If we’re playing the Social D, then it’s wrong time…or at least speculative wrong time. A long IM conversation with Russell from Football Outsiders prompted this question: what, if anything, does instituting a forty second play clock do besides put the onus on the officials to spot the ball faster? Even if the take 15 seconds to spot the ball–and watching this laggardly work by an SEC crew in this year’s LSU/Rebels game, that’s fairly brisk–it’s likely a push with the current system. And the more plays bit could come from the variable time that bleeds off the clock while the officials are pushing their walkers around spotting the ball. (Get them some offroad tires on those motherfuckers!)

So the 40 second clock may not be the real problem here, as Russell was quick and correct to point out. We were wrong, potentially, here, if the more logical types we know are correct.

The real-play shaver is still there, though:

“After a player runs out of bounds and the ball is made ready to play, the official will start the game clock. Under the old rules the game clock would not start until the ball was snapped. This new rule will not apply in the final two minutes of the first half and the final two minutes of the game.”

Hrm. it won’t be 3-2-5-e level trimmin’, but there’s some absolute time loss here without the promise of more plays. But that’s not the point here: we jumped the gun here and didn’t do our math correctly. See after the jump for the requisite self-flagellation.