I've seen this argument and ones like it in many places, but no where could I find any verification of how many or how long TV commercial breaks are in NCAA bowl games compared to regular season games. (... and I'm fairly good with the google machine). What I did find out was that the the length and numbers of TV commercials are usually spelled out in the contracts with the networks (which could be proprietary info).
Since I have the championship game as well as many regular season games on my DVR, I decided to check and see for myself. I counted and timed the commercial breaks from two games, the BCS National Championship game and the Thursday night prime time game, Oregon vs UCLA. What I found was somewhat surprising.
The number of commercials were almost the same. There were nine commercial breaks in each half of the BCS NC game (including the break between the quarters) and there were nine in the first half and eight in the second during the UCLA game.
The length of the commercials weren't much different either. My timing was rather crude because I just used the broadcast time of the DVR recorder which doesn't display less than full minutes, but then I averaged the times for all commercial breaks. The average time for the BCS championship game was only 6 seconds longer than the average time for the UCLA game. (2:33 vs 2:27).
More interestingly, the length of the halftime for each game was exactly the same... 23 minutes. (The NCAA rule book says 20 minutes, unless agreed upon by both teams to be different).
I think this says that the ESPN contract stipulated that the BCS championship game be broadcast under the same rules as any other prime time NCAA game.
Perhaps, if I get more time, I will see how other games on other networks or in other time slots compare. I suspect it won't be much different.
No doubt, some bowl games may have different TV contracts and may stipulate longer breaks, but it should be clear that the idea that Oregon is somehow at a disadvantage in bowl games because of longer and more frequent TV timeouts is based on a myth.
It was fun to watch the UCLA game again. Oregon's offense was in no way hindered by lengthy commercial time-outs... and UCLA did in fact use time outs to slow down the tempo. As far as I could tell, Auburn never called a time out to slow down Oregon.
But wait... After I did the above analysis someone correctly pointed out that the Auburn game was quite a bit longer than the UCLA game. The Auburn game was 3 hrs 34 mins while the UCLA game was only 3 hrs 11 mins.
True the elapsed time of the Auburn game was 23 minutes longer than the UCLA game... but Oregon played two other games whose elapsed time was longer than the Auburn game (not counting the weather-delayed Tennessee game).
Arizona was 5 minutes longer (3:39) and Arizona St was 12 minutes longer (3:46) than the Auburn game (3:34). The USC game was only 2 minutes less than the Auburn game and the Stanford game was 7 minutes less. These games were all on ABC/ESPN. In fact the average elapsed time of all the ABC/ESPN games was 3:27 (including UCLA which was the shortest and again excluding Tennessee). Auburn was longer than the average by 7 minutes. (Interestingly I inadvertently picked the shortest of the ABC/ESPN games to compare with the Auburn game.)
The average elapsed time for Oregon games not on ESPN/ABC was 3:08, which is 18 minutes less, so it's clear that ESPN has a negotiated a better TV contract for themselves. But I still think these facts suggest the National Championship game and regular season ESPN games were broadcast under very similar rules.
The Auburn game had a lot of injury time outs and official reviews. Games that are close will also evoke a lot more time outs at the ends of both halfs and Auburn called a lot at the end of the 1st half. These are the types of factors that may extend elapsed times. And we all remember how many injury timeouts there were in Oregon's longest game with Arizona St.
And BTW... last year's Rose Bowl had an elapsed time of 3:11. This was less than the average game length for all of Oregon's games in 2009. Can we put the bowl game TV timeout length myth to bed?
Here is a table showing the elapsed time from the box score for all Oregon games in 2010. The Network televising the game is also listed
| New Mexico | 3:09 | OSN |
| Tennessee | 4:24 | ESPN2 |
| Portland St | 3:09 | FSN |
| Arizona St. | 3:46 | ABC |
| Stanford | 3:28 | ESPN |
| Washington St. | 3:09 | - |
| UCLA | 3:11 | ESPN |
| USC | 3:32 | ABC |
| Washington | 3:19 | ABC |
| Califonia | 3:08 | Versus |
| Arizona | 3:39 | ESPN |
| Oregon St | 3:14 | ABC |
| Auburn | 3:34 | ESPN |
