FanHouse

Sunday Morning Quarterback continues to disagree with the NCAA rules committee's -- and the Fanhouse's -- assertion that the adoption of a 40 second clock will actually increase the number of plays in a game:

Any guess that the 40/25 clock will somehow increase plays is based on teams moving to the line quickly - "on consistent pace of play," in the words of the NCAA rep who responded to Orson's readers - but there is no incentive for offenses to take any less time than the rules afford. There's no way to predict the future with certainty, but the data from our "control group" (the NFL) indicates the number of plays will go down.

I must respectfully dissent, as SMQB forgets the grand poobah of clock differences between the NFL and college: in college, the clock stops after a first down until the ball is signaled ready for play.

I did a little rejiggering of the first down numbers provided by CFB Stats and came to the conclusion that the average NCAA game has 41.4 first downs in it. Each of these first downs is accompanied by a clock stoppage that does not occur in the NFL, and together they greatly lengthen the average college game. How much after the jump.

Let's first establish a benchmark. SMQB has a table with average numbers of plays for college and pro teams demonstrating that the average NFL game is considerably shorter than the average college one. NFL teams average just under 63 plays per game; college teams run just under 72. A college game is about 114% of an NFL game.

41.4 instances times 15 seconds per instance -- to use the approximate number the NCAA has settled on -- equals 615 seconds or 10.25 minutes of college time that doesn't exist in the NFL. By adding the 10.25 minutes to the standard 60 and dividing we get a college game that's 112% of an NFL game. Not quite exact, but close, and we're not controlling for several factors: some first downs are out-of-bounds plays, etc.

The main reason the NFL features far fewer plays than the college game is not the length of the playclock but the running clock after a first down. That difference is not up for review, and the assertions made by the rules committee are therefore well within the realm of the plausible. Any difference wrought by the 40-second playclock will be small.

(The out-of-bounds thing? That will obviously chop plays out of the game; given the plausibility of the rules committee's numbers I'm willing to give them a year to prove it... the net effect should be far less severe than Hated 3-2-5e. Matt Hayes says that might not pass; let's hope he's right.)