The last one of these I like and would save 17-18 estimated plays a game. Part of me thinks stoppin the clock on first down is what makes college football unique and I wouldn't want to get away from it. The time saving involved in that is projected to only be 4-5 plays.

I agree. I like the last one best. But even better than any of these would be to reduce the number of media time outs to the level in the NFL. I think that's the major reason that NFL games are significantly shorter on average.

$ from media timeouts is more important than.... anything else.... So, while I agree, with the idea I doubt it would happen.

Can they figure out how to eliminate chain gangs? Like good lord, it's archaic as heck that we still have things decided by two sticks and a 10 yard chain that is inconsistent on its markings

The cost of a spot will just go up in price. Anything to get the game to 3 hours or less is fine with me.

I can't believe more people don't support for #1. I hate consecutive timeouts to ice the kicker. #2 is almost irrelevant in my mind. I could go either way with #3. The only way I support #4 is if it does not happen inside two minutes. I don't mind lengthening a close game which is why I would exclude the last two rules during the final minutes of the game.

That is a good idea on the last two minutes stopping the clock on incomplete passes. Last two minutes of each half. That would still save 15-16 plays a game instead of 17-18 but keep the late game tactics.

Is spiking the ball considered incomplete pass ?

If it is, I think the rule should allow the clock to be stopped for that.

I would certainly think so. They have been trying to shorten games for decades with minor tweaks that sometimes have other unintended consequences. If shortening the game is the intention then why not just take a small amount of time off of the game clock. That seems beyond obvious to me. Why do we think of fifteen minutes is sacred but other rules that affect other parts of the game as well as not being sacred?

I don't know about anyone else but I have never been at a game or watching on TV with a group of people and heard anyone say that football would be so much better if game times were three minutes shorter. It seems to be mostly a concern of TV executives. I think that this is mostly an imaginary problem

IMO, analytics in baseball has shown that the best strategies to win games are not the best for spectators. It has real issues and probably has no choice but to make changes that will make some of its purist fans very upset. Football's problems have to do with keeping the game safe so that young people will continue to play and not so much that young people will continue to watch.

Fans of marching bands in general and the 110 specifically won't like this, but why not shorten the length of halftime from 20 minutes to what the NFL uses, 12 minutes?

You, Sir, have committed total blasphemy. If your comment resulted in even one minute less of the 110 at halftime, W. Tecumseh Sherman would rise from the grave, reconstitute his host, and march on your hometown.

Yes, it is an incomplete pass.

Running the clock through 1st downs is stupid, will gain very little for this, because, it's only stopped for about :01-:02 seconds after each first down.

Yeah its the play clock that counts down.

If people are so interested in shortening the game let’s do it like real footie. Two
45 minute running time halfs. No stoppages. We could add extra time at halftime to sell more concessions and see a longer 110 show.

Get outta here with your euro kickball solutions ;)

IMO, for most of my lifetime the timing of international soccer has been ridiculous. I understand the whole length that the gameplay is supposed to last is 90 minutes so we time it. But as in all sports gameplay is not always happening. A lot of timed sports stop the clock in acknowledgement of that. That's OK. It is merely a bow to reality. You can't get a small lead and stay down with injuries the rest of the game or take forever to put the ball back in play after a foul or an out of bounds. That sentence could apply to American football or basketball as easily as soccer. Soccer decides to add the lost time back on at the end of the game which in theory is an idea that is just as good but in practice has been an utter failure for as long as I can recall.

Back in the 80's and early 90's if you watched a soccer match there was almost always about 1 minute at the end of the first half and about 3 minutes in the second regardless of what happened during gameplay. And it wasn't even announced how long it was going to be. Then they started announcing the minimum addon for transparency it started to vary a bit and was sometimes other totals but still had seemingly no connection to how the game had played out.

Sometime around 10 or 15 years ago FIFA realized this random addon stiff was pretty silly and announced a list of guidelines about what constituted a stoppage of gameplay. So the World Cup is a huge thing and I don't recall if it was 2010 or 2014 but a very large number of media outlets all over the world timed the stoppages in that Cup themselves. I read an article on, I think, 538, where they complied them. So there were about 20 or 30 media outlets around the world timing the game and if you compared their totals for recommended stoppage time for one half it would look something like this:

9:32, 9:35, 9:37, 9:36, 9:31, 9:34, 9:35....
Then you'd see announced time: 3 minutes with the half ending 3:23 over.

Then another half would look something like 3:14, 3:20, 3:21, 3:13, 3:15, 3:17....
Announced time 5 minutes with the game stopped 5:14 over.

Not only was the added time not close it was completely random. There wasn't even a positive correlation. The R-value was almost exactly zero. A game with a lot of stoppage was every bit as likely to have a small number added on as a game with almost no stoppage.

In recent years FIFA seems to have realized this is still a problem and is demanding 90 minutes of actual gameplay. Not only does this seem to be working and the totals seem to be bowing to the reality of what actually happened but the added totals are a lot higher on average than they were 30 years ago or even 10 years ago. As with every change this has made some traditionalists angry.

But I would argue for even more transparency. Give a referee a button. When he presses it then his stopwatch for stoppage time starts counting up and is visible on the scoreboard for all to see. But that isn't any different than stopping the clock when the referee says to which, if my very limited experience with Bobcat soccer is any indication, is what the NCAA does. That isn't really any different from most other timed sports that have the same bow to reality that sometimes you have to stop the clock.

I would also claim this: A rule where the rules are different at the end of the game with respect to other parts of the game is almost always a silly, unnecessary rule. If you want to give a team more time to catch up don't change the rules to give them additional ways to stop it at the end of the game, do it for the whole game or just make the game clock longer. If you want to shorten then game make the game clock shorter. If it is unfair to fumble the ball forward in the last two minutes then it is ALWAYS unfair. If it is pass interference 5 minutes into the game then the ref shouldn't "swallow his whistle" on the same play with 0:30 left. We don't need to keep making the way we call the game more and more convoluted. Yes, you have to bow to reality when an oddity happens and you realize there is a discovered exploitable loophole, or research shows something is unsafe, or new coach strategies result in slow-paced or boring play and sometimes change the rules. But when you do make it as simple and straightforward as possible.

That's a good point, but you did not make an appropriate "football move" after typing. Therefore it is null and void.

Anybody watching baseball with the pitch clock? It is AWESOME. Takes it back to the way it used to be, hitters stay in the box and pitchers get the ball and fire.

With these discussions, it sounds like less football. I'd prefer a solution similar to what baseball has found, with the same amount of action in less time. Is a 30 second play clock plausible? With all the technology and signals do we really need huddles? Or how bout this - No subs except on 1st down. Make each series be active and the 1st down the reset. There's just too much damn standing around talking about what we're gonna do.

I have no faith that rules to shorten the game will shorten the time spent in a stadium or on television.

Every previous pace of game rule has only succeeded in giving media more advertising inventory.