How can we make college football a better game? Make it a shorter game

During the 2019 football season, USC starting quarterback Jake Bentley broke his foot on the last play of the fourth quarter of the first game. It ended his season.

Also during the 2019 season, Gamecocks star receiver Bryan Edwards suffered a knee injury on the last play in the fourth quarter of a loss to Appalachian State. It ended his college football career.

The reality is that as college football games take longer and longer to play, serious injuries are happening more and more often during them. Obviously the more plays there are in a game, the greater the risk that an injury will happen during a single play — particularly given the fact that players continue to get faster, bigger and heavier.

But there is another reason for the rising levels of injuries during college football games, and it is one that continues to be overlooked too often: during the fourth quarter of contests, so many players are both mentally and physically fatigued — which in turn makes all of them more susceptible and vulnerable to injury.

I have done research that shows that when a college football game reaches the start of the fourth quarter, there is a 90% probability that the team that has the lead will win the contest.

With that in mind — and the growing number of serious injuries to players — I propose that it’s time for college football games to be shortened from 60 minutes to 48 minutes to reduce the damage that is being suffered by athletes during the end of overly long, exhausting contests. In addition, college football should do away with overtime periods that have put in place to keep games from ending in ties.

While some may balk at these ideas, they make plenty of sense when you also consider these factors:

▪ The fourth quarter is usually the time when large numbers of fans flood out of stadiums during games that have become lopsided contests; this is especially sure to happen during hot afternoons in southern states like ours. And who can blame the fans for leaving, particularly when many of them have attended the game more for the pre-game partying and tailgating than the actual contest?

▪ f the TV networks showing the games need the broadcasts to run for certain length of time, the time lost by eliminating the fourth quarter can easily be made up by increasing the halftime period — which would also have the side benefit of giving the marching bands and cheerleaders greater exposure by providing them with more minutes to entertain the crowd.

It’s time for college football to do more to protect its players from serious injuries. It can do that just by eliminating the fourth quarter of college games, which in most cases doesn’t actually need to be played anyway.

John Crangle is a former college football player who lives in Columbia.