ShareThisBy GENE COLLIER
On Jan. 3, the night Penn State played Florida State in an Orange Bowl battle of coaches who were then a combined 216 years old, I left my house just before kickoff and drove downtown.
I parked the car and walked out of the parking garage and into the Pittsburgh Public Theatre.
I watched a play.
Yeah, all the way through.
I lingered in the lobby afterward, sipping a beverage.
I finally left the theater and went into a restaurant and ate dinner. Chatted. Ate dessert. Chatted.
I left the restaurant and drove home.
I went into the family room and went to sleep on the couch in, oh, 19 seconds.
I awoke during a commercial, but fell asleep before it ended.
I re-awoke during another commercial, this time staying conscious long enough for it to end; the clock on the VCR or DVD or whatever it is now read 12:55 a.m., and the Penn State-Florida State game was still on!
Two minutes later, or four hours and 45 minutes after it started, Penn State kicked the winning field goal in overtime, and players on both teams collapsed in either joy or despondence, but mostly because they knew that either way they could tell their grandchildren they were there the night two coaches with a combined ages of 216 somehow managed to stand erect on opposite sidelines for four hours and 45 minutes.
I remember hoping that Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden had at least sat down at halftime. One more overtime possession, and both would have had to be strapped to a handcart like Hannibal Lecter and wheeled back and forth toward the scrimmage line.
It was the third time in the 2005 season that Penn State had played games longer than 3 1/2 hours, but you don't have to be 108 like Paterno for college football games to be a health hazard. The average length of games expanded by another two minutes last year to 3:21, which is abominable in an era when the National Football League, which is commercialized to the very walls of human tolerance, can get in and out of a playoff game in 2:39.
Finally, several rule changes designed to keep the typical college football game from running longer than "Ben Hur" have been adopted and will be put into effect beginning this weekend.
On kickoffs and free kicks, the clock will start when the ball is booted rather than when someone on the receiving team touches it.
More dramatically, on a change of possession, the clock will start when an official signals the ball ready for play, rather than when the offense finally gets around to huddling, substituting, lining up, shifting multiple times, and snapping it.
The NCAA Rules Committee estimates that second change will cut five minutes off a game's running time, but it's still not enough. Collier's rule of thumb on this matter: The Penn State football game should not be longer than the drive to Penn State.
The No. 1 obstacle to the college game being completed in a reasonable period (the NFL average of 3:06 would be a worthy target) is the dubious process of stopping the clock after every first down, which amounts to 30 or 40 or even 50 clock stoppages that are totally unnecessary.
This nonsense will continue, the rules committee decided, but only after it briefly considered slicing halftime from 20 minutes to 15.
Yeah, it's all the band's fault; it's the twirlers and saxophonists and that infernal flag line with all their color and pageantry, not the 50 clock stoppages or the 96 commercials that ran during the Texas-Southern California national title game.
It'd be nice to get a replay adjudicated in less time than it takes to get a mortgage as well.
Naturally, there has been plenty of screaming from coaches who say this will decrease the number of plays and by illogical extension the chance for stunning comeback victories.
Pardon me, but any initiative that decreases the number of plays run by the Temple Owls is good for football and, if Vanderbilt only has to withstand 50 episodes of Michigan smashing into it rather than 65, that's a major boost to general health and safety.
In a hyper-active entertainment culture in which you can see a movie in 1:50, a baseball game in 2:45, a college basketball game in sometimes under two hours, a hockey game in 2:50, and a play, a dinner, a dessert, and a nap in 4:30, there's no reason a college football game should be longer than all that.
I don't think it's too much to ask that the Jan. 3 bowl games end before Jan. 4.
