College Football Game Length in 2026

Editor’s note: This article has been updated for Week 0 of the 2026 college football season.

The 2026 college football season will have a few rule changes that could impact game length. For the previous three years, I’ve documented the impact that timing rule changes have had on game length. In 2023, the clock no longer stopped after a first down, unless it was the final two minutes of each half. In 2024, a two-minute warning was implemented as a way to “standardize” timing runoffs. 2025 didn’t have any substantial changes, with the introduction of penalties or charged timeouts to teams faking injuries.

For 2026, the targeting rule was amended, but it’s more of an administrative change that won’t have much impact on game length. Players disqualified from a game will be eligible to play in the next game, regardless of when it occurs in the game. Previously, players ejected for targeting in the second half were required to sit out the first half of the next game. In 2026, if a player is ejected a second time, they will miss the first half of the next game. Players who are ejected for targeting three times will miss the entirety of the next game.

There are two additional changes worth noting. First, teams can now call for a fair catch kick. The receiving team can call a fair catch, which allows the team to attempt a field goal or drop kick from the spot of the fair catch. It’s basically a field goal attempt, with the defense required to be 10 yards away from the spot kick. It’s the same rule used in the NFL and high school. An example of how it looks in a game can be seen below.

In theory, that could lead to longer game times, but free kicks are a rare occurrence in the NFL. I don’t expect it to happen very often and certainly not enough to have any impact on game length. The final noteworthy change was that offensive pass interference is now a 10-yard penalty instead of 15 yards. Based on the limited data available, this change is also unlikely to have any impact. Nevertheless, there’s always the possibility that specific rules can be emphasized more in 2026, even if those rules aren’t the new ones for this season.

So, what were the results for the past three seasons? In 2023, the games decreased by 4 minutes per game in the FBS, but that decrease was erased in 2024 as game length increased by 4 minutes. In 2025, the FBS decreased by one minute from 2024 to 3 hours and 26 minutes. Since 2022, the year before all the timing changes, every division has seen an increase as of 2025. The table below shows the game length for the FBS, FCS, NCAA Division 2, and NCAA Division 3 from 2013 through 2025. The cells with “N/A” are due to the lack of available data. The 2026 season will be updated as the season goes on.

2026 Weekly Updates

8/30/26 Update (Week 0): There was action across the FBS, FCS, and D2 in Week 0, but in classic NCAA Stats fashion, there is no D2 data. Different year, same story. The NCAA shows the Delaware State–Stony Brook game lasted 17 hours and 56 minutes, but that is way off, as the MEAC Network broadcast shows 3 hours and 10 minutes. I manually changed those times to 3:10 on my spreadsheet, which dropped the FCS average from 3:34 to 3:18. I believe the difference stems from the live stats issues plaguing the DSU game on Thursday.

2026 Weekly Change Tables and Charts

Additional Yearly Charts (Updated Through 2026 Season, Week 0)

Photo by Gene Gallin on Unsplash