Are Football Games Too Slow? NFL Looking For Ways To Speed Up Play

Referees could get to watch replays on tablets and a play clock will be started after an extra point as part of a plan to speed up National Football League games, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday.

Goodell said the league has been working with its broadcast partners to try to minimize distractions and interruptions to action on the field, including the length and frequency of commercial breaks.

“Consistently, we heard from fans that we can improve in two key areas: the flow and pace of the game, and commercialization and the number of unnecessary disruptions to the game on the field,” Goodell said.

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The NFL hopes to boost ad revenues by billions of dollars by 2020 but ratings took a hit early in the season last year, with Monday night games down 12 percent by the end of the season and Sunday night games off by 10 percent, though interest rebounded in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Forbes reported.

Goodell said the league started working on improvements before the start of last season in a bid to “maintain excitement and also improve the consistency of our officiating,” he said in a statement.

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Clubs are to vote next week on whether to scrub fixed sideline monitors and replace them with tablets that will be brought to referees for reviewing plays to both improve consistency and speed up the process.

The league already has decided to use a play clock after an extra point that is not followed by a commercial break and also is considering a play clock following a touchdown.

“We’re also going to standardize the starting of the clock after a runner goes out-of-bounds and standardize halftime lengths in all games,” Goodell said, among other changes.

As a fan himself, Goodell said he hates when there’s a commercial break, a kickoff and then another commercial.

“I hate that too. Our goal is to eliminate it,” he said.

USA Today said though the NFL plans to cut the number of commercial breaks, the remaining breaks will be longer, going from 1 minute, 50 seconds to 2 minutes, 20 seconds.

“We have seen commercialization maybe creep into the game in areas that we don’t think is appropriate,” Goodell told USA Today, “and we’re going to work with our network partners to try to pull that back, to make sure that we can create that compelling experience for our fans.”

Touchdownwire called the effort to speed up NFL games odd since they typically are shorter than college games, and the final 2 minutes don’t take 25 minutes like basketball games do.