Shorter Games, Less Plays

The Football Rules Committee appears to have gotten its wish with a reduction in the average length of games, but the 40-25 play clock instituted for the 2008 season has also cut dramatically into the number of plays.

Marty Couvillon of cfbstats.com has compiled data for Week 1 games — 73 in all involving Division I-A teams — and found that the average length of a game was 3 hours 10 minutes, a 13-minute reduction from 2007. In 2006, when the controversial 3-2-5-e rule was enacted, the length of a game was 3:07, a 14-minute reduction from 2005.

As for the average number of plays, it was 134.7 in Week 1, down from 143.4 in 2007. That's 8.7 plays. In 2006, the average was 127.5, down 13.2 plays from 2005.

Michael Clark, the coach at Bridgewater (Va.) College who was chairman of the rules committee when it approved the 40-25 clock, said in February that the change was not expected to impact the number of plays.

"It is our hope that the 40-25 clock will add a consistent pace of play," he said. "NFL studies show when they made this change it also added four plays per game. The live ball carrier out of bounds happens on average about 12 times a game. A couple of those are in the last two minutes where there will be no change and the handful of plays lost through this should be replaced by the 40-25 pace of play. It should be a push."

Although the data sample remains small, it's pointing toward shorter games and fewer plays in 2008. If anything, the average length of games was pushed upward by a 1:12 rain delay at Oklahoma and an overtime game at UCLA.

Here is the data through Monday's games:

             G      Plays/G   Time/G
2005     717    140.7      3:21
2006     792    127.5      3:07
2007     792    143.4      3:23
2008      73     134.7      3:10

The longest games of Week 1:
Chattanooga-Oklahoma: 4:09
Eastern Washington-Texas Tech: 3:40
Illinois-Missouri: 3:39
Tennessee-UCLA: 3:39
Oregon State-Stanford: 3:39

The shortest games of Week 1:
James Madison-Duke: 2:35
South Carolina State-Central Florida: 2:36
Texas Christian-New Mexico: 2:44
Boston College-Kent State: 2:44
Eastern Kentucky-Cincinnati: 2:46

Update: Jon Solomon of the Birmingham News talks with Rogers Redding, NCAA secretary-rules editor and Southeastern Conference coordinator of football officials, about the early data.

Comments

[Ackos]

I wish the NCAA would leave the clock alone.

[CFBFan]

I wonder how much of the fewer plays from week 1 is skewed by the fact a lot of the games were against cupcakes thus leading the team ahead by 20+ points to not exactly hustling to get the next play off. I bet we see the reduction in number of plays start to get closer to what it had been once more competitive games begin.

[Z-Bus]

I don't think the new play clock had any difference in the amount of plays. The difference comes form the game clock running when the ball is reset after a player goes out of bounds. Most college teams need that 25 seconds to get the play off. Remember the NFL can get plays in a lot quicker with the helmet radios.

Also, the hashmarks are wider in college, so there are probably more out of bounds plays in college than the NFL.

I like the new play clock, but for me the 2 minutes out of bounds things should go away. Why change the rules of the game based on the time on the clock?

[Pat]

I agree 100% with ZBus. The logic is sound for higher tempo = same plays but with shorter real time.

The running clock on out of bounds plays just pisses away time for no reason. AND it seems stupid to me to change the rules of the game IN THE MIDDLE OF A GAME at some arbitrary 2:00 mark.

[ctsooner]

OU went that long? Are they including the 1 1/2 stoppage because of weather. I heard that they did a running clock in the 2nd half, can't see it actually taking 4+ hours to play

[David]

Fla vs Ten in 2008 - 108 total plays
Fla vs Ten in 2007 - 148 total plays
College fans lost 27% of the action. Regardless of the fact that the outcome would realistically been the same I still can not stand the fact that this much game action has been remove. This is equivalent to a 12 game season being reduced to 9 games.

CHANGE THE RULES BACK

[butch]

Good information here. But I have a problem with the bar charts - they give a false sense of how great the disparity is (they need to range from 0-145, not 125-145!) and makes it seem like you're manipulating the data to prove your point.

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Although the data sample remains small, it's pointing toward shorter games and fewer plays in 2008.