It's About Time

Last September, when I'd nestled into the butt-print I'd spent the previous season imprinting in my friend's couch and popped open the familiar Foster's Oil Can at 9:30 am EST to watch two and half hours of College Gameday, I knew the season was upon us.

Through the noon and afternoon waves of Big Ten, ACC and Big East games I cruised like a champion, only lamenting the preponderance of diamond ring and life insurance commericals on tv.

But the football was good. Some dozen beers and two pizzas later, the SEC games were just rounding the halftime mark with at least 90 minutes to go, and the Pac 10 was rising in the middle of the first quarter for the real diehards trying to go coast to coast through the full slate of televised games.

But I was dragging ass hard. It was a Saturday night in my mid-twenties, my team had won and I was beat. What was the matter?

Are college football games too long?

Yes, said the NCAA recently with their new rules tweaks to speed up the pace of play.

Starting this season, on a first down the clock starts "at the ready," when the official thinks the teams are all set to play, and not at the snap.

On kickoffs, the clock will now start when the kicker strikes the ball.

This is supposed to be a way to trim the length of games, which had grown in recent years to 3 hours 20 minutes, by eliminating 11-14 plays per game.

How's that for missing the point entirely? It's not that were sick of seeing more *football plays, it's that its taking longer to see it. Thanks to TV and diamond commercials.

So instead of eliminating 11-14 plays per game, which if you think about it ensures there's now more time for commercials, let's try eliminating 11-14 commercials per game and all of the tv timeouts. What do you bet that would make more of an impact on keeping games under 30 minutes?

But I'm not living in the '50s either and I understand that advertising dollars have to some degree facilitated the time of plenty in today's college football world. I'm just saying there's another way it can be done wherein I don't have to deal with 30 seconds of guilt induced by a financial planning commerical after seven minutes of football.

I like the way the World Cup does things, with a subtle advertiserment visible at all times during the continous flow of play. Why pray tell can't college football (and even the NFL) take a cue from the only sport that rivals these two in terms of sheer fandom and deliver the goods in an uncompromised way?

Consider the case of Zidane's headbutt in the world cup final. This act of savagery was blazed into the minds of millions at the time of broadcast and with a convenient little corporate logo in the corner, unofficially sponsored by Coke (at least on Univision). Consider that now in the age of viral videos on the internet, how many other people have and will continue to view this clip online and you're talking billions of impressions and I doubt any of Coke's regular TV spots could penetrate so deep.

So take that to the bank, college football sponsors and the NCAA, and give us what we want: not less plays, just fewer advertisements.