You're Getting Less Football for More $$$

Think you are ticked about the new 40/25-second clock rules? Finally a coach has voiced his displeasure. Florida's Urban Meyer called the new rules "awful" during his news conference Monday. This after the Gators were limited — by Meyer's count — to 46 competitive plays in Saturday's game against Tennessee.

"What in the hell?" Meyer said. "Where are the points? Where are the yards? What are we doing? Let's go."

Meyer's boss, athletic director Jeremy Foley, told the Orlando Sentinel that he contacted Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive on Monday to express concern over the new rules. Foley wants an evaluation of the rules put on the agenda for the next SEC meeting in December.

"My concern is if you reduce the number of plays, fans pay a lot of money to watch those plays," Foley said. "I'm not sure if what we're doing to save 10 minutes of football is working. I ask that we sit down as a league and talk about it, and if the league confers, then we'll see. But it's up to the NCAA [rules committee]."

Marty Couvillon of cfbstats.com, who has been studying the impact of the new rules, says there were only 113 plays in the Florida-Tennessee game, 21.56 under the average in 2008. Overall, the average number of plays is down 8.87 from 2007.

Despite the drastic reduction in plays, the Florida-Tennessee game took 3:11 to play, two minutes longer than the average in 2008. Overall, there has been a 14-minute reduction in the length of games in 2008 from 2007.

Our weekly look at the average number of plays and time of a game for the past four seasons:         

             G      Plays/G   Time/G
2005     717    140.71      3:21
2006     792    127.53      3:07
2007     792    143.43      3:23
2008     250    134.56      3:09

The longest games of Week 4:
Fresno State-Toledo: 4:05
Southeastern Louisiana-Louisiana Tech: 3:45
Portland State-Washington State: 3:42
South Florida-Florida International: 3:32
Miami-Texas A&M: 3:28
Kansas State-Louisville: 3:27
Wake Forest-Florida State: 3:24

The shortest games of Week 4:
Indiana State-Northern Illinois: 2:30
Wofford-South Carolina: 2:34
Nicholls State-Memphis: 2:41
San Jose State-Stanford: 2:45
Alabama State-Alabama Birmingham: 2:46
Tennessee Tech-Western Michigan: 2:47
Miami (Ohio)-Cincinnati: 2:47