NCAA panel looking to shorten football games

College football administrators are looking at ways to reduce the number of plays in games in the name of player safety, with a tweak in clock operating procedures likely the first step.

The NCAA Football Rules Committee is meeting in Indianapolis this week, and recommendations it forwards and approved in the spring would take effect next season. Steve Shaw, NCAA secretary-rules editor and officials coordinator, said the average number of plays per game in the Bowl Subdivision has hovered at 180 the past three seasons. NFL games average 154.

Conference commissioners would like to cut the number to reduce the players’ potential injury exposures. The issue has taken on urgency because some teams will be playing more games as the College Football Playoff expands. The playoff goes from four to 12 teams in the 2024-25 season, and further expansion is possible after that.

A proposal to let the game clock continue running when a team makes a first down, except in the last two minutes of a half, has broad support. Currently, the clock stops on a first down until the referee gives the ready-for-play signal. A rules committee study last season found about eight plays per game would be cut if the clock kept moving.

An eight-play reduction over a 12game season would save 96 potential injury exposures per team, and there would be over 100 fewer exposures for teams that advance to the playoff.

A more radical proposal would have the clock begin running once the ball is spotted after an incomplete pass. Currently, in both the college and pro game, the clock starts running once the ball is snapped. Tulane athletic director Troy Dannen, who chairs the Football Competition Committee, said there is minimal support for the clock change on incompletions. The rules committee study showed a wide range in how many plays would be saved because of differing offensive styles, but the average was 17.

The rules committee also is looking at a change to the procedure when there is a penalty at the end of a quarter. Currently, the following play is an untimed down if the penalty is enforced. The procedure would not change at the end of the second and fourth quarters, but plays that were untimed at the end of the first and third quarters would be moved into the following quarter.

Another proposal – more in line with reducing game lengths that averaged 3 hours, 27 minutes last season – would eliminate a team’s ability to call back-toback timeouts during the same dead ball period.