Written by Ell | 06 August 2008

In part 2 of our look at the new rules for college football in 2008 we'll take a look at the change in the way that the game clock works when a player goes out of bounds. Here's the NCAA rule

Rule 3-2-5-a-12 (FR-69)

12. When a ball carrier, a fumble or a backward pass goes out of bounds. (Exception: Within the last two minutes of each half the clock starts on the snap unless incidents 8 or 11 above occur.)

For the record, incidents "8 or 11" refers to the exceptions to the play clock rule in yesterday's post. #8 is when a team scores & #11 is the use of instant replay. This will likely shorten games considerably. This could be similar to the rules changes from 2 years ago that were widely disliked because they limit the number of plays in a game. The NFL has used this rule for years with success, so there is a template in place. But college football fans are not used to seeing the clock started in this regard, so there will be quite an adjustment. When you combine this with the play clock change discussed yesterday, you'll now see a totally different clock situation when the ball ends up out of bounds:

• While the game clock will stop when the play is whistled dead, the official will signal for the start the 40 second game clock immediately upon blowing the whistle. Last year the 25 second clock would not have started until the ball was set at the hashmark and the ball signaled "ready for play".
• Once the ball is signaled "ready for play" the game clock will start. In past years the clock would not have started until the ball was actually snapped from center.

The important thing to note here is that this game clock rule will not be used in the last 2 minutes of each half. That seems a bit odd to change the rules in the final minutes of the half, but the Arena Football League has done this with their clock rules in the final 1 minute of each half with success. This part of rule means that late game situations, as long as they start within 2 minutes of the end of the game, will not be affected by this rule at all. I'm still not sold on this one because of the fact that I think it will limit the total number of plays in the game, and I'm not in favor of rules that do that. I do appreciate that the NCAA is attempting to try various things in order to shorten the game, but shortening the game can be done in ways that doesn't impact the actual amount of football that gets played.

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