Coach Carr calls TV timeouts excessive

Coach Carr was highly critical of NBC's coverage of the Michigan vs. Notre Dame game for the excessive number and length of the network's television timeouts. Coach Carr commented both during "Michigan Replay" and again today at his Monday morning press conference that the televsion timeouts interfered with the flow of the game. Coach Carr complained that NBC had four 5-minute commercial timeouts per quarter. He stated that, "That's where television is having too big an impact on the flow of the game." Coach Carr also commented that he would lodge a complaint with Big Ten Commisioner Jim Delany. Carr stated, "I think the commissioner, I'm hoping Jim Delany, will also get involved. I've never heard of commercial breaks being that long. I have never in my life in college football heard of five-minute timeouts, and we had ten of them. No, we had 16 of them."

The TV timeouts slowed the pace of the game considerably as it took 3 hours, 28 minutes to play this game whereas the Vanderbilt game was played in 3:03 and the CMU game was played in 2:57 (not counting the hour weather delay). Thus, all the "time saved" by the new clock rules was now spent in extended commercial breaks and the game lasted the same 3 1/2 hours it took last season. It's just that now during that same 3 1/2 hour span the Wolverine fans were watching less football and more commercials than they were last year. In 2005, the Michigan vs. Notre Dame game had 147 offensive plays and took 3:30 to play. This year's game had only 129 offensive plays but despite the 18 less plays the game time was within 2 minutes of the previous year's time. Hopefully, Commisioner Delany and Michigan Athletic Director Bill Martin will support Coach Carr in his fight against the networks' expanded TV timeouts and further encroachment on the game. Go Blue!