College Football coaches want the NFL’s thinner hash marks, which could change the sport forever.
In the NFL, the hash marks are 18 feet, six inches wide. In the NCAA, they’re 40 feet wide.
Coaches across the country want the NFL’s 18-foot wide hash marks, as they argue that they open up the passing game and allow defenses to conceal their coverages better.
“Those hash marks were built for football a long time ago,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day told reporters.
Some coaches prefer to be louder and more blunt than others.
“We want the hash marks to look like the NFL,” said Arizona head coach Jed Fisch.
So what’s all the fuss from these College Football coaches about?
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Hashmarks were introduced to the gridiron in 1933. Before that, when a player was tackled out of bounds on one sideline, the ball would be spotted, giving defenses an extra man known as the sideline. The NFL’s hash marks have changed over the decades, continually decreasing in size as the game focused on the pass.
But how do the different-sized hash marks affect the NFL and NCAA?
In college football, an offense can line its receivers on the opposite sideline from where the ball is spotted, making it easier for the quarterback to read the coverage and spread the defense out, giving them the arduous task of covering all that grass.
Coaches and coordinators can do the exact opposite, where most receivers are lined up on the short side of the field.
Teams have left hash plays and right hash plays because of how wide the hash marks are.
Watch a game from this year’s Tennessee Volunteers as their head coach, Josh Heupel, leans into the chess match that is the NCAA’s hash marks more than any coach in the nation.
In the NFL, formations are tighter, making coverages harder to read favoring the defensive side of the ball. This, among many other things, is one of the reasons why college football has so many unbelievably high-scoring games, while the NFL has one every once in a blue moon.
NFL scoring was at an all-time high three years ago when teams averaged around 24.8 points per game in 2020. Already one of the weirdest seasons in NFL history that COVID-19 ravaged also stands out statistically; go figure.
Scoring has slowly decreased each year in the league since that infamous 2020 season, with each team now averaging 21.8 points per game this season.
It all makes sense.
As the era of the pocket passer slowly died out, defensive coordinators can no longer blitz and hope for the best. The upper echelon of quarterbacks in today’s NFL can hurt a defense in so many ways that coaches and coordinators need to play more complex coverages to shut them down.
These are where the NFL’s 18-foot hash marks come into play.
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With everything condensed, it’s harder to read a defense in today’s NFL than ever, with complex combinations of blitzes, zone and man coverage coming on every play.
It’s why many highly drafted college quarterbacks fail at the pro level. They can no longer out-athlete the guy next to them.
If the NCAA wants to prepare their players for the pros further, they should adopt the NFL’s hash marks. Quarterbacks will be forced to learn how to read coverages from Jump Street.
The NFL’s hash marks also give defenses what they need to level the playing field at the collegiate level. Finally, the NFL’s hash marks will far separate the haves from the have-nots regarding NCAA quarterbacks, showing us who has the complete package and who doesn’t.
