You love college football. I love college football. We all love college football. But despite our unrivaled love for the sport, we can admit there are some flaws with how it operates. And in an era of increasing concerns and adaptations focused on improving the overall health of the student-athletes and, if we’re honest, maximizing the television revenue, a new change to the game will be implemented this fall to help keep the pace of the game moving along.
On Friday, the NCAA announced it has approved a rule change that will keep the game clock running even after a first down across every division of college football except for Division III. The proposal for the running clock was formally approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel on Friday, allowing for the change to be implemented in time for the 2023 college football season. The change should dramatically decrease the total time it takes for a college football game to be played and will cut down the number of snaps per game as a result.
While the change will be in effect for the majority of the game, the game clock will continue to stop to move the chains after a first down once inside the final two minutes of the second and fourth quarters.
This is the most significant and notable rule change coming to college football in 2023, but not the only one. The rules oversight panel also approved a rule that will prevent a team from taking consecutive timeouts. And penalties at the end of the first and third quarters will simply carry over to the next quarter rather than tack on an untimed play. Penalties at the end of the second and fourth quarters will continue to have an untimed down as it has typically been.
The penalty change at the end of the quarter seems perfectly fine and will certainly help move the game along in those situations. The timeout rule preventing consecutive timeouts seems a little unnecessary and could actually put a team in a difficult spot. If a team takes a timeout in a key situation to discuss the plan for the upcoming play, comes out of the timeout and sees the opponent giving a different look it was not prepared for, that team could be at a disadvantage as it would not be able to call another timeout to assess the situation.
Of course, the counter to that is coaching matters. Have your team ready out of the first timeout for whatever scenario possible and roll the dice. Also, this prevents a team from attempting to ice the kicker with two or three timeouts in a row at the end of a half because you can’t take the timeouts into halftime or postgame with you. So overall, this is a fine rule change.
But the big change here is the running clock. College football games have been notorious for taking so long to complete, so this should help make games slightly faster and fit better into TV windows. It may take a little getting used to, but still having the clock stop in the final two minutes of a half ensures you can still have the clock be your friend on a potential game-winning drive in the clutch.
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