Jan. 23, 2006
Length of College Football Games
By all indications, the state of college football is very good. The bowl season featured many exciting games and the TV ratings for the BCS games reached an all-time high. For the first time since the BCS was created, there was no controversy involving the national championship game. The Rose Bowl matchup between Texas and USC lived up to all its hype, as the game was one of the best college football games ever played.
Despite all these positives, I do think that we need to take steps to shorten the length of college games. College games now routinely run well over three hours (television likes three-hour games and predictable length of games -- they block out 3 hours for each game) and some last almost 4 hours. Over the last decade, we have seen a tremendous increase in the amount of passing in the college game (with more passing, there are more incompletions and plays that go out of bounds -- plays that stop the clock) with the development of the spread offense. Increases in the length and time of commercials over the years also have contributed to the problem.
Interestingly, the NFL faced a similar situation a few years go and made a number of changes that helped shorten the length of NFL games. The average NFL game now has 20 fewer plays than the average college game, and games now typically run about three hours. The changes that I would recommend are similar to the changes that have worked effectively in the NFL. The clock should restart on out-of-bound plays once the ball is set, except for the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the game. In addition, the clock should not stop on first downs except for the last two minutes of each half. Although it is always risky to make changes when things are going well, I think these changes would make a great game even better.
Men's Swimming
Our men's swimming team, currently ranked 17th in the country, is having another great season. We've had outstanding performances the last two weeks -- finishing second in the prestigious Dallas Morning News meet and then beating 19th-ranked Notre Dame at home on Friday. Junior Matt Grevers, who captured a national championship last year, continues to swim at a high level. He was recently named both National and Big Ten Swimmer of the Week for his outstanding performance in the Dallas meet.
Women's Lacrosse
Although it is still cold in Evanston, our women's lacrosse team will soon begin defense of its national championship. This weekend (Sunday, Jan. 29), our team will travel to Florida to scrimmage the U.S. national women's lacrosse team. The national championship team is allowed to play the national team in a game that doesn't count as an official contest. This will be a great opportunity for our team to test itself early in the season. We should be strong again this season, and the matchup against the national team will help us get ready for a challenging schedule this year.
NCAA Convention
History was made at the NCAA convention earlier this month. For the first time since the NCAA restructured Division I in 1997, a vote was held to determine if the Division I membership would override legislation approved by the NCAA Board of Directors. Prior to 1997, all Division I schools would attend the annual NCAA convention and vote on legislation -- one institution, one vote. With the restructuring, legislation is now in enacted through the NCAA committee structure, and the Division I-A schools have a majority of representation on the committees. The vote was the first time that the smaller schools (I-AA and I-AAA (Division I schools without football)) had enough support to trigger the override. These schools successfully defeated scholarship increases in women's volleyball, gymnastics and track and field, and narrowly failed to override the increase in women's soccer. It will be interesting to see if the success of this override leads to similar votes in the future.