"Less plays. More commercials." - Fans troll new college football clock rules for cutting down playtime and exponentially increasing endorsements

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The new college football clock rules after Week 0 have fans up in arms on social media, and they are not holding back their thoughts.

A recent post on Reddit revealed the changes resulting from the new clock rules. The post earned 957 upvotes and 350 comments at the time of writing. It shares a tweet that shows that the average number of plays is down 7.8%, while the average length of a game is down 1.4%.

As you can see, the users commenting on the post were far from pleased about the new changes. User @MikeinSFLA has particularly strong feelings and wrote:

"Less plays. More commercials."

Another Redditor, @teslaistheshit, shared what they thought would be the possible future of broadcasts due to the new college football clock rules:

@Dudebro5812 shared what they think CFB announcers will be saying moving forward:

Here are some more comments:

Either way, these college football fans are expressing their disappointment over commercials seemingly overtaking the actual football games. And to them, the new college football clock rules are the culprit. But what are those new clock rules exactly?


The new college football clock rules explained

The NCAA wanted to do its best to shorten games this time around, mostly by speeding up the actual gameplay. An average CFB game taking as long as three and a half hours on average last year was among the main reasons the new college football clock rules have been implemented. Another reason the NCAA cited is player safety.

Here are the rule changes:

  • Game clock will run after the first downs, except for the last two minutes of each half
  • Teams can no longer call consecutive timeouts
  • Untimed downs will only be allowed as needed during the second and fourth quarter

These rules are meant to lessen clock stoppages on first downs, as per the NCAA. The NCAA Football Rules Committee has set the new clock rules for Division I and Division II football.

Here's what committee co-chair and Georgia Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart had to say about the ruling:

"This rule change is a small step intended to reduce the overall game time and will give us some time to review the impact of the change."

As one would notice, the clock not stopping after first downs is something that the NFL has been doing for so long. But NCAAF has been doing this since 1968, until this year when the new rules have been enforced.

Fans would also likely say that the easiest way to cut game time is to reduce the number of commercials being shown. But since college football (like any other team sport with broadcast rights) is still a business, this would be impossible to implement.

Edited by R. Elahi
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