Whistle While You Work, Part 1

Wouldn't it be great to take a ref's whistle to work with you every day?

Think about how great it would be to find yourself in the middle of the boss's bitching (you know, the kind of complaining when you're trying to get work done, but they are taking up your valuable time by telling you how your work attitude needs to improve, then wonder why you need to stay later that day just to get the story done) and you whip out the whistle to blow the play dead. Sometimes all it would take to make an employee happier would be to take a media time out once in a while. After all, they do it in college football practically everytime the game clock is stopped.

That takes me to my real topic - the constant debate over how clock rules should be altered to keep the games from lasting forever. There's really two arguments that come from this conversation. The first being my personal gripe with college football in general, that there are WAY too many commercial time outs during games. The other being the obvious solution, which is to adopt the NFL clock rules for college football.

In today's part of this two part post, we'll tackle the media timeouts mentioned above. I understand that money drives sports in modern times, but it has gotten to the point where college football games feel like breaks between commercial segments. It was only a few years ago that commercial breaks during broadcasts were few and far between, mainly due to the fact that it was a live telecast and anything could happen. Why would you want to risk missing a key argument on the sidelines between a coach and his star Cue-Bee? What if the commercial break runs over a few seconds and the viewers miss that 68-yard TD grab on the first play from scrimmage?

Well, just look no further than those fellas in red standing on the field. You know, those guys who look like refs, but have a 100-foot cord running from their headsets to the broadcast station on the sidelines. They are controling the game clock. You thought it was the officiating crew? HA!

NCAA officials, the media outlets and school officials claim that the games were entirely too long, sometimes lasting as much as 4-5 hours at a time. True, I completely agree. But if you want to cut down on the wasted time, don't pump out silly rules like starting the game clock on the kick off, or on the change of posession. Cut down on the freaking media timeouts!

The next time you're at a game, or someone you know is going to a game (hopefully I'll be able to report on this firsthand at the Florida Int'l game for all of you) watch to see how many times the teams are in the huddle, ready to break to the line of scrimmage, yet they have to wait for the media to give them the OK to start playing again. It's not the game itself, it's the people running the game that are the problems with wasted time. The only reason they're changing the clock rules (and stupid rules they are) is to allow the same amount of commercial time, while placing a BandAid on the bigger problem of very long football games.

In part 2, I'll explain why the adoption of NFL clock rules can only help college football, and why some call me dumb for thinking so.