Changes coming to CFB

[dillonpgp]

1. helmet communications, likely NFL style, in terms of active time for communication between plays, feed cuts with 15 seconds remaining on play clock or snap of ball (whichever comes first).

2. Acceptable use of tablets on sidelines for video purposes. Broadcast, sideline and endzone views would be accessible. (NFL only allows still images)

3. A Two-Minute warning at the end of eachh half. Basically an extra timeout and potentially another stoppage for television advertising

 

[Jaguar 88]

Wow, let's make the damn games even longer!!!! Already pushing the 4 hr mark as is, and unless the game has some significance, I will opt out. Better things to do on Saturdays than spend 4+ hours watching a meaningless game. The older I get and the more commercialized CFB has become, the less relevant it has become to me unfortunately. It used to make fall Saturdays fun, now not so much.

 

[CSCatFan1]

 

[Eurocat]

I like the two minute warning idea.

 

[villox]

Wow, let's make the damn games even longer!!!! Already pushing the 4 hr mark as is, and unless the game has some significance, I will opt out. Better things to do on Saturdays than spend 4+ hours watching a meaningless game. The older I get and the more commercialized CFB has become, the less relevant it has become to me unfortunately. It used to make fall Saturdays fun, now not so much.

Didn’t they already substantially shorten them by removing the clock stoppage on 1st down?

 

[Fanaticat98]

Didn’t they already substantially shorten them by removing the clock stoppage on 1st down?

And clock stoppage on out of bounds outside of 3 minutes I believe? I suspect that shortened the games but I haven’t seen the data. With all the replay reviews and media timeouts they still seem almost as long.

 

[phatcat_rivals223240]

Didn’t they already substantially shorten them by removing the clock stoppage on 1st down?

Shortened games are like wider highways. You think you're saving time but you get more commercials and more development

 

[Jaguar 88]

At some point when do these broadcasts turn from being football games with commercials to just being a bunch of commercials with a football game thrown in? All sports are entertainment, and if the entertainment value erodes, so does the interest in sports.

 

[Smolmania]

Wow, let's make the damn games even longer!!!! Already pushing the 4 hr mark as is, and unless the game has some significance, I will opt out. Better things to do on Saturdays than spend 4+ hours watching a meaningless game. The older I get and the more commercialized CFB has become, the less relevant it has become to me unfortunately. It used to make fall Saturdays fun, now not so much.

Terrible take. Games were significantly shorter this year due to rules changes (no clock stoppage for ob until end of half).

 

[No Chores]

I like the two minute warning idea.

Why? It lengthens the game and its contrived and phony. Neither team actually needs such a "warning"

 

[WildcatWillie_rivals223246]

Why? It lengthens the game and its contrived and phony. Neither team actually needs such a "warning"

Agreed. Surely the "warning" is added now to leverage another couple of minutes for TV commercials.

A true rules historian might know better but I suspect there may have been a need for such warning in football's early days before electric scoreboards. My dad (long since gone, alas) described his duty as a high school timekeeper in a small town back in, I think, the mid to late 1930s. I've only his word and my memory of the description, but he evidently stood on the field well behind the offense, stopwatch in hand. He wasn't an official in uniform and was charged with watching signals from the 2-3 guys who were. There was no visible scoreboard clock, so somehow a hometown math teacher with the stopwatch was "it." He said it was a great place to watch the game.

My guess is that there was some procedure to notify players and sidelines how much time remained in each half. Hence, a possible need for 2-minute (and other) "warnings" back then. Good old days indeed. Fun to think about.

 

[CatManTrue]

Why? It lengthens the game and its contrived and phony. Neither team actually needs such a "warning"

Great minds think alike in this case. The 2 minute warning makes little sense and should be abolished.

 

[NJCat]

The problem is between the NCAA and the networks. It's all about generating more ad revenue. The NFL has had the 2 minute warning for decades but still gets games done in a little over 3 hours, because they have two prime time slots on Sunday afternoons for two networks: 1:00 to 4:00 and 4:00 (or4:25) to 7:00. The NFL need the game to fit nicely into those slots so they limit the ads and therefore raise the ad rates accordingly. College football takes 4 hours because they have no time constraints for the Power schools, with a plethora of networks doing the games. Both sides conspire to let ad revenue grow by letting games run on forever.

 

[dillonpgp]

College football takes 4 hours because they have no time constraints for the Power schools,

The biggest differences between the NFL and CFB is 12 vs 20+ minutes of halftime and the potential for more replay potential in the college game

The biggest impact of the 2023 clock modifications wasn’t as much the elapsed time of the broadcast as the compression of the game. Unless the game is filled with turnovers and/or long scoring plays (or a Brian Ferentz offense) , the college game has shrunk to where more than 12 or 13 drives per team, per game is now a luxury and an increasing rarity.

Not counting kneel downs, San Francisco has 10 drives in the Super Bowl (lost the 11th on the muffed punt returns). Kansas City had 12. So did Michigan and Washington in the CFP Championship game.

 

[CSCatFan1]

Great minds think alike in this case. The 2 minute warning makes little sense and should be abolished.

“The creation of a two-minute warning for the second and fourth quarters like the NFL is meant to emphasize certain rule changes and help the flow of a game broadcast by preventing some back-to-back media timeouts.”

 

[CatManTrue]

“The creation of a two-minute warning for the second and fourth quarters like the NFL is meant to emphasize certain rule changes and help the flow of a game broadcast by preventing some back-to-back media timeouts.”

Yes: it is to benefit the media timeouts/commercials.

How does that help the game itself?

 

[No Chores]

“The creation of a two-minute warning for the second and fourth quarters like the NFL is meant to emphasize certain rule changes and help the flow of a game broadcast by preventing some back-to-back media timeouts.”

This gibberish makes little sense and does nothing to add to the flow of the game. More ads will be coming our way if it is implemented.

 

[Fanaticat98]

“The creation of a two-minute warning for the second and fourth quarters like the NFL is meant to emphasize certain rule changes and help the flow of a game broadcast by preventing some back-to-back media timeouts.”

How does it prevent back to back media timeouts? They must have some odd rules about it because it seems like sometimes they’ll come back from commercial after a score, do the kickoff and then go back to commercial.

 

[CMcCat]

The biggest differences between the NFL and CFB is 12 vs 20+ minutes of halftime and the potential for more replay potential in the college game

The biggest impact of the 2023 clock modifications wasn’t as much the elapsed time of the broadcast as the compression of the game. Unless the game is filled with turnovers and/or long scoring plays (or a Brian Ferentz offense) , the college game has shrunk to where more than 12 or 13 drives per team, per game is now a luxury and an increasing rarity.

Not counting kneel downs, San Francisco has 10 drives in the Super Bowl (lost the 11th on the muffed punt returns). Kansas City had 12. So did Michigan and Washington in the CFP Championship game.

I suspect in the next two to five years we will see continued alignment of college football rules and practices to NFL conventions as the college game formally becomes an NFL minor league.

Eventually, 36 college teams will become actual minor league affiliates of pro teams, enabling mid-season call-ups. Sadly, NU has no mate in this scheme and should recognize this and work with others who will be left out (e.g. Purdue, MSU, Iowa) to reconstitute a BIG Ten Conference that returns pure college football to its student-athlete roots.

 

[CMcCat]

I suspect in the next two to five years we will see continued alignment of college football rules and practices to NFL conventions as the college game formally becomes an NFL minor league.

Eventually, 36 college teams will become actual minor league affiliates of pro teams, enabling mid-season call-ups. Sadly, NU has no mate in this scheme and should recognize this and work with others who will be left out (e.g. Purdue, MSU, Iowa) to reconstitute a BIG Ten Conference that returns pure college football to its student-athlete roots.

Actually, it’s not sad at all but hopeful.

 

[ricko6543211]

The problem is between the NCAA and the networks. It's all about generating more ad revenue. The NFL has had the 2 minute warning for decades but still gets games done in a little over 3 hours, because they have two prime time slots on Sunday afternoons for two networks: 1:00 to 4:00 and 4:00 (or4:25) to 7:00. The NFL need the game to fit nicely into those slots so they limit the ads and therefore raise the ad rates accordingly. College football takes 4 hours because they have no time constraints for the Power schools, with a plethora of networks doing the games. Both sides conspire to let ad revenue grow by letting games run on forever.

I think it's worth noting that the timeline for college games varies quite a bit by network. FOX headline games are by far the worst in my experience. Those are the ones that go toward 4 hours. BTN or even ESPN 2 are closer to 3 if they don't go to OT (and depending on run/pass mix). ABC is a bit longer but nothing close to the FOX monstrosity. FOX take egregiously long commercial breaks (the countdown clock usually starts at 4:00 at the stadium and I think I've even seen 4:30) and they take a whole lot of them too.

The NFL I believe has regulated the number of commercial breaks that the networks can do, especially for the 1pm and 4:25pm / 4:05pm games. Or at least it seems that way - because the timeline and pacing of their games seems to be much more consistent. That said, I think there might be a loosening of those rules for the primetime games because SNF and MNF seem to be slower. In particular (and I don't have data to support this, just my sense) the commercial loads in the first half of those games seem to be much heavier, then it eases up in the 2nd half (after part of the east coast viewers have gone to bed has always been my theory, or sometimes when the game is not close - i.e. advertisers pay more for H1 slots than H2 slots on primetime games). Styre or others might have more hard info on this vs. my speculation.

College doesn't seem to have regulated it in the same way, so you have some broadcasters (namely FOX for their marquee games like Big Noon kickoff of B1G champ) going overboard and making it a miserable viewing experience - for those at the games and those watching on TV both.

 

[bringbacktherantboard]

Great minds think alike in this case. The 2 minute warning makes little sense and should be abolished.

It always made more sense in the NFL where the clock doesn't stop on 1st downs. The college game recently changed so the clock doesn't stop on 1st downs... except under 2 minutes. It makes a little more sense to have the 2-minute warning now with the rule change.

 

[NUCat320]

@ricko654321 I love your post. I can’t promise I’ll pay attention to NFL ad breaks or ad time by network next year, but I’m happy someone already does.

I wanted to be curmudgeonly about the introduction of the two minute warning but, actually, I like it. It does work as a tension builder. It does work as a key milestone. It does give something to argue about when teams goof in timeout strategy.

So I am firmly with the YEAS on the two-minute warning.


More importantly, I sure hope that we forever memorialize one of college football’s weirdest figures by referring to the introduction of helmet communication as The Stallion Rule, or perhaps simply referring to helmet earpieces as ‘Stallions’.

(see also: Santorum for a similar example of naming a thing after a person, by pure force of Internet, but maybe don’t.)

When traveling with an infant and a toddler and a preschooler many years ago, we required a double stroller, necessitating a car-topper for extra storage. We called it “the Griswold”, which seemed an appropriate name.

 

[Katatonic]

What may be a bigger change is if the B1G/SEC get their way and get 58% of the CFB Playoff payout - which would equal to $21 million for each B1G school (about double the payout to ACC/B12 schools),

There's also been an underlying threat that if the B1G/SEC don't get enough of what they want, that they may just separate from the rest.

 

[250vertical]

What may be a bigger change is if the B1G/SEC get their way and get 58% of the CFB Playoff payout - which would equal to $21 million for each B1G school (about double the payout to ACC/B12 schools),

There's also been an underlying threat that if the B1G/SEC don't get enough of what they want, that they may just separate from the rest.

At this stage, the inclusion of the Big 12 and ACC is only for appearances, and the avoidance of litigation. Over time, they will get rid of them (Big 12/ACC). Of course, after the Big 10 and the SEC get done tearing the hell out of the ACC, then it will only be the Big 12 to get rid of.

 

[bringbacktherantboard]

At this stage, the inclusion of the Big 12 and ACC is only for appearances, and the avoidance of litigation. Over time, they will get rid of them (Big 12/ACC). Of course, after the Big 10 and the SEC get done tearing the hell out of the ACC, then it will only be the Big 12 to get rid of.

Why do you assume the ACC will be the one torn apart? They have a prohibitive exit fee keeping them together, or else FSU would've been long gone.

 

[Katatonic]

^ It's only a matter of time.

Regardless, the problem for FSU is that they won't bring in a full share of revenue to either the B1G or SEC (only the Domers will do that), so they'll either have to take less $ for a no of years and either the B1G media partners or ESPN/Disney find a means to allocate more $.

Confirmed that the conferences/ND have agreed to the revenue split (for a 14 team PO) with the others things to be agreed upon later.