College football games are taking too long.
At least, that is what the NCAA believes.
After the average college football game took 3 hours, 22 minutes to play last year, the NCAA decided it must take action.
No, the organization didn’t reduce the number of commercial breaks per game. After all, that would reduce the amount of money the TV networks could bring in, which in turn would mean the media right deals — like the SEC’s $3 billion pact with ESPN — could be smaller.
Instead, the NCAA changed the rules of the sport.
Unlike in prior years, the clock will not stop on every first down during college football games this season. Instead, it will continue running when the chains move, outside of the last two minutes of the second and fourth quarters or when a player goes out of bounds.
Prior to the season starting, Steve Shaw, the NCAA’s national coordinator of officials, said the rule change would cut out about seven or eight plays per game, per The Athletic.
It’s a small sample size, but in Utah’s 2022 loss to Florida, the Utes and Gators combined for 133 plays, while the two teams totaled 119 plays in Utah’s win against Florida this year.
Of course, many variables can affect that, including how up-tempo each offense is running, but Utah coach Kyle Whittingham noticed a difference with the new clock rules.
“I don’t know if that’s indicative of what to expect with the new rules now because that game, there wasn’t a lot of snaps and so I guess if they were trying to tone that down, they accomplished their objective,” Whittingham said.
“It seemed like they made up for it with more commercials every two minutes and so I don’t know what that’s all about, but I guess we got to pay the bills.”
Whittingham said on Monday that while he expects the new rule changes to take away about one possession every game, he views the change as a positive overall.
“It’s a player safety issue. Why would we be the longest game at any level? Why is that necessary? I think we still are, but we’re more in line what the NFL is. I see it as a positive and less wear and tear on players, particularly with the expanded playoffs coming up next year,” he said.
UCLA coach Chip Kelly wasn’t too happy with the rule change in a halftime interview with ESPN on Saturday.
“This new rule, that’s crazy. We had four drives in the first half. This game goes fast. Hope you guys are selling a lot of commercials,” he said.
Comebacks could be tougher without the clock stopping on first downs the majority of the game, especially in the second half, when every second matters.
Take it from TCU coach Sonny Dykes, whose team used the clock rules to its advantage in multiple come-from-behind wins en route to a national title appearance last season.
“I think that’s one of the things that makes college football unique,” Dykes told the Sporting News. “You can score points quickly because that clock does stop. That leads to some really exciting finishes and some opportunities to make some significant comebacks in college football. To me, that would be one of the last options I would look at changing.”
It brings the sport in line with the NFL, which has the same clock rule. Plays per game, and total game length, are less in the pros, and it’s just one more step in making the NCAA more like the NFL.
Major League Baseball made a similar time-saving rule change this season with the implementation of the pitch clock, leading to more viewership, but baseball plays 162 regular-season games, the vast majority of which are on weekday nights.
The reason why the pitch clock in baseball works so well is that it cuts out some “dead time” between pitches where not much is happening for the viewer to watch. You get the same amount of actual action in less time. The new rule change in college football, however, will result in less action per game.
Does shaving 10 minutes off an average regular-season CFB game, of which there are only 12 for each school, at the expense of less plays really result in a better experience for the average fan?
The college football regular season is short enough, spanning just three months, and now this season will have less football than before.