Can college football do anything about the length of games? ESPN

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Iceland12

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SEC Commissioner "Sankey, for his part, wasn't troubled so much by the 3:24 average of games last season as he was by the 30- to 40-percent variance in time. The shortest game, he said, was 2:55 while some games lasted nearly an hour longer than that.

That would be because of college overtime rules, not ""Where we can hustle within the game," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said, "let's hustle within the game." :rolleyes:

http://www.espn.com/blog/sec/post/_...ootball-do-anything-about-the-length-of-games

"Halftime across the board in all regular-season games will be 20 minutes," Big 12 coordinator of officials Walt Anderson said. "Period. End of story."

That means that coaches better hustle out of their halftime TV interviews if they want to address their team for more than a few minutes before the start of the third quarter. And if they feel the walk from the field to the locker room is too long, then they might want to look into finding a better, more efficient route, Anderson said.

In February, the NCAA rules committee will take a comprehensive look at the time of games, which, according to Anderson, will include "actual game time" and the "number of plays." But for now, conferences are trying to work within the current framework to shave time off games.

Halftime is a new point of emphasis, as is the ability to get in and out of TV breaks quicker.

http://www.espn.com/blog/sec/post/_...ootball-do-anything-about-the-length-of-games
 



If you want to stop the clock on first downs, I feel you should at least have a 2-4 second wind down for ball movement and placement.

The idea that there should be no time needed to have your O-line and QB run from the 20 yard line to the 40 after a 20 yard completion seems ridiculous.

Same thing for NBA and college basketball when someone shoots a game winning shot with less than 2 seconds. No, the clock shouldn't stop at the point it goes through the rim on a timeout. There should be 1 second for the ball to actually hit the ground or be caught by a rebounder, then stepped behind the line for an in-bound pass.

It's one thing to stop the clock, but to allow a team to go 80 yards in about 7 seconds seems unrealistic and makes the last two minutes of the game take far longer.
It should be a clock stoppage, not a time out which it has essentially become.
 

Only stop the clock on first downs within 5 minutes of the end of the 2nd and 4th quarters. There's no need to stop it for every single 1st down.
 


GopherWeatherGuy said:
Only stop the clock on first downs within 5 minutes of the end of the 2nd and 4th quarters. There's no need to stop it for every single 1st down.
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Just do it like the NFL - no stoppages at all on 1st downs.
 

Word said:
Just do it like the NFL - no stoppages at all on 1st downs.
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I wouldn't be against that either. Part of me does still like the 1st down stoppage for at least a little time before half or at the end of the game. Either way that is the rule they should start with when trying to speed up the game.
 

Word said:
Just do it like the NFL - no stoppages at all on 1st downs.
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Agree. The stoppage for 1st downs made sense when the game was more of a grinder, but stopping after every first down is not needed anymore.
 

Every year someone suggests getting rid of the first-down clock stoppage and every year I facepalm myself into the next room. Of all the ways to speed up the game, why on earth would you eliminate one of the things that makes the college game great? You're literally advocating for less football. For less comebacks. For less drama.

If you want a game that more closely resembles the boring trudgefest of the NFL then by all means get rid of the clock rules.
 



beavergopher said:
Speed up the stupid reviews!
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I know several things could be done, but this is what bugs me. I was at the Colorado St game a couple of years ago. Those reviews were eternal. I once heard Brent Musburger (sp) say that the Big 12 refs see the replay and promptly make the call. He liked it, everyone likes it.
 

theTurning said:
Every year someone suggests getting rid of the first-down clock stoppage and every year I facepalm myself into the next room. Of all the ways to speed up the game, why on earth would you eliminate one of the things that makes the college game great? You're literally advocating for less football. For less comebacks. For less drama.

If you want a game that more closely resembles the boring trudgefest of the NFL then by all means get rid of the clock rules.
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Two minutes of clock time shouldn't mean 18 minutes of real time.
It's really ridiculous.

It's the #1 reason the games go longer.

The other dumb one is the ridiculous overtime. If you're going to do a college football style overtime, at least start each team outside of FG range.

That would shorten up the game by at least one round on average.
 

I hate the idea of dorking with clock stoppages. As said, it's just less football... and I'm sure they'd just fill up that time with more / longer commerical time...
 

denguegopher said:
I know several things could be done, but this is what bugs me. I was at the Colorado St game a couple of years ago. Those reviews were eternal. I once heard Brent Musburger (sp) say that the Big 12 refs see the replay and promptly make the call. He liked it, everyone likes it.
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The reviews are definitely a problem and another thing I think the NFL does better. It felt like they were reviewing every other play at the end of the national championship game. That along with 39 incompletions is why it lasted 4 hours and 8 minutes without OT.

Stopping the clock after every 1st down made more sense when everyone was a run first team. Now with so many teams passing the ball more than running it, it doesn't make sense to stop the clock after ever 1st down.

I love football but 3 hour games are about right. 3 1/2 to 4+ hour games are too long.
 




Hates Monikers said:
And reduce the number of reviews. In the NFL each coach gets one challenge (or two, or whatever the number is). In college, any play can get reviewed any time.
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I duno, I like those under 2 min booth reviews. I don't like the length, but I like that they're there.

Come to think of it... we still have those right?
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
I duno, I like those under 2 min booth reviews. I don't like the length, but I like that they're there.

Come to think of it... we still have those right?
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The under 2-minute booth reviews are in the NFL. In college, the booth can request a review at any time.
 


GopherWeatherGuy said:
The reviews are definitely a problem and another thing I think the NFL does better. It felt like they were reviewing every other play at the end of the national championship game. That along with 39 incompletions is why it lasted 4 hours and 8 minutes without OT.

Stopping the clock after every 1st down made more sense when everyone was a run first team. Now with so many teams passing the ball more than running it, it doesn't make sense to stop the clock after ever 1st down.

I love football but 3 hour games are about right. 3 1/2 to 4+ hour games are too long.
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The Colo st game was 3:59 minutes and it was too damn long. The ref (McGinn) did not have a good game. http://www.gophersports.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/2015-2016/15game02.html.html
 

GopherWeatherGuy said:
Only stop the clock on first downs within 5 minutes of the end of the 2nd and 4th quarters. There's no need to stop it for every single 1st down.
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This idea makes sense to me. It preserves a sense of the college game while speeding up play for most of the game. Some of these no-huddle spread times run play after play after play with only seconds going off the clock. I was at the Baylor-Iowa State games last year and the first quarter took an hour and 15 minutes.
 

theTurning said:
Every year someone suggests getting rid of the first-down clock stoppage and every year I facepalm myself into the next room. Of all the ways to speed up the game, why on earth would you eliminate one of the things that makes the college game great? You're literally advocating for less football. For less comebacks. For less drama.

If you want a game that more closely resembles the boring trudgefest of the NFL then by all means get rid of the clock rules.
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I'm with you on this. However, I'm not sure how much time these stoppages actually take. A couple of years ago they added the center judge for quicker ball placement. Anyway, I doubt the first down stoppage time adds up to the additional minutes used to buffer the official 20 minute half-time break.

Colleges did speed up the game significantly a few years ago went by keeping the clock running on out of bound plays. Like baseball, most of the additional time is in the expansion of commercial breaks. And like most fans (I think), I appreciate most games coming in at around 3:00 hours.
 

theTurning said:
Every year someone suggests getting rid of the first-down clock stoppage and every year I facepalm myself into the next room. Of all the ways to speed up the game, why on earth would you eliminate one of the things that makes the college game great? You're literally advocating for less football. For less comebacks. For less drama.

If you want a game that more closely resembles the boring trudgefest of the NFL then by all means get rid of the clock rules.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The game lengths would fix themselves through two corrections: (1) Shorter reviews - if we can all see it on TV, the review should be over quickly. This is an easy fix. (2) Shorter/lesser commercial breaks. Longer/more commercials ruined the NFL (for me), and are steadily making college football (and bball) harder to watch. However, since commercials = revenue, this fix is unlikely.
 

Is not a lot of it "TV timeout" related ?

If so, it becomes a revenue issue and you are stuck with it.
 

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