College Football's Biggest Issue - Shorter Games

After two weeks of action, many people, with Tommy Tuberville appearing to be the lone exception, have voiced and written about their displeasure of the new clock rules. I found an interesting tidbit in an article by Carl Dubois, sportswriter for the Baton Rouge Advocate, on the subject of shorter games. While college games have been too long, it's not because of old clock rules, but rather college football has become big time business for the universities, conferences, and television networks. The amount of commercials during the games is absurd. Let's cut out some commercials rather than plays. The fan is now getting completely screwed by paying higher prices for tickets and television, yet seeing fewer plays.

Anyhow, the most interesting part of the article in my opinion comes when Dubois discusses the amount of live action in a football game. I was shocked to learn that in LSU's game against Arizona on Saturday there was only 13 minutes and 8 seconds of live football action, meaning from the snap of the ball to the end of the play. I never really put much thought into the amount of live action, but to fans who say that football is boring (especially folks from outside the U.S. that love the game of soccer), I can now understand where they are coming from. However, I still think a game that generally ends with a score of 1 - 0 is boring as hell even if the players are involved in "live action" for 90 minutes. Those 90 minutes of live action is pretty damn boring and painful compared to college football's 13 minutes of "live action."