Michigan History re BGSU and Rutgers Games

Submitted by ShoelacesFlapp… on September 25th, 2023 at 6:34 PM

Like a lot of Michigan fans, I've been dumbfounded by how little football we've gotten to watch the last two weeks. After the BGSU game, I looked through the box scores in the Bentley online archive, which goes back nearly complete to 1938. The last two games have been two of the five shortest games by total plays in recorded Michigan history:

1. 98 - Michigan 28 Minnesota 13: 10/7/1944

2. 101 - Michigan 31 Bowling Green 6: 9/16/2023

3. 102 - Michigan 14 Iowa 7: 10/5/1946

4. 104 - Michigan 9 Ohio State 3: 11/25/1950 (the famous Snow Bowl)

5. 105 - Michigan 31 Rutgers 7: 9/23/2023

So the combination of the new clock rules and both teams' glacial offenses have produced the shortest games we've seen since teams started caring about the forward pass. I would also bet that there weren't constant commercial breaks in the 1940s.

http://websites.umich.edu/~bhlumrec/athdept/fbstats/

http://websites.umich.edu/~bhlumrec/athdept/fbstats/1944min.pdf

[Apologies if someone's commented on this already, and as a purely amateur historian, I would appreciate any correction or verification.]

Football

Monday Morning…

September 25th, 2023 at 8:49 PM ^

Yeah, I'd already been thinking it makes very little sense to compare the offensive output to recent years, and the OP confirmed it. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a 40-point output from this team all season, and it's certainly not for a lack of offense. It seems like (as someone mentioned in another thread today) Harbaugh has fully embraced an NFL model with these new rules. And in the NFL, 35 is a huge point total. 

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1VaBlue1

September 26th, 2023 at 7:56 AM ^

Flipping between 4 games both Sat afternoon and Sat evening, I could see maybe two plays max before a commercial, regardless of what channel/game I went to.  It's pathetic.

I mean, on one hand the people running the sport listened to us complaining about the length of time games were starting to take and actually did something about it.  So I guess that's good?  But what they did was all wrong - we wanted commercials reduced, not the game itself.  I feel like we missed out on some good endings that could have been better.  FSU-Clemson could have used another possession, or two, each before OT.  Same with OSU-ND.  But we didn't get it, we got forced endings instead.

REVERT THESE STUPID CLOCK CHANGES!!!  Either cut out some commercial breaks, or reduce the length of them.  Move some of them to a split screen with the game between plays to reduce the need for breaks.  Do something, but give us the game back.

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Blue@LSU

September 25th, 2023 at 9:20 PM ^

The rules committee that made this rule is comprised of coaches, co-chaired by Kirby Smart. I hope every college coach in America is calling him early on Sunday mornings to tell him how dumb it was. His goal was to shorten the game:

"This rule change is a small step intended to reduce the overall game time and will give us some time to review the impact of the change," Kirby Smart, co-chair of the committee and Georgia's head coach, said.

He still doesn't think it's a big deal, even after his team only had one possession in the entire 1st quarter against S. Carolina. 

“I actually sent a text to the analytics people we have a subscription to, and he sent me a text back immediately, I asked Week 1 and he said, ‘Well, it’s more than they thought but you can’t judge it on one week,'” Kirby Smart said. “And after Week 3, last weekend’s numbers were in, he texted me right back and said, ‘It’s right where we thought.’ He said 21-22. I want to say he said 175 — 175 snaps a game, maybe, and they’re at just 170.”

“So, it’s five snaps a game after three weeks. And you can quote me on it because I said it but I don’t know if it’s fact. I’m going off what somebody told me. So, they told me 175-170, so it’s actually [a] five place difference. Is that the same thing you’re hearing?” 

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Tex_Ind_Blue

September 26th, 2023 at 1:39 AM ^

So Kirby ain't smart at all? If Michigan-Rutgers is clocking in at 105 plays, then all other games must clock in at 171 plays (135 teams, ~ 68 games); 170 - 105 = 65 plays to be covered to get to 170 average for the day. 

That does not make sense. What question did Kirby ask? How many french fries did they eat? 

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MRunner73

September 25th, 2023 at 7:48 PM ^

Box score tally of the length of the games for 2023:

ECU; 3:14

UNLV. 3:04

BGSU; 3:02

Rutgers; 2:50.

Amazing how this last game was 24 min shorter than the ECU game.

I hadn't checked other box score length of games re B1G or other conference games and it would be a good FYI comparison.

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