College football games are four quarters full of action and excitement, but how long is a standard game and does it differ from the NFL?
The college football season is right around the corner. From August through January, fans throughout the country tune in on Saturdays to root for their favorite college programs.
But if you're a novice fan of the sport, you might be wondering how much time you need to commit if you're going to watch a game. Specifically, the question might be: How long is a college football game?
College football games are distinct from NFL games in a few ways, but they are similar in that the overall game clock is the same.
How long are college football games?
College football games are played across four 15-minute quarters. This is the same timing structure as NFL games.
Over the course of an NCAA game, there are sixty minutes of gameplay, but most college football games take between 3 and 3.5 hours of total television time — including gameplay, live stoppages in play (such as timeouts), halftime, and commercials.
What is the difference between college and NFL games?
Some important distinctions between college and NFL games are notable and related to the game timing and play clock operation. First, weekly college football games traditionally start at noon ET and 3:30 PM ET, unlike Sunday NFL games – which typically start on Sundays at 1:00 PM ET and 4:15 PM ET.
In crunch time, NFL fans have become used to the two-minute warning being used as an additional stoppage time at the end of each half. In college football, there is no two-minute warning. However, in the last two minutes of a college football game, there is a clock stoppage after each first down, unlike in the NFL.
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