College football officials on Friday took steps to shorten games and reduce the number of plays per game. It’s an issue that has been a focus for years but has taken on added urgency this offseason, as the sport is a year away from expanding the College Football Playoff to 12 teams, which will lengthen the season for some teams and increase the risk of injury for players.
The NCAA Football Rules Committee has formally recommended three rule changes, which will need to be approved by the Playing Rules Oversight Committee in April. They are:
- A clock running after the first tests (like the NFL), except during the last two minutes of each half.
- Prohibit the use of consecutive timeouts by a team.
- Reporting a foul to the second or fourth quarter rather than playing an untimed down.
What you need to know about recommendations
The recommendations follow the rules committee’s annual meetings in Indianapolis this week. The Division I Football Competition Committee also met this week to discuss the topic. All three rule changes received broad support. Other, more radical ideas, such as running the clock after incomplete passes, did not receive enough support to move forward at this point.
Tulane athletic director Troy Dannen, who chairs the competition committee, said The Athletic This week, he expects the three rule changes combined to eliminate seven to 10 plays per game.
“This is a first step,” Dannen said.
Background story
The question of game length is twofold. College football games are too long, much longer than NFL games. And, perhaps more important to this discussion, they are on average much longer per game.
According to an NCAA study of the 2022 season (which included special teams), college football games average about 180 total plays per game, compared to about 155 in the NFL. This is both a player safety issue with the ongoing CFP expansion and a fan engagement issue, as FBS games average nearly three hours and 30 minutes, while the NFL averages 3 hours and 10 minutes.
With so many plays per game, there are more chances for collisions and injuries. Experts call them “exposures.” Commissioners, including the SEC’s Greg Sankey, have been saying for more than a year that there are ways to safely expand the CFP by looking for ways to reduce exposures.
“It’s not about the game,” he said last winter after expansion talks stalled. “It’s about exposure. It’s about contact. So you’re asking yourself how do you adapt the game in the modern era to meet a different set of demands?”
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips led a push last year to examine college football holistically before making changes in any one area. In common parlance, it’s called the 365-day review, and it includes a review of the number of plays per game, among other topics. Phillips supports all three proposed rule changes and said they have the support of all 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences.
“With the expansion of the playoffs in 2024, a thorough examination of options to reduce the total number of games has been a top priority for the FBS commissioners,” Phillips said. “If you’re going to expand the playoffs, it can’t be done at the same number of games. You have to try to reduce it.”
“This is a first step. It is not the only one, but we hope that it will be an element that will be integrated into the next 2023 football season.”
Why this? Why now?
It would be nearly impossible for college football officials to add games and make significantly more money without doing anything else, especially in the current climate. Schools and conferences know they need to do more for athletes, whether it’s in the form of health and safety protocols or putting more money in their pockets.
College football players can’t be asked to potentially play 17 games in a season without doing anything to mitigate the risks associated with more snaps. The three rule changes that have been recommended won’t be drastic changes — Dannen estimated they would affect seven to 10 plays per game — but any small step helps. The NCAA kept tweaking its kickoff rules to make the game safer until it figured out what worked best. This process could be similar.
Some of these proposals were considered a year ago but didn’t garner enough support to pass. What’s changed? Well, the presidents and chancellors who oversee the CFP have formally approved expanding the field from four teams to 12.
“That may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back because we now know for sure that there are scenarios where games are added to teams’ schedules,” Dannen said. “Another trigger was the ACC calling for a holistic look at football. We looked at recruiting rules, schedules, the role of coaches and analysts. That was one of the areas that was addressed as well.”
Dannen said there was “not really support at any level” for the idea of running the clock after incomplete passes.
“We’re going to want to look at anything that can take away plays,” Dannen said. “(Running the clock) would take away a lot of plays, probably 15 or 20. But it’s hard to understand when it goes against the way we time football.”
Dannen expects the concept to continue to be explored along with any other ideas that arise over the next year.
“The progress we’re making is measured, in terms of time,” said Georgia coach Kirby Smart, co-chair of the rules committee. “We’re going to find out a lot this year about how much change that is. But I think it’s a smart move to look in that direction as we look to play more games.”
Required Reading
(Photo: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
