Extra-long games kill academics

Amemo to UNC faculty:Have you noticed that some students seem a little behind on their reading Monday mornings? Or perhaps a paper written during the weekend is laden with grammatical errors, incorrect word usage or misplaced commas?

The explanation behind this problem must be uncovered. And two weeks into the school year, the justification has become clear - college football.

No, seriously.

While in the past, such an excuse was relegated to the pantheon of cop-outs along with "The dog ate my homework" and "There was a blue-cup special at He's Not," students have a legitimate reason for running out of time to make a Blackboard post after a weekend of viewing battles on the gridiron. The games have become far too long.

While NFL games barely eclipse the three-hour mark on average, according to former NFL referee Jerry Markbreit on the Chicago Tribune's Web site, televised college contests regularly push past three-and-a-half hours.

Saturday's contest between UNC and Georgia Tech - for those fans that persevered through all three hours and 46 minutes of it - served as a perfect reminder of how unbearable watching an entire game has become.

While the first half went briskly, taking a comparatively meager one hour and 37 minutes, the second half seemed endless. At one point, after the replay official decided to review a Jesse Holley catch for no apparent reason, color commentator Ed Cunningham aptly wondered, "Is that worth stopping the game over?"

Although the introduction of instant replay worsens the problem, the crux of the matter is two-fold: the necessary evil of television timeouts and the unnecessary evil of the rulebook.

Television timeouts, of which there are approximately four per quarter, drain the excitement from players as well as fans.

"They last forever," says UNC defensive tackle Chase Page. "The (official) comes out there, he's looking at his watch and you're looking at the clock saying, 'Come on, let's get started.'"

As irritating as these stoppages are, the need for TV revenue is unavoidable, and the NFL works ads into its broadcasts as well.

The reason why college football games often stretch 30 to 45 minutes longer than their professional counterparts is the variance in the timekeeping rules.

In the NFL, the clock does not stop for a first down, and it restarts quickly after a player carries the ball out of bounds except for late in the second and fourth quarters.

In college, time does not elapse in either of these circumstances.

Tack on the increasing reliance on the spread offense in college football, which results in more clock-stopping incompletions, and it becomes understandable why games can last so long.

Take Ga. Tech coach Chan Gailey's inexplicable calling of pass plays late in the fourth quarter Saturday - with a 13-point lead - as a fitting example.

The NCAA has discovered how to limit basketball on TV to approximately two hours, and it has no excuse for not doing the same with regard to football. But until that happens, don't expect football-crazed students to complete too many weekend homework assignments.

"People want to watch a football game," Page says. "I think they'll suffer through whatever they have to."

And that might mean skipping a few chapters of an article or running out of time to finish a 10-page essay.

 

Contact Jacob Karabell at karabell@email.unc.edu.