College football games are getting increasingly longer… and few are outraged

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BleedGopher

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per Awful Announcing:

In the NBA and college basketball, fans strongly feel that the number of timeouts should be reduced. In the NFL, television viewers cannot stand the “commercial block-kickoff-commercial block” sequence when it emerges during a game broadcast.

College football? It seems to capture less large-scale frustration. That’s not scientific fact, but consider this: The Student Section’s preseason media roundtables for college football (2015) and college basketball (in 2014), done in conjunction with Awful Announcing, cut in two different directions. When asking our panel about football programming issues, length of games never came up. In the world of college basketball programming, the game-length issue comprised a large portion of our discussion.

Yet, consider this piece of commentary by Zach Barnett of Football Scoop, citing research in this Wall Street Journal article by Ben Cohen. After just four weeks, 66 games have lasted beyond three and a half hours, an average of more than 16 such games per week. Six have cracked the four-hour mark.

College football doesn’t have a commissioner, but still — wouldn’t this issue receive more play if fans cared more about it? The lack of outrage is noticeable.

http://awfulannouncing.com/2015-art...increasingly-longer-and-few-are-outraged.html

Go Gophers!!
 

My wife is outraged by it. During every timeout out she asks if it's been 10 minutes. I also find it fairly annoying that in order to ensure I DVR the entire game I have to extend the recording by at least 1 hr. It's pretty excessive.
 

Games are way too long.

They've essentially tacked on another 30 minutes.
 

When we are ahead I want the games shorter, When we are behind I want them longer. :) When your there, the end just sneaks up on you. I don't think game length is an issue for college football.
 

It just means more time in the stadium...not a bad thing imo.
 


It's a problem. Games lengths are getting ridiculous.

If I was a Big 12 fan I might give up entirely. The Big 10 isn't quite so bad.
 

The number of timeouts is excessive. Some of the games have absolutely no flow. The Kent State game was a perfect example of this. It was painful.
 

I don't seem to mind the length of Gopher games when they are long, but it drives me nuts when I'm watching another game and it goes so long.

I would have to guess that the faster paced offenses are the most responsible for this. I never used to be in favor of letting the clock run after a first down, but I am now. We could probably also do without the 25-minute halftimes.
 

It is funny that a game, which only has approximately 15 minutes of real action, takes over 3 hours to complete. America's two biggest sports (football and baseball) are both games where the audience is asked to hurry up and wait. One explanation for our love of these games is that we enjoy the social commentary around the game, both with TV announcers and with those who watch the game with us. Perhaps the actual game is less important than the social dialogue we get from watching the game.?
 



Games are way too long. It took nearly 50 minutes to play the first quarter vs. Colorado State. I couldn't stay awake for the end of the Ole Miss-Alabama game a couple of weeks ago, which ended at 12:30 in the morning local time.

But as long as ratings don't suffer, nothing will change.
 

Specifically at the TCU game when there was a tv timeout and then after it was over the refs decided to review a call that was obvious. Why not review the call during the tv timeout?
 


Just another symptom of over-reaching commercialism in life.
 



Gopher024 said:
My wife is outraged by it. During every timeout out she asks if it's been 10 minutes. I also find it fairly annoying that in order to ensure I DVR the entire game I have to extend the recording by at least 1 hr. It's pretty excessive.
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I missed the game-winning drive against Ohio because of this BS. Was at my girlfriend's parents' house who have AT&T U-verse which doesn't even have the "extra 30 minute" option that comcast has so the recording ended with about 12 freaking minutes of gametime still left...I was sad.

tinyarch said:
It is funny that a game, which only has approximately 15 minutes of real action, takes over 3 hours to complete. America's two biggest sports (football and baseball) are both games where the audience is asked to hurry up and wait. One explanation for our love of these games is that we enjoy the social commentary around the game, both with TV announcers and with those who watch the game with us. Perhaps the actual game is less important than the social dialogue we get from watching the game.?
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No trying to be sexist just going from experience but just about every girl I met in college who were "fans" of teams cared more about the outfit they were wearing to the tailgate then the actual team or game. Then you get in the stadium and it's a contest to see who can get the cutest snapchat of themselves and they are on their phones the entire time. No doubt that football has a lot of fans because of the social aspect of it.
 


It is a huge issue and I know I have brought it up here in the past. To me the most hated people (person) in the stadium isn't the ones wearing red, it is the guy on the southeast sideline with a red cap. I try to attend an MIAC game or two every year when it doesn't conflict with the Gophers. It is so refreshing to watch a college game flow in the way it was intended, rather than having that red capped a-hole stepping out onto the field every 5 minutes.

Try bringing someone less familiar with football, especially someone from a different country, to a Gopher game some time. People used to constant action (soccer) will be very hard to sell to grow football interest with when you explain that not only do they have to wait 30 seconds between plays, but they need to wait several minutes at a time for no other reason than to ensure viewers at home get enough ads on their TV screens.
 

Schnauzer said:
It is a huge issue and I know I have brought it up here in the past. To me the most hated people (person) in the stadium isn't the ones wearing red, it is the guy on the southeast sideline with a red cap. I try to attend an MIAC game or two every year when it doesn't conflict with the Gophers. It is so refreshing to watch a college game flow in the way it was intended, rather than having that red capped a-hole stepping out onto the field every 5 minutes.

Try bringing someone less familiar with football, especially someone from a different country, to a Gopher game some time. People used to constant action (soccer) will be very hard to sell to grow football interest with when you explain that not only do they have to wait 30 seconds between plays, but they need to wait several minutes at a time for no other reason than to ensure viewers at home get enough ads on their TV screens.
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Did this twice with foreign friends from class while in undergrad. Neither of them were particularly excited about the game itself but certainly thought it was interesting and asked plenty of questions. However, they were both enamored by the experience as a whole (we tailgated very, very hard) and had only positive things to say about the "gameday experience" although I don't recall their reactions to the game/sport itself other than pure curiosity.
 

I'm obviously not a network executive but in this day and age aren't their alternatives to securing ad revenue other than a 30 second spot? I know in NASCAR they've gone to having some commercial breaks where the race continues in the upper corner w/o commentary. You could have several 15 second spots between plays at various points during the game. It just seems like a 5 minute commercial break is somewhat antiquated.
 

DarrenTheGreek said:
I'm obviously not a network executive but in this day and age aren't their alternatives to securing ad revenue other than a 30 second spot? I know in NASCAR they've gone to having some commercial breaks where the race continues in the upper corner w/o commentary. You could have several 15 second spots between plays at various points during the game. It just seems like a 5 minute commercial break is somewhat antiquated.
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Soccer telecasts run the entire 45 minute half without commercial breaks relying instead on a mix of verbal spots, superimposed banner ads and field level signage. They seem to be making plenty of money.
 

I don't like it. It would also help if games actually started at the times they are supposed to instead of 10-15 minutes after. Halftime could probably be a bit shorter. I understand the whole band thing, but they can do 1 less song. 5 minutes here and there really adds up
 

I guess I'm the only guy who is OK with the pace of games. We only get to spend 7 Saturday's per year at the Bank and I'm never in a rush to get out of there. Sure, a couple less TV TO's would be nice, but I'm not too concerned about it.
 

It is oxymoronic that the fast paced hurry up offenses have resulted in games lasting so much longer. TV is a factor, but I think the fast pace, extra plays, extra passes approach makes the game last longer. No one wants to milk the clock.
 



I think a pretty simple compromise is to not have the clock stop on every first down except in the last five minutes of the first and second halves.
 

2nd Degree Gopher said:
Soccer telecasts run the entire 45 minute half without commercial breaks relying instead on a mix of verbal spots, superimposed banner ads and field level signage. They seem to be making plenty of money.
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We could put Case-IH across the chest of our uniforms!

On the topic of the thread though, I've never cared much about the length of the games and I accept advertisements as a fact of life.
 

GophersInIowa said:
I think a pretty simple compromise is to not have the clock stop on every first down except in the last five minutes of the first and second halves.
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No reason to have the clock stop on any 1st down. This is one area where the NFL has it right.

NFL games are pretty consistent 3- 3.25 hrs. College games can go to 4 hrs or more. I do hear 'fringe fans' bring up the 4 hrs for a college game from time to time.
 


Clock stopping on 1st downs is one of the things that makes college football great. I can't understand why anyone would actually argue for less football.
 


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