A Major Rule Change Coming to NCAA Football in 2023
Since 1968, college football has stopped the clock after a team gets a first down. That will no longer be the case in 2023.
According to a report from Dennis Dodd of CBS Sports, "The NCAA is expected to approve today's rules changes proposed earlier this year that will allow the clock to run after first downs are achieved in all divisions except Division III."
However, the clock will stop after first downs during the final two minutes of each half. The purpose of this rule change is to reduce the number of plays and shorten the game. That being said, it won't shorten the game by much. Steve Shaw, secretary-editor of the rules committee, told Dodd that it will eliminate roughly seven plays per game.
This rule change will completely change how coaches call games in the sense that they will have to have their next play sent in quicker than in years past and clock management will be more difficult knowing that if you want to stop the clock, you need to get out of bounds. I wonder how many times this fall we'll see a player fail to get out of bounds to stop the clock in a crucial situation because of simply forgetting thew new rule. Probably more often than we'd all like to see. There are several things the NCAA rules committee needs to take a look at and this isn't one of them.
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