Time, time, time, see what’s become of me…

The Wiz has provided an invaluable service this season tracking what effect the revised clock rules have had on the college game.  His latest post on the subject, which looks at the bowl season, confirms what those who are cynical about this stuff already suspected – that whatever time gets saved from shaving off plays and points gets replaced with more commercials and, in the case of the bowls, with more elaborate halftime festivities.

That’s a pretty worthless tradeoff, for my money.

Here’s the breakdown:

A look at the average number of plays and time of a game for the past four seasons.

G      Plays/G   Time/G   Pts/G
2005     717    140.71      3:21      52.61
2006     792    127.53      3:07      47.53
2007     792    143.42      3:23      55.37
2008     770    134.84      3:12      52.68
Bowls     34    137.35      3:26      50.29

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to take these numbers, along with the fact that viewership was up for the bowls, and figure out where things are headed.