New Rules For College Football Again Deal With Father Time

So here we go into college football 2008.

They changed the timing rules again. This time, going with an NFL look as opposed to what they did a few years ago with the really radical (and widely unpopular) moves they made.

Now, the biggest differences will be that the play clock is 40 seconds instead of 25 but it begins virtually at the echo of the whistle of the previous play.

This I like.

The other major rule change is that when a player goes out of bounds, the game clock resumes once the ball is placed at the line of scrimmage by the official instead of at the next snap. Inside the final two minutes, they revert to the old rule.

This I don’t like.

For one, I like my rules to be universal from start of game to conclusion. A touchdown counts for six points in the first quarter just as it does in the fourth quarter. Why doesn’t it count for more points near the end of the game? I realize there’s a modification on extra points in overtime but that’s understandable.

When you allow for different rules within the game, to me, you’re rendering parts of the game more meaningful than others. Yes, the final moments are usually the most important. However, the time saved earlier in a game by stopping the clock until the next snap could lead to an extra play or two in which decisive points are scored.

Essentially, these are rules meant to speed up the game for one simple reason and that is the TV folks. When you have tightly packed games in three-and-a-half hour segments it makes the program day flow nicely. When the games begin to swell to three hours and 45 minutes, four hours, and so forth that’s when the TV guys get a little restless.

As is the case with virtually all change, adaptation will be made by coaches.

I think the unintended consequence of the out-of-bounds-timing-rule will be that teams that are down by two scores or more early in the fourth quarter will simply turn that into a two-minute drill, if you will, over the course of 15 minutes making some fourth quarters last an hour or more. Since they can’t stop the clock for a significant amount of time by getting the ball out of bounds (until the final two minutes of the quarter) you’ll simply see coaches order their QBs the throw the ball away instead of dumping it underneath for a short gain with the receiver going out of bounds or just tell the quarterback to let it fly once he runs out of the pocket and it won’t be called intentional grounding.

I think that will be a loophole in the system regarding that rule.

I don’t think the new play clock adjustment will make much of an impact because in this era of the no-huddle or limited-huddle offense you pretty much have offenses ready to go not long after the previous play ends.

Whatever the case, the new rules could mean that those who like to make a day-long experience of their trip to a Saturday football game could end-up spending just a little less time at the game itself.