By: Jonathan Tunney
September 18, 2024
Photo Credit: The New York Times
If you have attended a college football game in person recently, does it feel like you’ve seen more of the “red hat guy” pictured above? If your answer is yes, you aren’t alone. College football fans across the nation have taken to social media to complain about rule changes the "increase" of the the number of TV timeouts per game. This begs the question: Are there really more commercials during college football games these days?
At the beginning of the 2024 college football season, the NCAA introduced the “two-minute timeout”. This means that for this season and beyond, there will be an full length media timeout at the two-minute mark of the second and fourth quarters, just like the NFL. However, this doesn’t mean that the two-minute timeout has increased the amount of commercials shown during a televised college football games. Commercial breaks still follow a "3-4-3-4" or "4-4-4-4" structure in most college football games. The "3-4-3-4" structure is 3 commercial breaks in the 1st quarter, 4 in the 2nd, 3 in the 3rd, and 4 in the 4th. The "4-4-4-4" structure is 4 commercial breaks in every quarter. The NCAA has allowed a maximum of 20 commercial breaks for a given football game, including halftime, for many years now. Additionally, college football games, both before and after the rule change, have consistently averaged around 45 minutes of commercials per game.
So if the two-minute timeout hasn’t increased the amount of commercials in college football games, why do so many fans feel like they're seeing more advertisements and less football on their TV's? The culprit may be a different rule change. At the beginning of the 2023 college football season, the NCAA instituted a new running clock rule. Unless it is the final two minutes of the 2nd or 4th quarter, the clock will continue to run after first downs. Before this rule was in place, the clock stopped after all first downs to set the line of scrimmage and first down markers. This rule was designed to reduce injuries and improve player safety by reducing the amount of snaps played per game. College football experts say the rule eliminates anywhere from 7-10 plays per game, and shortens the game by about 10 minutes.
In essence, the running clock rule change hasn't increased the amount of commercial time during college football games, they’ve just decreased the amount of actual game time by about 10 minutes while maintaining the same amount of ads, making it seem like there are more commercials during a college football live broadcast.
Regardless, these widespread reactions to these rule changes have clearly negatively affected the fan viewership experience. Will this phenomenon lead to a loss of fan engagement value for college football overall? I don’t believe so. Most college football fans root for the football program of their alma mater or teams that their family and friends have supported for generations. These strong ties won’t be severed due to the increased ratio of commercials to live football action during the modern college football live broadcast. Instead, I expect a college version of NFL RedZone or NFL Sunday Ticket to debut very soon to provide a solution. I have no doubt that superfans of the sport of college football at large would be willing to pay a premium to avoid commercials and watch every game through coordinated whip-round live coverage.
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