College Football Game Length in 2025

Editor’s note: This article has been updated through Week 6 of the 2025 college football season and will be updated as more games are completed and data becomes available.

The 2025 college football season will be a slight respite in terms of realignment, although that will change again for the 2026 season when the Pac-12 returns. For the previous two years, I’ve been documenting the impact timing rule changes have had on the 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 doesn’t have any changes on that magnitude, except for penalties or charged timeouts to teams faking injuries.

The results in 2023 and 2024 with the rules changes? For 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. The table below shows the game length for the FBS, FCS, NCAA Division 2, and NCAA Division 3 from 2013 through 2024. The cells with “N/A” are due to the lack of available data. The 2025 season will be updated as the season goes on.

2025 Weekly Updates

10/5/25 Update (Week 6): The game length is trending lower for a third straight week. The FBS was down about a minute, the FCS was down 3 minutes, D2 was down 2 minutes, and D3 was down 3 minutes. The FBS is currently at 3 hours and 27 minutes, which was the final length for 2024. FCS, D2, and D3 are all 10 minutes above the final tallies for the 2024 season.

9/28/25 Update (Week 5): It was another week of small decreases for FBS, FCS, and D2, but D3 saw a drop of five minutes in game length to 3 hours and 5 minutes. Notably, all four groups saw a slight increase in plays per game. We might continue to see some small decreases in game length over the next few weeks.

9/21/25 Update (Week 4): All four divisions saw a decrease of about 3 minutes in game length following week 4. The number of weather delays fell this week, which led to the overall decrease. Will the trend continue? All four a likely to come down some more as the season goes on.

9/14/25 Update (Week 3): The data is up for all of the NCAA and it doesn’t show much positive change. There were more weather-related delays in week 3, although fewer than in week 2. We’ll continue to monitor the game length and plays per game on a weekly basis, but it doesn’t look good so far. Still, it’s been less than a quarter of the season and the numbers should fall.

9/8/25 Update (Week 2): Normally, I don’t go back and see if the NCAA updated its data, but the lack of missing D2 numbers made me keep an eye out in case it was posted late. Well, it was. I decided to grab all the numbers again for FBS, FCS, and D3 while I was at it. That was a good call because the game lengths were way higher.

The FBS game time is up 10 minutes from week 1 (3 hours and 32 minutes), FCS is up 11 minutes to 3:34, and D2 is up 13 minutes at 3:24. D3 is at 3:09 with the new numbers, one minute less than Sunday’s data. Remember, there were long delays along the East Coast and in the Southeastern US area. However, the previous two years also had a week when weather-plagued games across the country.

9/7/25 Update (Week 2): Week two is in the books, but in classic fashion, the D2 data was not updated this week. Yikes. The big story was weather delays on the East Coast, which led to game length increasing by 5 minutes for the FBS and FCS. It’s difficult to take anything away given that context. D3 played its first week and starts at 3 hours and 10 minutes, way up from the 2:50 for 2024. Expect that one to decrease drastically over the next month.

8/31/25 Update (Week 1): The NCAA updated its website, and a welcome surprise for 2025: the D2 data is back! The FBS is showing a roughly five-minute decrease from the 2024 season for week 1, with three games left to be played. FCS is up 6 minutes, from 3:17 in 2024 to 3:23 after week 1 in 2025. D2 is at 3:11 following week 1, without a comparison to last year. D3 will begin play next week and hopefully will have data.

Note: I made one manual correction to the NCAA’s data. Tennessee Tech’s game length is listed at 23 hours and 53 minutes in the NCAA’s data, but using the ESPN+ recording, it was closer to 3 hours and 2 minutes. I typically don’t correct the data unless it’s egregiously wrong, as in this case. The correction brought the FCS average game length down from 3:34 to 3:23.

8/26/25 Update (Week 0): The Week 0 game times were posted the morning of Tuesday, August 26. With only a handful of games played last weekend, there is really nothing to take away from the first numbers. Hopefully, this year’s data will include D2 game length and be posted in a timely manner each week.

2025 Weekly Change Tables and Charts

Additional Yearly Charts (Updated Through 2025 Season Week 6)

Photo credit to AP Photos