Florida’s Meyer calls new clock rules ‘awful’

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida Coach Urban Meyer is upset at the new clock-rule changes.

After being limited to what he calls 46 competitive plays Saturday against Tennessee, Meyer came out firing Monday about the new 40/25-second and out-of-bounds clock rules that have reduced the number of offensive plays. He called them “awful.”

Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel on Monday that he contacted SEC Commissioner Mike Slive about his concern for the rules. Foley said he asked that an evaluation of the rules be put on the agenda for the next formal SEC meeting in December, admitting there’s probably nothing that can be done about it this year.

“Florida is not complaining,” Foley said. “Everybody is playing with it. My concern is if you reduce the number of plays, fans pay a lot of money to watch those plays. I’m not sure if what we’re doing to save 10 minutes of football is working. I ask that we sit down as a league and talk about it, and if the league confers, then we’ll see. But it’s up to the NCAA (rules committee).”

For clarity: The primary problem with the new clock rule is that after every offensive play—even when the ball carrier runs out of bounds—the clock automatically resets when officials place the ball. Only timeouts can stop that. Apparently teams are losing about 10 to 12 percent of their offensive downs so far this season. Florida could be losing more than 30 percent considering last season’s team averaged around 71 per game.

“It’s wrong,” Meyer said. “If we’re turning the ball over and the other team has 87 plays and you can’t stop them, you know what, shut it up,” Meyer said. “That’s not the case right now.”

Though he’s happy with his team’s clock management and overall play, obviously Meyer is disappointed that his offense managed 243 yards of total offense. Tim Tebow was a yawning 8-of-15 passing for 96 yards and 26 yards rushing. This is Meyer’s way of defending a spread offense that’s supposed to throw up 40-plus per week without blinking. Last year’s offense led the SEC with 42.5 points per game.

“What in the hell?” said Meyer about his reaction when looking at his offensive numbers. “Where are the points? Where are the yards? What are we doing? Let’s go.”