and that's a new rule this year. So you can't really decleat people. A lot of times you see it on kickoffs, change of possessions, interceptions, punt returns. You have to make sure that player sees you, and he can defend himself, otherwise it will be a penalty.

Blocking below the waist, we've made a lot of changes in the last 10 years. This is a minor change, but we want to align Team B fouls - Team B is the defense, Team A is the offense as far as officiating terms are concerned. And now Team B, low blocks, mirror exactly what the low blocks are for the Team A. So that's a good change.

And the last area has to do with overtime. No changes to overtime until we get to the fifth overtime. Last year we had one game in FBS, seven overtimes, and the year before we had another one over seven. When you get over 250 plays in a game, it's dangerous to the players' health. So when we get to the fifth overtime, we're not going to put the ball at the 25-yard line. Everything remains the same as the first four, we're going to give them extra time-outs between the second and the fourth overtime, but when we get to the fifth, we're going to move the ball from the 25-yard line down to the three-yard line and they're going to have one shot at scoring a touchdown from there. So we're going to try to -- we don't want the game to end in a tie, but we want the game to keep moving, and we want it to end once we get to that point.

So those are the major changes as far as rule changes are concerned. Let me just touch on before we open it up for some questions a little bit about our program and where we're at.

The Big Ten has been around a long, long time, 100 some years, from 1896, longest standing conference. We've done a lot of really good things in the Big Ten, team-wise, championship-wise, student-athlete-wise, et cetera, and I'm a firm believer that we've done a wonderful job on the officiating side, and we've done that for a long time. I'm not talking about during my tenure, but for the last 40, 50 years under the leadership of Jim Delany, who's more of a hands-on football person. Most people don't know that, but Jim is very involved in football, and he understands it, and he cares about the student-athletes and he cares about the integrity and the fairness of the rules, and we've done a lot -- and maybe the biggest number one gift that he gave our officials was replay 15 years ago in 2004. He led the country in bringing college NCAA football with replay, and that's been great.

So technology is emerging, emerging, changing the game. We have a lot of changes around us. You heard from the coaches the last two days, all the changes that are coming around their game and the schemes and the game is going from three yards and a cloud of dust to a lot of passing and so on. We have to adjust to that. But I would say the technology in this area, the replay has helped us a lot.

Now, there's a lot of other things going on in technology that help. I may be more of a traditionalist. I think it's still blocking and tackling and winning and getting the calls correct, and giving them a fair shot at that. But we're always open to looking at technology, and I've personally made trips in the last 24 months to all the professional headquarters, the NBA, the NHL, Major League Baseball as well as the NFL, to see what they're doing with technology. So best practices, learning what they're doing, how they're doing, how they're training, how they're trying to get the calls right, et cetera.

So we're listening. We talk to all the other collegiate conferences out there, what they're doing with command centers, so on, so forth. We feel we like what we're doing today, and it may be a little old fashioned. We like to use the technology where it fits, and replay technology is there to fix the egregious errors, not fix every single mistake, so we're concerned about the length of games out there, but the technology certainly can help us.

But certainly we are going around and listening and seeing what's going out there because we want to continue to improve, give the best program, best officiating program to our players, our coaches and our fans. So that's out there.

But even with the greatest technology, never been a perfect game. There's mistakes by players, by coaches, and of course officials, and I've documented several times we make five or six mistakes every single game. I like what we're doing. I like our people. I would say today our officiating staff is as strong as it's ever been in my last 10 years, the 10 years that I've been here, and I've been associated with the Big Ten conference since the late '70s, started full-time in 1980, and it's never been as good, and our officials today are way better than when I was on the field in the '80s.

There's really three core principles, core fundamental principles that we have in officiating, and I want to make it as simple as possible. First of all, it's our training program. Secondly, it's integrity, and third, it's accountability. I want to touch on each of those categories because I think it's important to note that it sounds pretty basic, but we need really good training, and the Big Ten provides the technology, the people, the resources, the budgets to give our officials maybe the best training in the country, and I benchmark them get all the professional sports, so I really like what we're doing in training.

But we probably spend more time on the training side to find the right candidates, getting the right skill sets for people on the field, finding the right skill set for people in the replay booth. They're totally different, and we spend a lot of time on the front end vetting all the people, all the candidates that come to us, and our bar is set really, really high as far as if you want to come into the Big Ten and be an official in the Big Ten, it's set really high.

And I think we have a much better chance to be successful if we get the right people in the program.

So a lot of the things that we do, we give them Wonderlic tests to check their aptitude and intelligence. We give them personality tests, we give them a battery of written tests, we give them video tests, we do online interviews. By the time they come in, my first question I always ask them, why do you want to be an official, men and women that come in, that apply into the Big Ten, and the number one answer is our training program. So I feel pretty good about what we're doing on the training side, and that's really important. It sounds old fashioned, roll up the sleeves, blue collar, but you've got to work. You've got to work really hard to get to that level.

And then if you can make it, that's great. And when I take a look at the training program of the people that have come in, and when I took over, and I took over one of the greatest programs in the country under the leadership of Jim Delany, his vision, whether it's technology or getting the right people. Dave Perry had the most respected officiating program in the country, so it's hard to take over an icon like that, Dave Perry, but we want to get a little bit better. That's what we've been doing.

The second area that we've put a lot of focus on is integrity. If there's any gray area in our game, and if I had to measure my officials on one particular thing, it's integrity, and once we lose that integrity, we've lost the game. It really would crush the game, integrity. So we put a lot of time in that area. I mean, we have fans that call me all the time and say these officials have favoring this team versus another team and so on, and any accusation is credible as far as I'm concerned. We look at it and we check the source and we try to document what they're trying to say, but the reality is when something like that happens, my first reaction is report it up to the commissioner, we get outside people to look into it, investigate it, and if we need be, we'll bring it right to the FBI. That's how serious this is, and I ask my officials, they have to sign a contract every year, an expectations letter, and that's exactly what's in there, what they do on the field is really, really important. We want to get the calls right. What they do off the field is equally as important.

So they have to have the capability when they come in. They have to keep improving, but they have to have the right character, and that's the integrity element that we took for.

And the last is really accountability. We want accountability for myself, if we make mistakes in the game, I'll take full responsibility. I trained them. Our staff put them out there. We assigned them. Full responsibility there.

At the same time, these officials are graded on every single play throughout the year, and there's candid, confidential conversation with all the coaches, with the AD's, with the administrators, as high as the presidents of each university. Jim Delany is involved in that with myself, and that confidential conversation is really, really important, a candid conversation with the teams, and that's what builds trust between us.

We don't go public with these evaluations for a lot of reasons. I know people are experimenting with that. But we feel that what we do internally is important.

Now, like I said, there's never been a perfect game. If we make a mistake and we give five downs and it's the winning touchdown, that's not a good thing. We're going public and we're going to acknowledge those errors. But they're judgment calls, and every single game some tough calls. The coaches will get the answers. I may tell the media and a lot of you will text me or call me, what do you think, and off the record I'll tell you that we like the call, we don't like the call. But that's a really important area. That accountability from my officials is critical, and our officials know it's hard to get in and it's easy to get bounced out from that standpoint.

So a lot of things are going on in the program. We try to manage it. I don't want to say the old fashioned way, but it's a lot of hard work, a lot of dedication. They put more time in it than they ever have, way more time than when I came into the Big Ten, and we're really seed. When I take a look at all the elements, when I look back, when I talk about the recruiting, the training program, our evaluation program, the accountability and those candid conversations with our AD's and our coaches is really critical, really important for our success.

So with that, let me stop there. I know we can't satisfy everybody on the field, but certainly I want you to know that I'm really pleased with our staff, what they're doing today and how hard they're working and I'll stop here and open it up for some questions.

Q. Can you expand a little bit what you're talking about with targeting? What kind of takes it over the borderline from being a stands call to being a confirmed call? Can you give an example of that, where it takes from being stands to being confirmed?
BILL CAROLLO: Sure, really good question. It's really important. We spend probably most of my time on targeting, and they're our toughest calls, and I always take them to meetings with our coaches, we vote on it and we don't get 14-0 that's targeting or not targeting. It's split a lot of times 7-7 what they're looking for. There's a lot of gray area in this area.

It has to have some indicators. They have to launch. They have to thrust upward. They have to attack. They have to use the crown of their helmet or hit a defenseless player above the shoulders. Those are the basic -- that's black and white. That's pretty easy to understand. But it's got to be forcible contact in an attacking manner that's more than just playing the ball, making a tackle, making a block. So it has to be more than that.

And not that we're just saying -- years ago when we put this rule in, that's just football, they're taking the big hits away from the players. But when we aren't sure, the rule said we threw the flag on the field, the rule said the call is going to stand unless you can overturn it beyond all doubt, okay. So if we don't have the right angle, we aren't really sure, is that enough force, we'd say the play stands, and we'd go with the call on the field, which is the right answer.

We had too many marginal calls, too many ticky-tack fouls, too many on the margin, just on the edge that, boy, they could have passed on that. Well, we're going to get rid of that. Now it's going to be tougher for my officials, especially in replay. Either it is or it isn't, and I think that's important. So we might have a few less. We're not backing away from it.

We tell the guys, when in doubt, throw the flag. Replay has technology, excellent technology, slow motion, just like you have at your homes or during the game. You can see it. So you talk about transparency, there's clearly -- everyone sees it immediately. You see it before my officials see it. But we tell the officials, throw the flag, replay, your job to fix it.

It's going to be tough because we're getting rid of it. As an example, last year we had no targeting calls in the Big Ten that stood. I was kind of advocating this the last couple years. Either make it a targeting call or let them stay in the game, and that's what we've done now nationally. We've made that rule change. Good question.

Q. Similar to the NFL, do you see a necessity to or would you like to explore reviewing other areas of judgment like pass interference?
BILL CAROLLO: That's a really good question because we see what's happening now in the NFL after that New Orleans championship game. It's a slippery slope in my opinion. I think the judgment, I pay and we train these men and women to make those judgment calls, and it's a little different -- I mean, we've expanded replay, and there's a little creep to it as far as we keep -- haven't come up with a play, yeah, that should be reviewable, let's fix it, we know that. And it's gotten bigger and bigger, replay, a big part in the game. Really a big part in the game.

I think getting into holding calls and judgment calls like pass interference is a little tricky because we're going to have some inconsistency. I mentioned about the targeting; there's a judgment call, is it forcible, did he attack, was he trying to make a play on the ball or not, et cetera. And when you get into the replay and put it in slow motion, everything -- let's use pass interference because that's the most -- the latest example.

The Canadian league did this about three or four years ago and I consulted with them and talked about it, they still wanted to go along with that, and they've been experimenting in that area.

The NFL is adding that this year. You're going to see probably some inconsistency because a play live on the field, it's a bang-bang play we call it, the ball, the two players come together at the same time, no one would think that's a foul. Once you go to replay and you do slow motion and looking at two frames a second versus 20 frames a second on the field, you're going to see that the guy made slight contact right before he touched the ball, and they're going to create pass interference on the play. Is that what we really want? I don't think so.

I've talked to our coaches about it, our AD's. They're well aware of it. It's probably a slippery slope that we don't want to go down.

Q. I was wondering what qualifies as a two-man wedge, they have to lock arms, and what were those exceptions you mentioned?
BILL CAROLLO: Yeah, two-man wedge is the question, and what's the definition of a two-man wedge. It's the same as a three-man wedge that we threw out about four years ago. It's when two players come together intentionally, shoulder to shoulder apart, within two yards of each other, to form this wedge. Forming a wedge, two men shoulder to shoulder is a foul. They don't have to block anybody. They're coming together. And what's happening is it's not these players that we're worried about, it's the guy that comes down the field and he's trying to bust the wedge up. He's the person getting injured, not these guys coming together. So just coming together, forming that wedge shoulder to shoulder, it's a foul, with the exceptions if it's an obvious onside kick, the guys up front stacked where they're going to kick it off to the right, your left, that's okay. If the kickoff is out of bounds, shanks it out of bounds, we'll pick up the flag and announce there's no penalty on the flag for a two-man wedge. If it's a touchback, no penalty, and if we call for a fair catch, there's no penalty. So those are the four exceptions when they come together to form a two-man wedge.

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