Florida continues to draw flags at a prodigious rate, but the mistakes have not hurt the Gators yet. Although common sense tells you their luck could change in the near future, NCAA results over the past seven years are overwhelmingly in the Gators' favor. It's not just Urban Meyer's teams that have gotten away with flag-happy performances. Good teams, including national champions like Florida in 2006, rack up more penalties than bad teams every year.
A week after watching Tennessee wave the white flag in a 59-20 destruction, the only thing Florida saw against Ole Miss was the yellow hankie.
The penalty flags were flying fast and furious last Saturday in Oxford, Miss., and the experience was nothing new. Florida, the second-most penalized team in the land a year ago, racked up 14 penalties for 127 yards against Ole Miss, climbing into third place nationally on the same dubious list.
UF coach Urban Meyer said the mistakes cost his team 200 yards in field position, counting the result of the plays that were nullified. He is not having a heart attack about it, but he is not happy.
"It's something we'll have to address," he said earlier this week. "Some people say (it is) a lack of discipline. Whatever it is, we've got to get it fixed. It's not acceptable."
The funny truth is he's wrong. No good coach tolerates mistakes, but penalties rank near the bottom of the list of concerns that could derail Florida's bid for its second consecutive SEC championship. The absence of a pass rush from the defensive tackles? Absolutely. The fragileness of Percy Harvin's body? Possibly. Tim Tebow wearing down if he carries the ball 25 or more times again? Maybe.
A perpetual penalty parade? Bring it on.
It may be counterintuitive, but history indicates less correlation between a lack of penalties and wins than any other college football statistic, including the oft-criticized time of possession. The numbers are overwhelming.
Florida getting past its penalties to win the national championship last season was no fluke. In the last seven years, only two BCS titlists have finished among the top 70 in fewest penalties yards per game – Ohio State, which tied for 10th in 2002, and USC, which was 27th in 2004.
Miami was an atrocious 114th out of 115 teams in 2001 and went undefeated. Texas was perfect in 2005 despite ranking No. 88. Oklahoma was 79th in 2000 and never lost. LSU finished 73rd in 2003 and beat Oklahoma for the championship.
If you think those teams were abnormal, guess again. When Florida won the national championship in 1996 under Steve Spurrier, the Gators committed 125 penalties for 1,095 yards – nine more infractions for 207 more yards in two fewer games than last year's flag-happy bunch. Spurrier's Gators beat last year's average of 8.3 penalties with 8.5 in 1995, the only time they have gone undefeated in the regular season.
The stat is just as startling everywhere else. In 2000, the first year the NCAA charted penalties on its website, the 10 most penalized teams (for yards) in Division 1-A went 92-38 while the 10 least-penalized teams went 65-64. The bottom 10 has been better than the top 10 every year since then, too, including a remarkable disparity in 2003 when the worst offenders went 81-47 and the teams most mellow with the yellow went 56-69.
Meyer's first Florida team was 87th in penalty yards, so the flags have been rampant since he arrived in Gainesville. He said this week he did not think penalties were an issue earlier in his career, but he was wrong there, too. His 2004 Utah team that went 12-0 finished 88th in penalty yards. A year earlier, the Utes were 87th despite winning the Mountain West championship.
The problem is not a lack of discipline or it would show up elsewhere. Under Meyer's watch, Bowling Green, Utah and Florida have been among the nation's leaders in turnover margin every year, a benchmark of teams that play under control. Meyer is 52-11 in his six-plus years as a head coach and 4-0 in bowl games, when coaches have to keep their players focused during the month-long break between games.
A rash of penalties appears to be the price teams pay for running sophisticated schemes with superior athletes. When he coached in Gainesville, Spurrier claimed officials threw more flags on championship contenders than also-rans in an unconscious attempt (when he wasn't ranting about Gator haters) to level the playing field.
Regardless, the cost has been negligible. Good teams can draw flag after flag after flag and still have a chance to plant their flag on the field after winning the national championship.
Chart
Penalty-prone teams have been more successful than penalty-free teams every year since 2000. Here are the composite records of the 10-most penalized teams and the 10 least-penalized teams in college football each season.
Year best 10 worst 10
2000 54-57 79-33
2001 46-67 60-52
2002 70-66* 77-48
2003 56-69 81-47
2004 51-63 60-54
2005 58-58 71-47
2006 56-68 64-62
* Counts Ohio State, which tied for 10th and went 14-0.