If there is college football this fall Notre Dame football will be entering its 30th season having its home games broadcast on NBC with the current deal set to expire following the 2025 campaign.

It’s been a wild ride through the years with as many as 30 personalities a part of the broadcast, sideline, and studio shows which have accompanied Irish football on the Peacock Network. Now that there’s time to look back I wanted to compare one of the very first broadcasts on NBC to a more recent game to see how things have changed.

Editor’s Note: After researching this article, the YouTube video with commercials for the 1991 game vs. Tennessee was made private and is no longer available. I’ve substituted another quality video of the game without commercials. My research based on the private video remains.

November 9, 1991
35-34 Loss vs. Tennessee
Play-by-Play: Dick Enberg
Color: Bill Walsh
Sideline: John Dockery
Broadcast: 1:45 PM ET

This game–one of the worst losses in Notre Dame Stadium history–took 1 hour, 35 minutes, and 40 seconds from the beginning of the broadcast until the halftime clock hit zero.

There was a 1:00 intro, players came out on the field at 1:30 of the broadcast, and things were kicked up to the booth announcers at the 2:00 mark. At 3:30 they throw it down to the field for a report and the ball is kicked off at 4:30, shortly before 1:50 PM ET.

The first half features 10 commercials, ranging from 140 seconds long to a quick 60-second commercial right before the end of the second quarter. In total, there are 1,215 seconds of commercial time.

A few other notes:

*It’s been long enough since the NCAA changed the rule that it’s weird to see the opponent take the field first inside Notre Dame Stadium.

*It’s a nice throwback for television, before the age of the internet and cell phones, to see just how many national score updates NBC kept highlighting throughout the game.

*Smokey VI the Bluetick Coonhound was on the sidelines for this game. When did the live animal ban inside Notre Dame Stadium begin?

*At 39:47 of the video there is an amazing 1991 Irish Highlight Video commercial. Just $19.99 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling for a sweet VHS tape. Did any of our readers order this?

*There’s an interview with a stadium usher who had been at this job since 1930. John Dockery interviews him about Knute Rockne and it goes about as well as you’d expect for an excited elderly man on television.

*Johnny Majors, who passed away recently on June 3rd, wearing a huge trench coat with a full suit on underneath has to be one of the strangest coaching outfits in my lifetime. That’s old school, baby.

*No doubt, football on television was shot a little differently in 1991. The biggest thing that jumps out to me is that NBC practically ignores the crowd. There’s two ways you could take that. One, they keep a focus on the field without many distractions. Or, they miss out on the collegiate flavor of the crowd and the broadcast lacks the excitement we’re used to seeing today.

*Sadly, the video cuts out a huge section of halftime except for the Band of the Fighting Irish show–featuring Ahmad Rashad as honorary band director! Things obviously improved over the coming years with the NBC broadcast but I found it interesting how absent the band was during the game so many years before the introduction of piped-in music through the stadium speaker system.

October 28, 2017
35-14 Win vs. NC State
Play-by-Play: Mike Tirico
Color: Doug Flutie
Sideline: Kathryn Tappen
Broadcast: 3:30 PM ET

This game lasted 1 hour, 53 minutes, and 30 seconds until halftime or nearly 18 minutes longer than the 1991 game above. There’s a standard 1:00 intro that transitions to the players coming out to the field (Notre Dame first!) except this takes 2 full minutes until they go to Kathryn Tappen on the sidelines for a report.

At the 4:00 minute mark, the broadcast is thrown up to the booth and kickoff doesn’t occur until 6 minutes in, or 90 seconds slower than the 1991 game.

There are also 10 commercials ranging from 150 seconds to 90 seconds. In total, there are 1,270 seconds of commercial time in the first half. That’s 55 more seconds than the 1991 game (effectively one extra super short commercial break) but again the 2017 game lasted much longer until halftime.

Are there more similarities between the 1991 and 2017 NBC broadcasts than we think?

If you recall, Brian Kelly asked NBC to change their commercial layout prior to the start of 2010 in his debut season anticipating a high-octane offense that moved quickly. Instead of 4 long breaks they switched to the NFL-style 5 shorter commercials. Both the 1991 and 2017 games featured 10 commercials apiece in the first half which logically says at some point in the years in between NBC probably switched things up.

The weird thing to me that I can’t square is that advertising revenue is typically pretty locked in ahead of a college football game and yet I remember years when NBC would do the old PAT-commercial-kickoff-commercial move pretty routinely. There were seasons in the late aughts where fans were livid about the supposed increase in commercials. But was there a real increase in commercial time or did we just perceive things that way?

I also remember the beginning of games used to go right to Jimmy Roberts for a NBC Sports Report upon the open of the broadcast. There’d be a quick shot of the stadium or a player warming up and then we’d spend the next 2 minutes with Roberts looking at golf and hockey highlights.

Maybe halftime is the culprit for long games? Back in 2017, college football instituted a maximum of 20 minutes for halftime, while teams could agree to a shorter break too. Before that, it was possible to agree to a longer halftime and I swear there have been games on NBC where the action didn’t come back closer to 30 minutes.

However, I’m more convinced than ever that commercial breaks have little to do with the increase of overall game time for college football. Some time in the last decade-plus, college football games became 3 hours and 24 minutes long on average and have held steady there from an average of 3 hours and 7 minutes early in the 2000’s.

I think there are 3 main culprits: Injuries, Reviews, and More Snaps

A few times in the NC State game above there was an injury and I was certain the game would be thrown to commercial quickly. But no, the broadcast really seemed to detail the injury and stay on the field to cover the status of the player. It’s possible there are more injuries today than in the past but this decision to not go to a commercial break makes the commercials when they actual come on seem more tedious.

Interestingly, the 1991 Tennessee game featured one first half injury (the doomed Craig Hentrich blocked field goal at the end) taking up 1:07 of the broadcast. The 2017 NC State game featured 4 injuries covering 5:25 of the broadcast.

There’s undoubtedly a major increase in replay reviews and challenges today. There were no reviews in the Tennessee game and 2 reviews in the NC State game (on back-to-back snaps, no less) taking up 3:03 of the broadcast. While this alone doesn’t make up the 18-minute difference in the respective first halves, the injury time and reviews do make up a 7:20 difference or nearly 40% overall. Add in the longer intro before kickoff and you’ve made up half the difference.

The snap difference didn’t seem to be much of a factor for these games. For one, Tennessee in 1991 was really pass-happy and Notre Dame in 2017 was really run-heavy. Your average modern college game certainly has more snaps today than 30 years ago but in this game it was only a 5-snap difference–maybe worth 2 to 3 minutes more time.

Penalties jumped out to me, though. The Tennessee game featured 7 penalties in the first half, while the NC State featured 13 flags. There were more flags in the first quarter (8) in the NC State game than in the entire first half of the Tennessee game. I’m not sure if there has been research on the amount of penalties being called through the years but it’s something I’d be interested in looking at further.

Lastly, along with the penalties being called I’ve always had the feeling that officials today move slower when making calls and when setting the ball at the line of scrimmage. Referees seem to conference so much more and take longer to announce any infractions. And while the game has certainly sped up in tempo from spread offenses when I watch old games it feels like the ball is being re-set just a bit quicker than today. If an official is placing the ball 2.5 seconds quicker on average than today that would be a difference of several more minutes and we’re closer to possibly explaining why college football games are longer nowadays.

Either way, having the clock continue to run after a first down like the NFL seems like the easiest way to shorten games. Still, while fans hate the 4-hour marathon broadcasts they also don’t want to get rid of actual playing time as seconds tick away in between snaps.