Ole Miss football coach Lane Kiffin sounded off on the NCAA's new clock rules after the Rebels' Week 1 victory over Mercer. The veteran head coach was annoyed by the changes to the gameplay, and felt there was no reason to fix a system that had no issue.
The rules he is referring to are geared towards faster games, and were just implemented this offseason following in the footsteps of the NFL. The clock no longer stops after a first down except in the final two minutes of a half, something that had differentiated college football from the NFL.
“I just don’t understand it,” Kiffin said, per On3. “People pay to see, they sit down with their family to watch a game, they pay for tickets to go to a game and we’re going to shorten it? I mean it’s not like it was broke. And there’s a lot of problems that need to be fixed in the world around college football, and running the clock so the game’s quicker? I don’t get it.”
Kiffin likened the change of game length to going to a country concert with less songs. Fans are spending a lot of money to attend games with family and friends, and college football has never had a gameplay issue leading to declining revenue as seen with baseball over the years.
Article Continues Below“You go to a country concert and want to have them sing two less songs when you pay for a concert?” Kiffin said. “No. So why do you want a game to be shorter? That just does not really show much awareness about what should be getting worked on and fixed around college football, in my opinion.”
This past year, the MLB installed a successful pitch clock rule that sped up the games by over 20-30 minutes in some cases. The two sports feature very different fanbases and atmospheres, and that has never been a major concern in CFB the way it had been in baseball for over a decade.
Kiffin would rather have other issues fixed in the sport, and has commented extensively on the NIL free-for-all that the game is struggling to get ahold of after a major change in 2021. He sees the clock rules as ticky tacky, and would like to see the NCAA focus on the bigger problems.