Clock won't stop after most first downs in college football games in 2023 and beyond
The clock has been stopped to set the ball after all first downs since 1968
Some significant clock changes are coming to college football.
The NCAA’s Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved a recommendation to keep the clock running after first downs during the majority of Division I and Division II football games. The approval was a formality but a necessary step after the NCAA Football Rules Committee recommended the change in March.
The clock has stopped after all first downs in college football games since 1968 and is restarted after the ball is positioned and whistled to be ready for play. And while it will still stop after all first downs in Division III games, all games at the top levels of college football won’t have clock stoppages after first downs outside of the final two minutes of each half.
The change is being made in an effort to reduce the number of plays per game and also shorten the length of games. College football games routinely take over three hours — and sometimes closer to four hours — without overtime. Keeping the clock running after first downs for 56 minutes of the game will likely remove an average of fewer than 10 plays from each game as teams have run faster and faster offenses in recent decades.
"This rule change is a small step intended to reduce the overall game time and will give us some time to review the impact of the change," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said in a statement in March when the committee made the clock recommendation.
Of course, an easy way to reduce game length in college football games would be to cut the number of commercial breaks per game. But we don't need to tell you that the TV networks that broadcast college football games would not go for a commercial reduction.
In addition to the clock rules, teams are now no longer allowed to take consecutive timeouts. It wasn’t uncommon to see a team with multiple timeouts take those to ice a kicker ahead of a late field goal attempt in a half. Now, teams can only take one timeout in that scenario.
All penalties at the end of the first and third quarters will also now carry over to the following quarters. NCAA rules previously stated that an untimed down needed to be run if there was no time left at the end of a quarter and a penalty was committed on a play that ended with no time left.
