You can add UCLA Bruins coach Chip Kelly to the list of people who don’t seem to be a fan of the changes implemented this year in college football.
In particular, he didn’t seem to like the new clock rules that went into effect this year.
In both Division I and Division II, the clock no longer stops after a first down aside from the last two minutes of the half.
It’s an effort by the NCAA to try and shorten the length of games, which has been an issue MLB has been contending with as well.
The impact has already been felt with the new season underway.
When Kelly was asked about it at halftime on Saturday night, he didn’t have any issues throwing some shade at what’s been going on.
“This new rule is crazy,” he said during a short halftime interview with ESPN. “We had four drives in the first half. This game goes fast. Hope you guys are selling a lot of commercials.”
The feeling among some is that while the NCAA may be trying to shorten the times of games, it has opened the door for networks to just run more advertisements during broadcasts.
UCLA, for instance, had averaged 72 offensive plays last season but ran just 30 against Coastal Carolina on Saturday.
A user on X, formerly known as Twitter, even examined the Week 0 data and found that there wasn’t much of a change.
“The NCAA said that the average CFB game last year took 3 hours and 27 minutes – so they instituted the new clock rule to shorten games,” Colton Denning wrote. “Yesterday’s 7 games averaged 3 hours and 23 minutes, and that was with the benefit of a service academy game that took 2 hours 50 minutes.
“Excluding Navy-Notre Dame, the average time of game yesterday was 3 hours and 29 minutes. Small sample, but I think it’s a decent bet they’ve just replaced that game time with more commercials.”
To add more fuel to that notion, Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham told reporters after the game against Florida that he felt as if there were more commercial breaks.
“That game, there wasn’t a lot of snaps,” Whittingham said. “I guess if they were trying to tone that down, they accomplished their objective. Seemed like they made up for it with more commercials. There were commercials every two minutes. I don’t know what that’s all about. I guess we’ve gotta pay the bills.”
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