2008-2009 Rule Changes

a5ehren said:
NCAA football is only popular among non-alumni in places with no NFL team (midwest, deep south, Los Angeles) or a consistently poor one (Georgia, Louisiana). In places with any kind of decent NFL team (anything north of DC, Chicago, etc), they dominate the football market.

The NFL definitely has superior clock rules - almost all games finish in under 3 hours, which is pretty much the stated goal of the committee. Now if only they would change the PI rule...
Click to expand...

The Dallas Cowboys are decent enough and they're third in Dallas' interest behind high school football.

It also works the same the other way around. Chicago, Minneapolis, Green Bay, Buffalo and New England haven't had a good college football team nearby for a very long time. Those teams developed tradition while interest in schools like Minnesota and Illinois waned.
 
A lot more people attend NCAA football games than NFL games.
 
I have no linkable evidence for this, and for that I am sorry, but I know I heard this on ESPN or from some other news source.

The major television networks spend more on the contract rights to televise the NFL, than all other major sports combined (e.g. NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball, MLB Baseball, NBA, and NHL).
 
beej67 said:
A lot more people attend NCAA football games than NFL games.
Click to expand...

There is no doubt that there are more rabid college fans who go to every game of their school than there are NFL fans of the same type, but attendance means absolutely nothing with regards to popularity. The number of people who watch on TV is exponentially higher and the money all comes from TV contracts/ads. It might not be bad way to gauge a city's interest in its team, but it really doesn't say much about the overall popularity of the sport. You have to remember that alumni and hardcore fans make up a very small percentage of the United States.

And GTLax, I have heard the same thing, or at least something similar...the amount of money spent to televise NFL games is astronomical.
 
beej67 said:
A lot more people attend NCAA football games than NFL games.
Click to expand...

In pure attendance, yes. But there are 119 NCAA Division I-A football teams, whereas there are only 32 NFL teams.

Accounting for the regular season only (and for games that were played at the teams main home stadia, because I'm lazy), the NFL saw an average attendance of 68,385 people per game. DI-A, on average, saw only 46,730 people per game.

While I agree with your other arguments regarding how boring the NFL is, busting out attendance figures isn't the way to win this one.
 
ASimPerson said:
In pure attendance, yes. But there are 119 NCAA Division I-A football teams, whereas there are only 32 NFL teams.

Accounting for the regular season only (and for games that were played at the teams main home stadia, because I'm lazy), the NFL saw an average attendance of 68,385 people per game. DI-A, on average, saw only 46,730 people per game.

While I agree with your other arguments regarding how boring the NFL is, busting out attendance figures isn't the way to win this one.
Click to expand...

Tough to factor average when the sample is as skewed as that is. You have to consider the small DI schools that will never have high attendance.

Take out the bottom 25-35% of the NCAA and see what that average is ;)
 
ASimPerson said:
In pure attendance, yes. But there are 119 NCAA Division I-A football teams, whereas there are only 32 NFL teams.

Accounting for the regular season only (and for games that were played at the teams main home stadia, because I'm lazy), the NFL saw an average attendance of 68,385 people per game. DI-A, on average, saw only 46,730 people per game.
Click to expand...

The average over 119 team is irrelevant. Average the top 32 college teams and you get 80,278 per game. College football is more popular from an attendance point of view, period. But pro is more popular from a TV and $$$ perspective.
 
In pure attendance, yes. But there are 119 NCAA Division I-A football teams, whereas there are only 32 NFL teams.
Click to expand...
College > NFL in direct viewership.
NFL > College in TV revenue.

That's all I was saying.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that regular season NCAA football makes more money all things considered than regular season NFL does, too, if you sum TV revenue and the gate.

I bet NCAA blows NFL out of the water if you were to try and take alumni contributions into account somehow.
 
beej67 said:
College > NFL in direct viewership.
NFL > College in TV revenue.

That's all I was saying.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that regular season NCAA football makes more money all things considered than regular season NFL does, too, if you sum TV revenue and the gate.

I bet NCAA blows NFL out of the water if you were to try and take alumni contributions into account somehow.
Click to expand...

I looked it up, and the networks pay $3.1 billion per season to broadcast NFL games. I don't have the time or the resources to go and sum up all the NCAA tv contracts, but here are a couple things that were easy to find: CBS pays $9 million per year to broadcast all of Notre Dame's home games. Fox pays $80 million per year(total) to air four of the five BCS games, and ABC pays $37.5. These numbers are not even close.

I quickly looked up some team revenues, and the NCAA team with the highest revenue was Texas, at $47,556,281(list of top 10: http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/005403.php). The NFL team with the worst revenue was the Minnesota Vikings, at $182 million(full list: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/30/biz_07nfl_NFL-Team-Valuations_Revenue_2.html)

So the least profitable NFL team generated over three times as much money as the the most profitable NCAA team. I know those figures are a couple years old, but there is no way the NCAA has managed to come even close to catching up in two or three years. The NFL is immensely more popular and profitable than the NCAA. The stadiums for college football may be more full, but that doesn't really mean anything when the biggest stadium hold 100k people and there are tens of millions watching on TV.

EDIT: By profitable, I mean that more people watch it and spend money on it, so "profitable" is probably the wrong word to use, when it costs a hell of a lot more to run an NFL team than an NCAA team. But when considering how popular it is, that doesn't really factor in.
 
Last edited:
gth816f said:
I looked it up, and the networks pay $3.1 billion per season to broadcast NFL games. I don't have the time or the resources to go and sum up all the NCAA tv contracts, but here are a couple things that were easy to find: CBS pays $9 million per year to broadcast all of Notre Dame's home games. Fox pays $80 million per year(total) to air four of the five BCS games, and ABC pays $37.5. These numbers are not even close.

I quickly looked up some team revenues, and the NCAA team with the highest revenue was Texas, at $47,556,281(list of top 10: http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/005403.php). The NFL team with the worst revenue was the Minnesota Vikings, at $182 million(full list: http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/30/biz_07nfl_NFL-Team-Valuations_Revenue_2.html)

So the least profitable NFL team generated over three times as much money as the the most profitable NCAA team. I know those figures are a couple years old, but there is no way the NCAA has managed to come even close to catching up in two or three years. The NFL is immensely more popular and profitable than the NCAA. The stadiums for college football may be more full, but that doesn't really mean anything when the biggest stadium hold 100k people and there are tens of millions watching on TV.

EDIT: By profitable, I mean that more people watch it and spend money on it, so "profitable" is probably the wrong word to use, when it costs a hell of a lot more to run an NFL team than an NCAA team. But when considering how popular it is, that doesn't really factor in.
Click to expand...

I'd change it to say that the NFL is more popular per team than the NCAA, because I sincerely doubt the NFL outstrips the NCAA in total revenue.

Also, the main reason NCAA schools are not competitive individually with NFL franchises is the fact that there are so many schools. Everyone has one. For the NFL, each team pretty much controls a region.
 
fattyjackson said:
I'd change it to say that the NFL is more popular per team than the NCAA, because I sincerely doubt the NFL outstrips the NCAA in total revenue.

Also, the main reason NCAA schools are not competitive individually with NFL franchises is the fact that there are so many schools. Everyone has one. For the NFL, each team pretty much controls a region.
Click to expand...

The total revenue of all NCAA D1A football combined was around $1.5 billion(http://www.fanblogs.com/ncaa/005445.php sources cited in this article). The total revenue for all the NFL teams combined was around $6.5 billion(source: Forbes http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/30/...Revenue_2.html). So the total revenue for the 32 NFL teams was over four times as much the total revenue for 100+ NCAA teams. I think that maybe living in the south can skew perceptions as to just how popular the NFL is around the rest of the nation.
 
The NFL timing rules are geared to making game length more predictable for the network coverage. It is ridiculous for the fan at the game to watch teams take the full time between plays and the clock run on an out of bounds play. They run three plays in two minutes and then you have to wait two minutes for commercials after a punt. This shows the increasing tendency in the college game to cater to the TV audience at the expense of the fan in the stadium.
 
The clock doesn't run on out of bounds plays in the NFL. I don't know why the AJC implied that it does.
 
gth816f said:
The clock doesn't run on out of bounds plays in the NFL. I don't know why the AJC implied that it does.
Click to expand...

Uh, pretty sure it does.... I remember noticing it the first (and only) time I went to a Falcons game. Now I notice it whenever I catch an NFL game on TV.
 
I believe the clock stops when you are tackled out of bounds and when the ball is set the clock starts. I could be wrong, I'm not familiar with NFL rules.
 
ASimPerson said:
Uh, pretty sure it does.... I remember noticing it the first (and only) time I went to a Falcons game. Now I notice it whenever I catch an NFL game on TV.
Click to expand...

Clock is stopped if player is knocked out of bounds. However, if player is knocked BACKWARD out of bounds, then forward progress rule takes priority--and player is marked down inbounds, and the clock continues to roll. This is a semi rule change about 5 (or so) years ago--and refs were told to be much more strict on out of bounds versus forward progress. [Am a big fantasy football geek, so pay extreme attention to all NFL rules, etc. ]
 
BuzzMD said:
Clock is stopped if player is knocked out of bounds. However, if player is knocked BACKWARD out of bounds, then forward progress rule takes priority--and player is marked down inbounds, and the clock continues to roll. This is a semi rule change about 5 (or so) years ago--and refs were told to be much more strict on out of bounds versus forward progress. [Am a big fantasy football geek, so pay extreme attention to all NFL rules, etc. ]
Click to expand...

Right, because of forward progress is called then the play never actually went out of bounds. This is the same as current NCAA rules, if I am not mistaken.
 
GTH, I think the main difference is the NFL refs are much more aggressive at calling forward progress than college ball--that is why people often think the clock continues in nfl out of bounds.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top