College football games "are getting longer," as the average length of a contest "has ticked up almost every season" since '08, according to Ben Cohen of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. In '08, after the NCAA "passed new rules meant to make games shorter, the average time of a regulation game was 3 hours and 11 minutes." It "peaked at 3 hours and 22 minutes last year, though this season is challenging for the record at 3 hours and 20 minutes." Already this season, there have been 66 games that "lasted for more than 3 hours and 30 minutes, and six epics that passed 4 hours." College games "seem to be even more of a grind compared with NFL games." This year, the average NFL game "has taken 3 hours and 7 minutes, a number that hasn’t changed dramatically over the last two decades" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 9/29). SI.com's Richard Deitsch examined why games are running longer, noting one reason could be the "proliferation of spread offenses -- meaning more plays and more clock stoppages and more breaks between scores." There also is the "in-game commercial inventory that has inched up in newer rights deals to help justify the price." ESPN VP/College Sports Programming Ilan Ben-Hanan said that the "key number" for games on his network is 3 hours and 30 minutes. If they can "stay under that number -- which is the duration ESPN allots for each broadcast window for college football -- they are in good shape." Meanwhile, Deitsch noted moving to a noon, 4:00pm and 8:00pm ET start time scenario to end the spillover is "not going to happen." Ben-Hanan said that ESPN "wants to put on as many games as possible so they won’t be doing windows with just three games a day." He added that he will "often speak informally about game length with conference commissioners and assistant commissioners during the course of business, but he wanted to be clear." Ben-Hanan: "It’s not really ESPN’s place to make those kind of suggestions" (SI.com, 9/29).
