I wasn’t going to publish this for another week or two but after Saturday night, well, let’s get it out there now. 

Every year late August rolls around and that childlike excitement of college football returning puts me in a great mood. Then the games begin and I’m reminded, “Oh yeah, watching college football on television sucks.”

Part of this is getting older, having less free time, other interests popping up, and pressure from friends and family to do other things with your time. This part of the time suck that is football is normal and it’s been around for generations. It’ll probably force 18 Stripes to close someday!

I was putting together a list of my sports viewing habits and it’s a healthy mix of college football, NFL, college basketball, NBA, Formula 1, club & national soccer, cycling, with a combination of tennis, golf, boxing, NHL and a few others in the second tier.

The switch over to college football is especially harsh coming off the European-based sports where advertising and commercials are kept to a minimum. For the past 6 or 7 years it drives me nuts in the early part of the football season how often I’m sitting in front of a screen during a football game, not watching football.

There’s nothing we can do about a weather delay, right? A couple weeks ago, Kathy took the kids to a friend’s house to “get them out of my hair” for the NC State game. They left around 12:30 PM and the game was delayed 19 minutes later. In a cruel twist, they returned just as the game was returning–and we still had over 2 more hours of football to watch. Brutal.

The extreme length of games is part of it, although that has improved in recent years. Three hours isn’t that bad in a vacuum. Plus it’s not an apples to apples comparison. I can’t allow myself to miss a single play of a Notre Dame game but yet I’ll watch 5.5 hours of a Tour de France stage because I’m okay with getting up and doing something for 5 or 10 minutes throughout a race. But when I return it’s nice that the cycling is still there–in general NBC goes to commercial maybe every 20 to 30 minutes and only for 90 seconds to 2 minutes at a time. Add it up and that’s a lot of sports watching and very little time for commercials.

Watching commercials with some football thrown in.

I feel like my brain is being re-wired by non-American sports and it’s zapping the joy of watching some of the things I love, like the Fighting Irish. It’s not going to get better is it? Will anything be done in the coming years to make things better for this sport?

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Media Build Up

I remember the Tennessee State game a few weeks back brought us coverage live from Penn State as NBC promoted their “College Countdown” show featuring Maria Taylor and 3 other guys whose opinion  I don’t care about in the slightest.

While watching football these broadcasts can’t help but redirect you to other football stuff. I’m tuning in to watch Notre Dame play football, or God forbid consume some Notre Dame content before kickoff, and we’re talking about another game. Or maybe multiple other games.

They’ve scrubbed them from full game replays on YouTube, but remember when NBC would start their broadcast for Notre Dame games and jump to Jimmy Roberts in the studio updating everyone on Wisconsin leading Illinois 35-6 early in the 4th quarter? I guess that died with the smart phone era.

Greater emphasis needs to be on getting to the football action more quickly.

Shorter Game Time

Perhaps the most fundamental question we can ask is if college football games can be pushed closer to 2 hours or even 2.5 hours. If not, this is all for naught. I’m not saying I am advocating this per se, but I do wonder if someday 12 minute quarters are adopted to speed things up.

Of course, they would just fill the time with with the same percentage of commercials and it would feel like a net loss for fans. But if not, I would at least listen to a pitch around 12 minute quarters and game times that were 30% shorter to complete.

Shorter Play Clock

Sixteen years ago, the NCAA switched to the NFL-style 40-second play clock. Why? In a long list of dumb moves this was quietly one of the worst in recent memory. Switching back to the old 25-second play clock is the better move.

Now, that might actually increase the length of games (as less game clock time melts away without action on the field) but it’s a change I’m willing to make especially with the 2023 change to keep the clock moving after 1st down, except for inside of 2 minutes of each half.

Also, and this is really important, I think we need to seriously look at removing the current 25-second play clock coming out of administrative breaks (injuries, timeouts, change of possession, etc.) and putting in something like a 10-second play clock. Hurry it the hell up coming out of breaks.

There were some plays coming off breaks against Ohio State where I was really zeroing in on how slowly things unfold when we return the cameras to the field. There is way too much time for these players to stand around and not snap the ball.

Shorter Halftime

A soccer game first half is nearly 50% complete in the time it takes to complete a college football halftime. A college football halftime is 66% longer than the NFL. When you factor in true kickoff time, every college football game has 30 to 35 minutes minimum baked into the broadcast before the game begins and during the halftime.

I know the excuse will be that their needs to be time for the bands to do their halftime routine(s). I would like to propose that maybe we don’t? Either fit things in a shorter timeframe or be content with pre-game and post-game band concert.

Commercials

I came across this article last week by Awful Announcing that touched upon a few things that I found interesting and were pertinent to this discussion. I think we can all agree that TV timeouts are the single biggest problem with the experience of consuming college football games.

A few key points from the article:

  • Average game times through week 3 were down from 3:22 in 2022 to 3:16 so far in 2023.
  • Most conferences and partners utilize a 3-4-3-4 or 4-4-4-4 commercial strategy for each quarter of football. The latter strategy adds an additional commercial break after the 1st and 3rd quarters.
  • Networks are using more “30-second floaters” which are not ‘official’ commercial breaks asked for by the television business. These are quick commercial breaks during injuries or other stoppages in play. This led to 8 commercials in one quarter during the recent Georgia-South Carolina game, for example.

The sport has shaved almost 15 minutes off its average from ~10 years ago when games were lasting 3.5 hours long. And yet it feels like we are watching more commercials and consuming less on-field football content than ever.

It’s really funny in hindsight with the impending fast, no-huddle offense that was promised, because it never came to fruition, but Brian Kelly nonetheless worked with Jack Swarbrick and NBC prior to the 2010 season to alter the commercial breaks during home games. That resulted in 5 shorter breaks per quarter instead of 4 longer commercials.

I’m not even sure I like that change. It’s the same amount of commercial time but fewer windows to at least get a quick bathroom break in before the action returns.

There’s no way we see fewer commercials and that’s depressing. Maybe the only way is if the NCAA allows players to get a direct cut of TV money. Then the schools and networks might get a little less greedy and start thinking about hurrying things up if their pockets aren’t being lined as much anymore.