There’s a new rule in college football this season that may initially appear subtle, but which has the potential to have a substantial impact on games: the first down running clock.
All games across the Divisions I and II levels will now mimic the NFL application, in that the game clock will continue to run even after a first down is gained. In previous years in college football, the clock stopped after every first down while the crew of officials moved the chains.
Now, a gained first down will only stop the clock during the last two minutes of either half.
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham was asked ahead of this week’s opener vs. Florida what impact the rule change would have on his staff’s analytical and game-calling approach, and he reflexively responded, “You know, not much.”
He did then concede, however, that will some games having already taken place this past weekend, he was intrigued the change and noted that its impact warrants further study.
“I was interested, I asked the staff [about] that this morning in our in our early staff meeting, because we had some games this past weekend: ‘Do you know the numbers?’ and ‘What was the average play? Was it down? What was the average game time?’” Whittingham said Monday. “I asked my ops guy to take a look at that, and I haven’t got the feedback yet.”
The rationale for the rule-change is apparently two-fold: to reduce the number of plays per game, and thus hopefully reduce opportunities for injuries; and to shave some minutes off the approximately three-and-a-half-hour run time that games typically take to play.
Whittingham’s initial anecdotal review suggests both of those goals were accomplished to some degree in the initial spate of games.
“My estimation was four to six plays less for each team, and maybe eight to 10 minutes shorter of a game,” he said.
Still, he said the Utes’ game-calling approach wouldn’t change for Thursday’s season-opener against Florida, and that the only significant consideration of the rule change is simply remembering “that inside of two minutes [of each half], it reverts right back to the old rules. But other than that, it doesn’t change the strategy a whole lot, if at all.”
Per the NCAA, the other rule changes and clarifications in effect for this season are:
• Teams will be prohibited from calling consecutive team timeouts. Thus, no more back-to-back timeouts to “ice the kicker.”
• Penalties at the end of the first and third quarters will carry over and be enforced on the first play of the next quarter.
• Teams will have the optional use of instant replay in games that do not have an instant replay booth official.
• Second-half warmup activities guidelines were established, including that teams are required to wait until the field is made available to return and have designated areas of the field to warm up.
• When teams are on the field, drones are not allowed over the playing surface or the team area.
