rule change could help Cowboys
By Mike Baldwin
This year college football is changing its clock rule similar to the NFL. Once a play ends the clock automatically starts at 40 seconds, even on running plays and completed passes where the runner heads out of bounds. Similar to the NFL, each offense will probably lose around 10 or more plays a game.
In the past the official would start a 25-second clock that began only when the ball was placed down.
“Now as soon as they put the ball down we can run another play,” said coach Mike Gundy. “The official used to stand over the ball (and you couldn’t snap it until he left). He won’t stand over it any more.”
So could it be an advantage for a spread offense that goes with a no-huddle approach?
“We’ll see,” Gundy said. “They did stop us (from a quick snap) sometimes in the past. Now we won’t have that. Out of bounds plays don’t start on the snap any more.”
While the rule change is designed to shorten the overall length of games that sometimes go 31/2 to 4 hours, it could be a slight benefit for the Cowboys because of their no-huddle approach.
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Sorry to see this rule changed. Faster is not always better. But, hey, TV schedules rule most everything now. Maybe they should just cut out one or two of the too many TV timeouts accompanied with their dumbed-down commercials.