Potential college football rule changes aim to limit plays and exposures while shortening the game

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UpAndUnder43 said:
The game clock stops for a few seconds on first downs where the ball stays inbounds. But once its placed it starts again. Lets say there are 30 first downs in a game. 15 of which the ball stays in bounds. Thats maybe 1 minute of game clock ,assuming teams operate at the same speed. If they run the play clock down it won't change anything.
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Yeah, I don't buy it either. The old college rule where they stopped the clock on first down would have lengthened the game, but the few seconds it is stopped now is not a major factor in game length. And it won't change the total number of plays by all that much or have any significant impact on player safety.

If they really want shorter games there are two options. Shorten the amount of time the bands get at halftime or shorten the length of the commercial breaks. I don't see either of those things happening anytime soon.
 


GopherPoke said:
Decrease number of TO's. Set timer for video reviews. Those would be two more options imo.
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Replay is too inconsistent because the amount of replay time is going to differ in every game. As opposed to decreasing the # of TO they could just make the ones the coaches call last for the amount of time they are supposed to instead of turning them into full media timeouts that run for 2-3 minutes. But again, the ads are way more important to the people in charge than the on the field product. They know fans are going to watch no matter what so the goal is to get as many ads into the game as possible. Can't do that with shorter commercial breaks.

That said, we are getting to the point where everyone will have a large enough screen that they can just split the feed full-time with the game playing in one window and ads playing in another the way they already do sometimes during a game. Maybe then they wouldn't need the long commercial breaks because they would have the captive audience watching their ads at all times.

I know I am cynical about the advertising but it gets more and more ridiculous each year as the breaks seem to keep getting more frequent and longer.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Agree.

All new drives after a score should just start at the 25.

Onside kick can be replaced with the option to go for it on a 4th and 15 play or something to that effect with the same likelihood of success.
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I don't like this idea. So there will not a potential surprise on side kick but you teams have to announce it? If true, no thanks.
 

It seems there is a regular effort to shorten college games. TV commercial breaks have continually grown and the red hat dude now rules the game. So, when people complain the game is too long it is ironic how everything seems to be on the table to limit the actual football part with little/no mention of the grand expanse in tv advertising time. I find that frustrating.

And as others have mentioned, adding more games seems to cancel out the idea it is a player safety issue. I’d rather see them dial the regular season back to 11 games with the lost week being given to an open date for a 16 team playoff. The net would be less football, without screwing with the actual game. And, I’d also rather see caps on the number of plays a player can participate in than screw with the game rules and reduce the amount of football played. That would allow for greater participation so win/win.

I’ve always felt most of the difference in length of college vs pro games is due to the much longer marching band halftimes in college games.
 


4four4 said:
I don't like this idea. So there will not a potential surprise on side kick but you teams have to announce it? If true, no thanks.
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Most on-side kicks occur when everyone in the stadium knows you have to do it and it's very clear from the kick formation.

My opinion is that "surprise" on-side recovery attempts from normal appearing kickoffs are rare enough events that it's not worth preserving them. Just my opinion.
 

Schnauzer said:
And as others have mentioned, adding more games seems to cancel out the idea it is a player safety issue.
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Adding playoff games is only for a handful of teams.

Looking at the total number of football plays in a season, the reduction in regular season plays I assume would more than make up for the added from the few playoff games.
 

If NFL games are 12 to 16 minutes shorter and the goal is for the game to take less time...doesn't it make sense to just adopt NFL rules? That way the viewing experience is consistent. Many games I ask myself is that an NFL rule, a college rule or a high school rule I'm thinking of? Because, I think the officials just screwed up.
Be nice if rules were the same for all levels. Shorter periods, quarters or halves I can keep track of if we need adjustments.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Replay is too inconsistent because the amount of replay time is going to differ in every game. As opposed to decreasing the # of TO they could just make the ones the coaches call last for the amount of time they are supposed to instead of turning them into full media timeouts that run for 2-3 minutes. But again, the ads are way more important to the people in charge than the on the field product. They know fans are going to watch no matter what so the goal is to get as many ads into the game as possible. Can't do that with shorter commercial breaks.

That said, we are getting to the point where everyone will have a large enough screen that they can just split the feed full-time with the game playing in one window and ads playing in another the way they already do sometimes during a game. Maybe then they wouldn't need the long commercial breaks because they would have the captive audience watching their ads at all times.

I know I am cynical about the advertising but it gets more and more ridiculous each year as the breaks seem to keep getting more frequent and longer.
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NBC did this for the Olympics (the split screen) and it was annoying to the point of stopping watching. The nfl and cfb have also done this with some ads but only doing it during breaks in action. I’m sure it won’t be long until touchdowns are celebrated by playing chik fil a ads while the replay rolls on a split screen
 



UpAndUnder43 said:
I don't think that would really change anything.
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The clock stops for around 5-8 seconds on every first down play before the ref starts it again. They used to wait for the ball to be set, but now basically wait for the umpire to have the ball close to the spot. 5-8 seconds can add up. 40 first downs and you are at about 5 minutes of game time.

Also Note:
1. If offense subs players they have to wait for defense to sub players, if they choose.


I would suggest the clock run for any play the goes out of bounds until the last 2 minutes of 1st half and 5 minutes of the game.
 


UpAndUnder43 said:
The game clock stops for a few seconds on first downs where the ball stays inbounds. But once its placed it starts again. Lets say there are 30 first downs in a game. 15 of which the ball stays in bounds. Thats maybe 1 minute of game clock ,assuming teams operate at the same speed. If they run the play clock down it won't change anything.
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I would guess it would shave between 2-4 minutes of game time off an average Big Ten college football game. Probably 3-5 minutes in leagues with more wide open offenses with more first downs. Certainly not significant, but not "no additional time", as you first claimed.
 

tjgopher said:
I would guess it would shave between 2-4 minutes of game time off an average college football game. Certainly not significant, but not "no additional time", as you first claimed.
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Perhaps mentally we would think that the game is going much faster as the clock keeps moving. Amazing how events, happenings, tick tock of the clock does to the brain.
 



upnorthkid said:
NBC did this for the Olympics (the split screen) and it was annoying to the point of stopping watching. The nfl and cfb have also done this with some ads but only doing it during breaks in action. I’m sure it won’t be long until touchdowns are celebrated by playing chik fil a ads while the replay rolls on a split screen
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Yeah, the only kind of good thing about it is that you can watch what is taking place on the field at the same time as the ad and kind of tune it out, but I am not a fan of this concept. However I expect to see more of it.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Most on-side kicks occur when everyone in the stadium knows you have to do it and it's very clear from the kick formation.

My opinion is that "surprise" on-side recovery attempts from normal appearing kickoffs are rare enough events that it's not worth preserving them. Just my opinion.
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Bad Citrus Bowl memory alert...
 

60's Guy said:
If NFL games are 12 to 16 minutes shorter and the goal is for the game to take less time...doesn't it make sense to just adopt NFL rules? That way the viewing experience is consistent. Many games I ask myself is that an NFL rule, a college rule or a high school rule I'm thinking of? Because, I think the officials just screwed up.
Be nice if rules were the same for all levels. Shorter periods, quarters or halves I can keep track of if we need adjustments.
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The nfl should adopt the only need 1 foot rule. We would see more unbelievable catches
 

Schnauzer said:
It seems there is a regular effort to shorten college games. TV commercial breaks have continually grown and the red hat dude now rules the game. So, when people complain the game is too long it is ironic how everything seems to be on the table to limit the actual football part with little/no mention of the grand expanse in tv advertising time. I find that frustrating.

And as others have mentioned, adding more games seems to cancel out the idea it is a player safety issue. I’d rather see them dial the regular season back to 11 games with the lost week being given to an open date for a 16 team playoff. The net would be less football, without screwing with the actual game. And, I’d also rather see caps on the number of plays a player can participate in than screw with the game rules and reduce the amount of football played. That would allow for greater participation so win/win.

I’ve always felt most of the difference in length of college vs pro games is due to the much longer marching band halftimes in college games.
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What I have in post #17 would fix the game length and probably spur on some more creative TV commercial time usage, like used in the recent Olympic coverage. I'm a big open-wheel racing fan. Indycar and F1 races obviously don't stop for commercial breaks but they get in the commercials and run between 2-2.5 hours. There clearly are ways of shortening the games while preserving the commercial revenue.
 
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tjgopher said:
I would guess it would shave between 2-4 minutes of game time off an average Big Ten college football game. Probably 3-5 minutes in leagues with more wide open offenses with more first downs. Certainly not significant, but not "no additional time", as you first claimed.
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I misunderstood but this seems very dumb to do. People gonna be like “man, 3 hours and 32 minutes is too much time for a game. But if it was 3 hours 25 minutes I’d be at every game”
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
I misunderstood but this seems very dumb to do. People gonna be like “man, 3 hours and 32 minutes is too much time for a game. But if it was 3 hours 25 minutes I’d be at every game”
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Yeah, of course not. It isn't a significant amount of time, but if you find 3 or 4 things that save 3-4 minutes each, then there is progress to making a 3:32 game a 3:15 game. I think 3:15 is the preferred window for just about everyone.

So, while this wouldn't solve a problem, it could be part of a solution.
 

Stupid. Want to limit exposure, play a different sport. Want to shorten the games, it’s not rocket science, literally just shorten the game clock from 60 minutes.
 

tjgopher said:
Yeah, of course not. It isn't a significant amount of time, but if you find 3 or 4 things that save 3-4 minutes each, then there is progress to making a 3:32 game a 3:15 game. I think 3:15 is the preferred window for just about everyone.

So, while this wouldn't solve a problem, it could be part of a solution.
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as a serious question, has anyone actually heard someone say that watching a game on TV takes too long? All i've ever heard is there's too many commercial breaks and dead time (ie injury timeouts, official reviews) rather than that the TV run time is too long. In person I get that some people don't want to invest the half day, but 15 minutes isn't going to tip the scales for much of anyone when it comes to that imo
 

tjgopher said:
Yeah, of course not. It isn't a significant amount of time, but if you find 3 or 4 things that save 3-4 minutes each, then there is progress to making a 3:32 game a 3:15 game. I think 3:15 is the preferred window for just about everyone.

So, while this wouldn't solve a problem, it could be part of a solution.
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I’d rather have more game things (plays, substitutions, etc) and not cut them out to save a couple minutes. Maybe eliminate one commercial break instead.
 

upnorthkid said:
as a serious question, has anyone actually heard someone say that watching a game on TV takes too long? All i've ever heard is there's too many commercial breaks and dead time (ie injury timeouts, official reviews) rather than that the TV run time is too long. In person I get that some people don't want to invest the half day, but 15 minutes isn't going to tip the scales for much of anyone when it comes to that imo
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Yeah, I think it is a talking issue that games take too long. I personally don't care. I am totally in your boat, same with baseball. I certainly am not pining for shorter football or baseball games. I enjoy the sports and am good with it.
 



tjgopher said:
Yeah, I think it is a talking issue that games take too long. I personally don't care. I am totally in your boat, same with baseball. I certainly am not pining for shorter football or baseball games. I enjoy the sports and am good with it.
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that's the part I don't understand. According to who are games too long? fans or the networks?
 

upnorthkid said:
that's the part I don't understand. According to who are games too long? fans or the networks?
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I think over time, they have gotten longer and that is the question. I assume there is some sort of survey data and game length is on it.
 

upnorthkid said:
as a serious question, has anyone actually heard someone say that watching a game on TV takes too long? All i've ever heard is there's too many commercial breaks and dead time (ie injury timeouts, official reviews) rather than that the TV run time is too long. In person I get that some people don't want to invest the half day, but 15 minutes isn't going to tip the scales for much of anyone when it comes to that imo
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I watch most of my Vikings games where I start watching about 1 hour in on the dvr and catch up to live by the end. So yes I wish games were shorter. Gopher games I'm usually on here so I have to be live so I can complain about the refs in real time.
 

Give the TV ads a limited number of minutes.
Run the ads during half time.
Run the ads during injury time outs.
Run the ads between quarters and when either team calls a TO.
Limit the number of minutes to review a play.
 

I do find myself watching games on DVR right when they finish. Or start halfway through. I find it takes the edge off, since I can just fast forward right to the plays and not give myself any time to get nervous. But if games were considerably shorter (and not filled with more commercial breaks), I'd probably watch more live.
 

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