Getty Image / Kevin C. Cox
- The NCAA football rules committee meets this week
- They’ll be discussing 2 major changes that would impact the pace of college football games
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The college football world has spent a lot of time over the last few years discussing one change to the game that they are unfortunately not going to get. However, while playoff expansion isn’t coming any time soon, it does appear that the NCAA is considering some changes to college football.
According to The Athletic’s Nicole Auerbach, the NCAA will discuss two rule changes that would impact the pace of college football games when the rules committee meets this week.
Last month, @TheAthletic wrote about two potential CFB rule changes — treating incomplete passes like runs out of bounds & not stopping the clock on first downs.
Both are under discussion by NCAA football rules committee, which meets this week in Indy: https://t.co/YliJd7oJzc pic.twitter.com/jfHabPnVPc
— Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) March 1, 2022
Who is it that’s actually asking for this? This would entirely change the way that college football is played. First of all, if you only temporarily stop the clock after incompletions, that would mean we see less plays actually run in college football. You’d quickly start getting fans complaining about how much lower scoring games are.
It also completely changes the strategy of late-game situations. If you’re trying to run out the clock late in a game right now, you run the risk of the clock stopping any time you throw it. It gives coaches some really tough decisions to make on 3rd downs. If the penalty for throwing an incompletion instead of running it is only about 10 seconds, it feels like an easy choice.
As for the stoppages after first downs, it seems to not account for one major difference between college football and the NFL. There is no 2-minute warning in college football. Taking away stoppages after first downs on top of that would make late-game situations unbelievably difficult for trailing teams, especially if they change the incompletion rule too.
I’m not really sure who these people are that don’t enjoy spending all day on a Saturday watching college football, but I don’t think even they would be too thrilled about these rule changes.