On Friday, college football leaders took a step toward shortening games and decreasing the number of plays per game. It’s an issue that has been top of mind for a number of years but took on increased urgency this offseason as the sport sits one year away from an expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, which will lengthen the season for some teams and increase potential injury exposures for players.

The NCAA Football Rules Committee officially recommended the adoption of three rule changes, which will need to be approved by the Playing Rules Oversight Panel in April. They are the following:

• A running clock after first downs (like the NFL), except for the last two minutes of each half.
• Banning the use of consecutive timeouts by a team.
• Carrying over a foul to the second or fourth quarter rather than playing an untimed down.

What to know about the recommendations

The recommendations come after the rules committee’s annual meetings in Indianapolis this week. The Division I Football Competition Committee also gathered this week to discuss the topic. These three rule changes received widespread support. Other more dramatic ideas — such as running the clock after incomplete passes — did not have enough support to move forward at this time.

Tulane athletic director Troy Dannen, who chairs the competition committee, told The Athletic this week that he expects the three combined rule changes to eliminate seven to 10 plays per game.

“This is a first step,” Dannen said.

Backstory

The issue of game length is twofold. College football games are taking too long, far longer than their counterparts in the NFL. And, perhaps more importantly for this discussion, they average many more plays per game.

College football games average about 180 total plays per game, compared to about 155 in the NFL, according to an NCAA study on the 2022 season (that included special teams). It’s both a player safety concern with an expanded CFP on the way and a fan engagement concern as FBS games average close to three hours and 30 minutes, while the NFL average is 3:10.

With that many plays per game, there are more opportunities for collisions and injuries. Experts call them “exposures.” Commissioners, perhaps most notably the SEC’s Greg Sankey, have been saying for over a year that there are ways to expand the CFP in a safe way by looking for ways to decrease exposures.

“It’s not games,” he said last winter after expansion talks had initially stalled. “It’s exposures. It’s contacts. So then you think, how can we adjust the game in the modern era to meet a set of different demands?”

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips spearheaded a push over the last year to look at college football holistically before making changes to any particular area. Colloquially, it’s been called the 365-day review, and it’s included a look at the number of plays per game among other topics. Phillips supports the three proposed rule changes and said they have support across all 10 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences.

“With the expansion of the Playoff in 2024, a thorough review of options to reduce the overall number of plays has been a high priority among the FBS commissioners,” Phillips said. “If you’re going to expand the Playoff, it can’t be at the same number of plays. You have to try to dial it back.

“This is the first step. It’s not the only step, but it’s something we hope will be incorporated into the upcoming 2023 football season.”