Saturday, October 10, 2009

Collegiate Football Question

This is something I've noticed a few times over the course of this college football season, most importantly it came up a few times last week in UM's loss to MSU. There was another instance of this just one moment ago in the Iowa game and it is really bugging and confusing me, so I was hoping someone out there may have an easy and quick answer for me.

Why, when a football player goes out of bounds (not tackled in bounds and then the play carried them out of bounds), the clock stops temporarily and then starts again? I'm not talking about the play clock, I'm talking about the game clock. What is the deal with that? Isn't the clock supposed to remain stopped until the next play is snapped? My entire football memory consists of a stopped clock when someone goes out of bounds until the next play begins. This is going to bother me until I have an answer, and even after that I'll still probably be bothered because it causes time to run off the clock when it should be at a standstill. We don't have much opportunity to control time in our lives, so it's not fair to have one of the instances in which we can taken away.

1 comment:

Ken said...

Copied and pasted for your enjoyment from Rob B. on Facebook (I wish there was an easy way to merge comments):

They changed the college rule recently that outside the 2 minutes to go in each half, that an out of bounds play would be treated like a first down. Clock stops until the ball is set for play, then starts again. Games were too long (for those on the rules committee) and then they made rule changes to shorten games that weren't popular. During a second round of changes, this was one of the compromises and one of the changes that most observers don't notice. So kudos for being an observant football fan.