Major League Baseball has been under enormous pressure to do everything they can to shorten games. So with the average college football game now taking close to three and a half hours to complete, why isn’t that sport facing the same level of scrutiny?
This week, the Wall Street Journal made its case that college football should be taking a page out of MLB’s playbook with an interesting article entitled “College Football Games Are Far Too Long.” The argument is built around the fact that the average length of game has grown steadily over the past decade. Since 2008, the average college football game has expanded by approximately 15 minutes to over 3:25 per contest. In each of the last two years, the sport has set records for average length of game and that looks to go up again this year.
The catalyst for the Journal‘s argument? The Labor Day night game between Ole Miss and Florida State that took four hours and four minutes to play and only featured 16 minutes and 12 seconds of actual football-related action.
So are these marathon games such a bad thing?
In the famous words of Lee Corso, “not so fast my friend.”
First, let’s take a look at the viewership ratings. We’re just about a year and a half away from three college football games becoming the three most-watched games in the history of cable television with the advent of the College Football Playoff. The sport could have come close to duplicating the feat had its powers that be not attempted their misguided and self-defeating endeavor to conquer New Year’s Eve. For the regular season, ESPN has seen its audience increase each of the last four years and the network just had their best opening weekend ever for the sport. Attendance is down across Division I, yes, but in an increasingly competitive television landscape, college football is thriving on a national level.
Second, the main reason why games are taking longer is because of something that fans really like: points.
The American sports fan wants to see action, or even perceived action. The average football game has a heck of a lot not-football stuff going on, but as long as offenses are running up and down the field and the ball is crossing the goalline, people are generally happy… unless you’re Nick Saban, that is.
Last season, an astonishing 12 teams averaged over 40.0 PPG and 57 teams (44.5% of FBS teams) averaged over 30.0 PPG. Even Idaho scored over 30 points a game last year. Idaho! Just 16 out of 128 teams averaged below 20.0 PPG. That’s a lot of turnover on the scoreboard for each game.
How do SEC offense compare to AP Top 25 and FBS average scoring PPG? http://t.co/ook2q6Coqb #SECFootball #CFB pic.twitter.com/dYPL1lKx86
— Pigskin Nerd (@PigskinNerd) October 10, 2014
In 2014, the average score for an FBS team finally crossed the 30-point barrier. Again, that’s the average college football team. And it’s been rising steadily over time as seen at the link and in the graph above.
The explanation for increased game time is really quite simple. As spread option offenses and up-tempo attacks have become more widespread throughout the sport, yards and points have seen a pronounced uptick. The more yards a team gains, the more first downs a team picks up. The more first downs a team picks up, the more the clock stops to move the chains. The more the chains move, the more touchdowns and field goals are scored. The more points are scored, the more kickoffs and changes of possession there are. All these events take time and through it all is always the opportunity for more commercial breaks. Because even though games are taking longer, we sure as heck aren’t going to have fewer commercials to make up for it!
These high-powered offensive shootouts have become a trademark of college football and they make for some great entertainment. (Once again, as long as you’re not Nick Saban.) Who wasn’t captivated by Texas beating Notre Dame 50-47 in the first week of the season? The Florida State-Ole Miss game may have taken forever, but I know I was glued to my television set for the Seminoles’ comeback in the second half, even though I had no real rooting interest.
Put it this way — how many fans were complaining when the 2015 Sugar Bowl between Ohio State and Alabama took three hours and 40 minutes to finish and had 77 combined points? Maybe the game started way too late, but anyone who was up past midnight got their money’s worth and then some.
And this gets to why college football isn’t facing the same serious inquiries that Major League Baseball has faced over length of game and likely won’t for the foreseeable future. It’s all about the entertainment factor and the pace of play.
There’s a major difference between length of game and pace of play and it explains why long college football games don’t seem to bother a huge number of fans.
In baseball, it’s easy to see where the added length to the game has come from — visits to the pitching mound, endless pitching changes, batters constantly stepping out of the box — things that slow down the pace of play and extend the time spent between pitches. The longer it is between pitches, the easier it is for people to lose their attention span. In the end, the pace of play in baseball came to a grinding halt as fans were getting less action over a longer period of time. Baseball has wisely addressed some of these issues to speed up the pace of play and thereby shorten the game.
For college football, the exact opposite is true. Length of game has increased because the pace of play has largely sped up, not slowed down. College football fans are getting more points, more yards, and more plays than ever before.
College football is far from perfect as the sport has a couple areas where they can improve the pace of play. The biggest offender is certainly interminable replays for even the most inconsequential and easy-to-decipher calls seem to take forever. Outside of that, perhaps the halftime marching band displays could be shortened, but that’s a major part of the college football experience.
The NCAA could do something to shorten the game, but we’ve already seen disastrous results when they have tried to do that in the past. There’s always the option to keep the clock running on first downs, but that would take a way a major distinguishing mark of the NCAA game and once again, all it would do is cut down the number of plays in a game.
Right now, college football fans are getting more of the things that make them fans in the first place. And to shorten the game, the NCAA would have to slow down the pace of play and cut back on the entertainment value. Do you think the majority of college football fans want to see fewer plays, yards, and points? I didn’t think so.
