Editor’s note: This article has been updated through Week 5 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.
| Year | FBS Game Length | FBS Plays Per Game | FCS Game Length | FCS Plays Per Game | D2 Game Length | D2 Plays Per Game | D3 Game Length | D3 Plays Per Game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 – Thru Week 5 | 3:23 | 65.5 | 3:21 | 65.6 | 2:54 | 63.6 | ||
| 2025 | 3:26 | 66.7 | 3:18 | 65.5 | 3:10 | 64.8 | 2:53 | 64.1 |
| 2024 | 3:27 | 66.6 | 3:17 | 65.3 | N/A | N/A | 2:50 | 63.9 |
| 2023 | 3:23 | 66.7 | 3:16 | 65.4 | 3:01 | 64.1 | 2:50 | 66.3 |
| 2022 | 3:27 | 68.5 | 3:17 | 67.6 | 3:01 | 66.2 | 2:52 | 66.2 |
| 2021 | 3:28 | 68.4 | 3:17 | 67.2 | 2:58 | 66.4 | 2:45 | 66.5 |
| 2020 | 3:28 | 69.6 | 3:08 | 67.8 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2019 | 3:18 | 69.1 | 3:03 | 68.7 | 2:41 | 67.5 | 2:38 | 67.5 |
| 2018 | 3:19 | 70.1 | 3:06 | 69.3 | 2:48 | 68.5 | 2:38 | 68.6 |
| 2017 | 3:19 | 69.8 | 2:58 | 68.2 | 2:46 | 68.4 | 2:38 | 68.8 |
| 2016 | 3:24 | 71.4 | 3:05 | 69.5 | 2:48 | 70.2 | N/A | N/A |
| 2015 | 3:22 | 71.3 | 3:00 | 70.0 | 2:48 | 70.8 | 2:37 | 70.4 |
| 2014 | 3:23 | 71.8 | 2:55 | 70.1 | N/A | N/A | 2:41 | 70.5 |
| 2013 | 3:17 | 71.6 | 2:56 | 70.6 | N/A | N/A | 2:38 | 70.7 |
2026 Weekly Updates
10/5/26 Update (Week 5): The D3 data was uploaded on Monday morning. The game length fell by two minutes compared to last week, and is just one minute longer than last year’s final number.
10/4/26 Update (Week 5): There has been little change from Week 4, with only the FCS time increasing by one minute. I noticed the D3 game length hasn’t been updated for the Saturday games in Week 4 and will be updated if it’s posted before next week’s games.
9/27/26 Update (Week 4): Game length changed very little this week, with the FBS dropping by one minute on the chart. I round up or down to the nearest minute, and this week’s change was only 12 seconds, but it was enough to fall below the 3:23:30 mark to round down. FCS stayed the same, as did D3, but the latter was the opposite of the FBS. D3 actually fell by 58 seconds, from 2:56:29 (2:56 rounded down) to 2:55:31 (2:56 rounded up), but the rounding makes it look like no change happened. The “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics” quote is living up to the billing this week.
9/20/26 Update (Week 3): The NCAA stats repository was updated much later on Sunday than normal. Typically, the stats are completed around 1 PM Eastern, but today it was almost 7 PM before they were updated. In any case, they have arrived, but not for D2 still. I’ll stop mentioning the lack of D2 going forward unless they somehow magically appear. I don’t expect them to be here for the 2026 season.
There were quite a few weather delays this weekend in the East and Southeast regions. Despite those delays, the FBS game length was the same as last week at 3 hours and 24 minutes. FCS decreased by one minute and D3 went down by three minutes from last week. As usual, I removed any obvious outliers, such as a team going from 3 hours to 9 hours on average. Some D3 averages were the reverse, going from 3 hours to 1.5 hours in a week. I think we’ll have a much clearer picture after Week 5 games on Saturday, October 3.
9/13/26 Update (Week 2): After reviewing the data from the NCAA stats page, I realized I made an error calculating the Colorado-Georgia Tech game. The replay I watched did not have commercials, which made it seem very short. I don’t know how long the broadcast actually was, so I excluded the game length from the Week 1 calculation. Of course, the numbers reported to the NCAA will continue to be averaged using 1 hour and 54 minutes, which isn’t correct. I’ve noticed a few of these at the FCS and D3 levels as well. To keep things simple and prevent too many manual corrections, I’ll just exclude the obvious outliers going forward. I think most of these will eventually be “smoothed out” by additional data points by season’s end.
As for Week 2, there were some storms impacting games across all three groups. This is a yearly factor now and should be expected in late summer and early fall. The FBS and FCS game length went up slightly this week, while D3 fell by 3 minutes and is under 3 hours. I expect D3 to continue its downward trend in the coming weeks.
9/8/26 Update (Week 1): The tables and graphs were updated to include games played through Labor Day. The FCS games from Sunday, September 6, weren’t included in the NCAA’s data. The D2 data is also still not available. As stated in the previous entry, I don’t expect the D2 data to be available.
9/7/26 Update (Week 1): The first full week of games took place across all three divisions. As with last week, there is no data for D2, and I don’t expect that to change. For the FBS, the season starts at 3 hours and 26 minutes. One outlier was the Colorado–Georgia Tech game. The stats submitted to the NCAA show the game played on Thursday night started at 12:48 PM, ended at 2:43 PM, and lasted 1 hour and 54 minutes. We all know that isn’t correct, and the ESPN broadcast was roughly 2 hours and 28 minutes. I manually adjusted the time for both teams. By season’s end, I think the 30-minute difference won’t be a factor, but it is right now.
At the FCS level, last week’s game between Delaware State and Stony Brook hasn’t been corrected, and I don’t expect that to change. Unfortunately, the game time for both teams will continue to be incorrect. After week 1, Delaware State has played an average of 22 hours and 49 minutes, while Stony Brook has played an average of 22 hours and 31 minutes. It looks like the game length for each school is being added together, but the reported game lengths for the first two games aren’t equaling the time shown by the NCAA. Something strange is happening there, so I excluded those two teams from the FCS average.
Overall, the FBS is at 3 hours and 23 minutes, which is slightly lower than the game length in 2025. The FCS is at 3 hours and 19 minutes, which is slightly above last year’s number. D3 is at 3 hours and 2 minutes, which is roughly 10 minutes higher than 2025. One somewhat noteworthy takeaway is that players per game are down in week one compared to last year. FBS games have 1.5 fewer plays, while FCS is at half a play fewer than 2025.
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
| Week | FBS Game Length | FBS Plays Per Game | FCS Game Length | FCS Plays Per Game | D2 Game Length | D2 Plays Per Game | D3 Game Length | D3 Plays Per Game |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 3:21 | 65.4 | 3:18 | 65.3 | ||||
| 1 | 3:23 | 65.2 | 3:19 | 64.9 | 3:02 | 63.9 | ||
| 2 | 3:24 | 65.1 | 3:21 | 65.1 | 2:59 | 63.5 | ||
| 3 | 3:24 | 65.3 | 3:20 | 65.4 | 2:56 | 63.7 | ||
| 4 | 3:23 | 65.4 | 3:20 | 65.4 | 2:56 | 63.5 | ||
| 5 | 3:23 | 65.5 | 3:21 | 65.6 | 2:54 | 63.6 | ||
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Additional Yearly Charts (Updated Through 2026 Season, Week 5)
Photo by Gene Gallin on Unsplash
