NCAAF Rule Changes

At the beginning of the 2023 MLB season, Major League Baseball announced some new rule changes with the goal of speeding up the game.

As the MLB season winds down, whether you love or hate the new pitch clock, it’s obvious the new rules worked as intended.

Most reports suggest that games are almost 30 minutes shorter this year compared to last.

MLB – Average Length of Game

Year	Avg. Length Of Game
2023	2H and 38 Mins
2022	3H and 6 Mins
2021	3H and 11 Mins
2020	3H and 6 Mins
2019	3H and 10 Mins

Mission accomplished for MLB.

In 2022, the average D-I football game took 3 hours and 21 minutes.

In our new on-demand world, where attention spans are shorter than ever, games averaging 200+ minutes are no longer acceptable.

In fact, my boss will be upset with me for dragging out this introduction.

Let’s dive into the 2023-24 NCAA Football season and give college football fans and bettors some interesting things to think about.

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

Chances are, if you have the skill set to read this article, you have probably heard of Mark Zuckerberg, and maybe you have even opened your own Facebook account.

If you haven’t seen the 2010 movie The Social Network – but still have it on your To Do List thirteen years after it was released, this is a spoiler alert:

Zuckerberg might have been a bit unlikeable while at Harvard, and his closest friends at school (The Winklevoss brothers and Divya Narendra) all sued Zuck, claiming Facebook was not necessarily his original idea alone.

When the NCAA detailed its new rule changes for the 2023 football season, many assumed they were taking their cue from MLB.

There was nothing original about their reasoning. College football games were taking well over three hours to complete.

In a world where the majority of fans have little interest in spending 3+ hours at a stadium, many believe the NCAA-F wanted to explore ways to shorten their games.

Some point out that anytime teams run fewer plays – you will intentionally or unintentionally reduce the amount of player injuries in a game.

It’s a chance to shorten games and potentially positively impact player safety – it sounds like a win/win.

2023 NCAAF Rule Changes

Starting this season, the game clock for college football games will continue to run after a first down, except in the final two minutes of each half.

Previously, college football differed from NFL football because, in the NFL, the game clock continued to run after a first down, while in the NCAA, clocks would stop.

This subtle rule difference actually created a big difference between the two games.

Most Plays Per Game – NFL vs. NCAA – 2022

Teams	2022 Plays Per Game	2022 Points Per Game
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	68.8	18.2
Los Angeles Chargers	67.9	23.4
Arizona Cardinals	67.3	20.0
Texas Tech University	89.2	31.8
University of Buffalo	80.4	28.3
Oklahoma State University	80.0	27.9

• In our table above, we see that the Bucs, Chargers, and Cardinals led the NFL in average plays per game in 2022, with all three teams averaging more than 67.
• When you compare the top three teams in college, we see that all three teams are averaging more than 80 plays per game — a significant increase compared to the NFL teams.
• 80+ D-I football teams averaged more plays per game than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

NCAAF Rule Changes And Their Betting Impact

With their new rule changes, MLB was able to reduce the dead time between pitches, a time when no action was taking place.

When you continue to run the clock after a first down in college football, you are stealing from actual game time, not dead time.

What exactly the impact will be on scoring is still to be determined.

• There is no doubt that running the clock will reduce the amount of plays a team runs during a game.
• The fewer plays a team runs during a game, the fewer points they will average per game.

But college football fans shouldn’t expect to see NFL-type scores now just because of the new rules.

• Many NCAA teams run up-tempo offenses and styles of play that take advantage of personnel mismatches that don’t exist in the NFL.
• There are many games where teams are significantly more mismatched than in the NFL.

Week 1 of the college season has more than ten games with a 30+ point spread just among the top 25 ranked teams.

30-point spreads don’t exist in the NFL.

Do NCAA-F Bettors Need To Adapt?

The great David Purdum of ESPN Chalk wrote a very interesting Week 1 college football article where he provided a quote from Chris Andrews, sportsbook director at the South Point Hotel & Casino.

“As far as bookmaking goes, if someone is going to play the [under] angle, I’m going to let them play it and see what happens,” Chris Andrews, sportsbook director at the South Point Hotel & Casino, said. “There might be a little trend betting unders out there, a little bit of play towards the under from the sharp guys.”

Betting On College Football In 2023

Chris Andrews knows a few things more about book-making than I do, and Mr. Andrews doesn’t seem overly concerned about the new rules.

That said, Andrews does mention a trend towards betting college football unders among the Sharps.

Who am I to turn down a football betting tip from Chris Andrews, even if he, himself, doesn’t seem to be buying into it?

With that in mind, at BestOdds we are recommending that all college football bettors be aware that new rules have been implemented for this upcoming season, and that at this time their impact on how to bet on college football games is unknown.

There are a lot of theories suggesting that teams are going to score fewer points, primarily because they won’t be running the same amount of offensive plays.

However, sportsbooks know this information as well.

How will these changes impact their totals for each game? Chris Andrews of the South Point Casino says, at least to start, that he won’t be doing anything different with his college football totals.

As bettors, we need to study the first few weeks of the season and determine if there are any O/U trends occurring.

• Did the rules have a bigger impact than we thought?
• Did the sportsbooks over or under-react to the new rules?
• Is there any value to be found in betting NCAA-F Overs or Unders?

These are the important questions bettors will have to ask themselves as the 2023 college football season plays out.