New rules will mean less college football ... how can that be good?
Don't blink, you might miss more than you think.
That could be the case for college football fans when they sit down and start watching football this season. The rules, which are tweaked almost every year, have been changed again and this time the changes will have an effect on the time on the clock.
Or more precisely, the time that won't be on clock.
You have no doubt heard by now that the play clock is going to be running at times it has never run before during a college football game.
Kickoff through the end zone? No longer would that take no time off the clock. Now the clock starts as soon as kicker's toe meets pigskin. Then, as soon as the ref signals the ball ready to play at the 20-yard line, the old clock starts rolling again.
Incomplete pass?
Start the clock again as soon as the referee signals the ball "ready for play." That will pretty much eliminate the quarterback spike as an offensive weapon late in games. There will be no advantage to stopping the clock when all a team will have to quickly line up again so as not to lose valuable time off the clock.
Runners runs out of bounds?
Clock stops, but then starts again as soon as the referee says it is ready.
"First time in the history of college football that we will wind the clock on a 'ready for play signal' following a kick or run out of bounds, an incompleted pass, touchback or a fair catch," said John Adams, NCAA football playing rules secretary-rules editor."Tremendously important change in our game," he said. "This is going to effect 30 plays approximately in our game. This was placed in the rule book to cut down on the length of our games."OK, but my question is why? Why does the NCAA rules committee feel the need to cut down on the length of college football games? But perhaps just as important, why cut down on the number of plays in a game.If the rules will effect about 30 plays a game, that amounts to 18 percent of the 166 plays a game (on average). But with the clock eating away valuable time, it is estimated that it will mean a decrease of at least six to seven plays a game, and possibly more. Some estimates have the number of as high as 20 plays a game that won't be run because of the new rules."I don't think it will take that many series away," West Virginia coach Rich Rodriquez told the Charleston Daily Mail. "It really depends on the style of the team."
It should be noted that the Mountaineers run a no-huddle offense.Other coaches are not as comfortable with the new rule. Oregon coach Mike Berlotti said he was "appalled" with the turn of events."I think it will help the underdog teams," South Carolina's Steve Spurrier said. "If you're the underdog, obviously you would like fewer plays in the game."Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville is on the rules committee. He told USA Today that the intent of the rules change was not to take plays out of the game.
"We weren't looking to take plays away from the game," he said. "We were looking to get away from some of these three-hour, 45-minute games in hot weather or cold weather."
Again, I have to ask why? College football games are meant to be experienced as much as watched. Some of that experience is spending an entire day on campus whether it is spent tailgating in the parking lot, walking around the campus or sitting in the stadium watching the game. About the only people that care about the length of games is the television networks and they want to get games over with as soon as possible--but with all of its commercials, of course--so the networks can move on to another rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond or Survivor: Des Moines.
Television is obviously the reason games run long, but the networks will not surrender any commercial time so the only way to shorten games is to convince rules-makers that everybody wants shorter games and to do that you either have to cutback on halftime or the playing of the game. The NCAA has decided to make the cut right at the heart of college football--the game itself. Brilliant.College games on television averaged three hours and 20 minutes last season. For games that were not televised (and yes, there are still a few of those), the time was three hours and three minutes. With the clock running more often, and if every team snapped the ball with 10 seconds left on the play clock every down, it would shave five minutes off the game.
Five whole minutes; that has to be exciting to fans when they realize they will be spared spending five more minutes, or one whole hour over the course of a 12-game season, inside the stadium. They can jump into the game traffic five minutes earlier and, if it is a night game, they can actually get home and in bed five minutes earlier, which will obviously come in handy when that alarm clock goes off on Monday morning.
The changes are not as bad as the ideas behind them are idiotic. College football is a great spectacle, one that fans wait for nine months out of the year. Why mess it up? Of course, as Tuberville pointed out, "This is obviously an experiment. Anything we do in the rules committee can be changed next year."
Let's hope so, just don't count on it.
