Big 12 football coaches mixed on impact of new NCAA clock rules to speed up

ARLINGTON, Texas — College football games will be shorter this year.

In April, the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved three rule changes for the 2023 season. Most notably, the clock will continue to run after first downs, like the NFL, outside of the last two minutes. (Previously, the clock stopped until the ball was set. That will remain the case for plays that go out of bounds outside of the final two minutes.)

Will it have a notable impact on games this fall?

“It’ll be a big factor in the games, in my opinion,” Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy said this week. “Now, if teams have the ability to rush the ball with a clock that continues to move on first downs, very similar to what you see in the NFL, the game is going to expire much quicker and it’ll be considerably different to what it’s been in the past.”

Along with the clock change, the NCAA banned a team from calling consecutive timeouts, and penalties at the end of the first and third quarters will carry over to the next quarter, instead of playing an untimed down.

There are two reasons for those changes: One is player contact and the other is the length of games. College football games in 2022 averaged 180 total plays and 3:30 in length, according to an NCAA study, with many games longer than four hours. That compares to 155 plays and 3:10 in the NFL. Members of the competition committee believe this will reduce games by seven to 10 plays per game and as much as 10 real-time minutes. It’s also a proactive move ahead of an expanded College Football Playoff with more games.

While some Big 12 coaches were concerned about the clock change at conference media days this week, more of them downplayed any change.

“I don’t like four-hour, 15-minute games,” Houston coach Dana Holgorsen said. “I’ve done things from a ball control point of view. Two years ago, we were top three in the country in time of possession. I’ve prided ourselves on being able to run the football and shorten games when we have leads. In my opinion, whatever shortens games, I’m all in favor of. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Teams tend to tempo the most after a first down anyway, so keep that thing running.”

Because of up-tempo offenses, college football officials have already been trained to spot the ball as quickly as possible, typically in under 10 seconds. That’s why they’ve downplayed this as a major change. It’s different in the NFL, where officials dictate more tempo and teams don’t run hurry-up for an entire game, in part due to smaller rosters.

UCF coach Gus Malzahn runs one of the fastest offenses in the country (seventh in plays per game last year) and said the rule won’t change anything for him. He noted the 2006 rule change starting the clock on change of possessions and after kickoffs was much more dramatic in shortening games. A year later, that was…