We’ve all heard the saying “a rule is a rule.” Well, now a rule is a rule for at least two years.

That’s because the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel (PROP) has adopted a two-year cycle for playing-rules committees that inks changes in the books more indelibly than in the past.

The every-other-year rules book system is not a cost-cutting initiative – it allows committees to be more deliberate, to communicate and collaborate more efficiently with the membership, and to adopt proposals that truly are in the best interests of the game.

“The process provides more time to review proposals and collect meaningful data and feedback before changes are made,” said the NCAA’s Ty Halpin, an associate director in playing rules administration. “There’s a significant benefit to giving the rules committees the opportunity to create educational materials and have more philosophical discussion about the game without the pressure of making rules changes every year.”

PROP made the two-year cycle an option for playing-rules committees in 2005. The Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey Rules Committee was the only group to take the bait, and the committee and its chair, Jim Knowlton, the athletics director at Rensselaer, loved the idea.

“The challenge with the one-year cycle,” Knowlton said, “is that you’ve got all sorts of feedback from constituents – traditionalists, progressives, people who want change and people who don’t. Then over the course of a committee meeting, you have to review all of it – keeping in mind that you’re trying to act in the best interests of the sport – and then consider the second- and third-order effects of a proposal so you don’t get unintended consequences.”

But if the rule will be in play for two years, the committee has more time for checks and balances. Knowlton thinks that’s good for the game.

PROP thought so, too, when it mandated the two-year cycle for about half the committees this year and the rest the next.

Not only is the two-year approach more efficient, it might make change easier to accept. A case in point: The hockey rules committee recently implemented a hitting-from-behind rule as a major, rather than a minor, penalty to discourage players from slamming opponents dangerously into the boards or into the goal from behind.

“After the first year, there was a lot of pressure on the committee to change the consequence to a two-minute minor penalty instead of a five-minute major,” Knowlton said. “But we had seen a change of behavior – instead of blasting someone to the boards from behind, players were holding up and just riding the opponent into the boards, thus creating a much safer environment. Even though we could have changed it that year, it was one of those instances in which it takes two years for a community to accept and grow into a rule change.”

The “off year” in the new two-year cycle also gives committees more time to deliberate about the state of the game.

“It builds time to gain a consensus among constituents when changes are necessary,” Halpin said. “It’s a more patient – and prudent – approach.”