A Slight Increase in the Number of Plays Lost

Updating the season-long study on the impact of the new clock rules for 2008. After Marty Couvillion of cfbstats.com added the Week 2 games, he found another decrease in average number of plays per game. In 2007, the average game had 143.43 plays. Thus far in 2008, the average is 134.61 plays. That breaks down to a loss of 8.82 plays a game. Last week the number was 8.7.

The time of an average game remained the same, 3:10, despite a 5:18 marathon between Western Carolina and Florida State. That game had two weather delays totaling 2:14.

With the addition of another 70 games in Week 3, there should be enough data to start drawing conclusions on the new clock rules. We're also going to start examining how the rules are impacting certain teams. Stay tuned. ...

Here is the data through Week 2:         

             G      Plays/G   Time/G
2005     717    140.71      3:21
2006     792    127.53      3:07
2007     792    143.43      3:23
2008     139    134.61      3:10

The longest games of Week 2:
Western Carolina-Florida State: 5:18
San Diego State-Notre Dame: 3:39
South Florida-Central Florida: 3:39
Mississippi-Wake Forest: 3:33
Cincinnati-Oklahoma: 3:33
Rice-Memphis: 3:29
Texas-Texas El Paso: 3:39
Weber State-Hawaii: 3:27

The shortest games of Week 2:
Florida International-Iowa: 2:42
Maryland-Middle Tennessee: 2:44
Sacramento State-Colorado State: 2:46
Air Force-Wyoming: 2:48
West Virginia-East Carolina: 2:54
New Hampshire-Army: 2:54
Toledo-Arizona: 2:54
Western Kentucky-Eastern Kentucky: 2:54

Comments

[Sean]

The headline is misleading. The number of plays lost has increased (from 8.7 in Week 1 to 8.82 in Week 2 according to the statistics presented). The overall number of plays has decreased, not the number of plays lost.

[The Wiz]

Thanks for that. Correction made.