On his first press call with reporters since the Senate recessed in August, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, discussed something near and dear to his heart – college football.

One issue that has come up recently deals with first downs, specifically a new rule that mandates the game clock keep running when teams make a first down, except in the last two minutes of either half.

“For years, we’ve tried to cut back on the number of snaps in college football,” Tuberville (R-Auburn) said Wednesday. “It got to the point where a lot of these players were going through 100 to 120 snaps a game. That’s way too many.

“You don’t want to call it for concussion protocol or anything like that, you just want to make sure that you look out for the integrity of the game and for the safety of all athletes that participate in the game.”

He also said the complaints are disproportionate to one side of the ball.

“Now, its going to be a while, I know, I read some articles where some coaches complained that they didn’t have the ball enough,” Tuberville said. “Most of them are offensive coaches by the way, that like to call offensive plays and they didn’t get quite the number of plays that they normally have the opportunity to use and to be able to call.”

The former head coach said commercials are a major issue that lengthen the time of games.

“With that being said, most of the time taking up a football game is TV commercials and there has to be some kind of working relationship with the NCAA and with TV corporations that are allowed to have three to four 3-minute commercials per quarter and it takes forever to run a game,” Tuberville said. “So, I think we will wait and see through the next five or six games to see how it stands up, to see how much it really cuts back. They’re not going to change the rule midseason.”

Tuberville urged patience from the fans.

“You’re going to continue to hear people complain about it, but let’s give it a little time and see what happens,” he said

Austen Shipley is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News.