The Dallas Morning-News is reporting that the NCAA has scrapped the rules aimed at making college football games shorter.

I think this is definitely the right move for college football. The clock rules may have made the games shorter (on the average about 15 minutes) but to say that they reduced the quality of the game would be an understatement. The rules were universally panned by players and coaches and even sparked a website. You know you’re hated when you have your own hate-site (just ask Ron Zook)

There are some other rule changes that I’m a little apathetic about..

• Timeouts will be 30 seconds instead of 65 seconds
• The play clock will be just 15 seconds after a TV timeout
• Kickoffs will kicked from the 30 instead of the 35 in an attempt to reduce kickoffs

I’ve blasted the NCAA before and rightfully so but I think they finally made the right move on SOMETHING.

Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said he doesn’t think people who drive hours to watch a football game care about how long the game runs, he told the Morning-News, “I don’t know if they come to see a quick game, a game to played in three hours,” he said.

I firmly believe that football fans, either in the stands or watching at home, care if the game runs long or not. But the networks do care. They have a budgeted time slot that they give a game and they want the game to be over in that allotted time. That’s why this decision was made in the first place and I wish the NCAA would have acknowledged that from the start and not front like they’re taking up the sword and trying to protect the integrity of the game.

Here’s a link to the Morning-News article.

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