SEC football officials coordinator discusses rule changes | Texas A&M University Aggie Football

Key factors that impact game time

Factors such as scoring, game time, fouls per game and replay stops per game cannot predict game time in college football, McDaid explained with statistical analysis.

Over the last five years, McDaid said game time, penalties per game and replay stops per game have been flat, while scoring has been down. Last year, the average game time in the Football Bowl Subdivision was 3 hours, 22 minutes, which was up five minutes from 2023, penalties per game was 14.1, up from 13.8 in 2023, replay stops per game was 2.1, down from 2.2 in 2023, and the average points per game scored between both games was 53.8, down from 54.7 in 2023.

McDaid then explained how other factors such as incomplete passes, injuries, pass/run ratio, play tempo, the number of charged timeouts that are not media timeouts, and the number of possessions per team are the variables that most affect game time variance.

“I present this data to you in terms of scoring, game time, fouls per game, replay stops per game, trying to come up with some kind of causality to the overall game length, and I believe it’s how the game is played, how the game is coached that explains those outliers and explains the difference between what you see watching a football game on a Saturday as compared to watching a football game on a Sunday,” McDaid said.

Other rule changes

Officials will have new judgment standards for defensive substitutions, which must be made “with an athletic pace.”

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