Two part question.
A baseball game is considered official after the visitors bat in the 5th inning if the home team is winning. Is there a similar provision for a football game? Considering they’ll play in just about any sort of weather, when would they need to shorten a game and declare it official?
On rare occasions they will shorten a game by a few seconds. 
If one team has a good lead, and makes some great play to almost finish it off, then the team and the stands rush the field sometimes they will just call the game and ignore the last 3 seconds rather than take 30 minutes to clean the field just to see a kneal-down. about the only time I have seen a game ever less than 60 minutes.
I have also seen the game field cleared during a massive lightning storm, but never seen them not wait it out and come back.
Technically, if the clock is still running, wouldn’t that be a delay of game on the offense with a ten-second run-off? So the game still runs 60 minutes, but the last few seconds were run off due to a penalty.
Well since the refs never set it for play in that kind of situation, It can’t really be delay on the offense.
I googled the NCAA football rules and made a rather cursory search. It’s a PDF document over 200 pages long.
Right at the beginning in the description of the game there is the statement that the game ends when the Referee declares that it has ended.
Down in the section on periods the statement is made that the time for any period may be shortened by mutual agreement of the coaches and the Referee. I assume this would cover situations where the weather makes the field condition so bad the game can’t continue. There is no lower limit to the time required for any period so I would assume that if things get bad after 2 minutes of the second quarter, that quarter could be shortened to 2 minutes and the third and fourth quarters shortened to zero minutes.
I can’t imagine even starting the game in weather so bad that the above hypothetical would ever occur.
That’s as far as I looked. As a WAG, if something happens that the game can’t continue and the coaches can’t agree on how to end it the Referee could declare the game over and I suppose then there would be an appeal to the NCAA rules group for a final determination.
Yes, but isn’t there some sort of penalty that can be called due to fan interference or the like?
The only time I’ve ever even heard of a football game being called for weather were heavy lightning storms where the fans and players were at serious risk of being struck. Other than that I can’t think of anything else. Short of a sudden alien invasion. But the victims ain’t talking and the government ain’t talking! :eek:
Think a wuss baseball team will ever be known for playing an Ice Bowl?.
13 below zero temp, wind chill of 46 below. Packers beating the Cowboys for the title. Football will play on no matter the weather. Unless it’s determined to be “too dangerous”. Heh, 46 below ain’t dangerous enough to call the game. There are few reasons to call off a football game.
Sometimes high school games are called early if a player gets hurt toward the end and there will be a delay in getting treatment. They tend to be pretty cautious at that level.
Basically, the game is over if the referee says it’s over. In the NFL, I think the referee would consult with the Commissioner’s Office for advice. For a college game, the referee would probably consult with the two coaches to see if it was OK with them to quit early.
The 2003 Hall of Fame Game involving the Packers and Chiefts was called in the
third quarter due to lightning and heavy rain. The Packers had been involved in
a previous Hall of Fame Game shortened for the same reason and the Chiefs in
a separate preseason game called for lightning.
I believe there was a NFL game shortened, cancelled or rescheduled in the last
few years due to fog.
Fog? FOG?!? In the NFL?!?! When the hell was that? Pit thread opened shortly if that’s the case! (Not doubting you, just don’t remember that one)
Forgot to include: Fog would make for a great running game for both teams. I can’t see taking away the long game as detrimental to determining the best team in any game.
In 2002 a football game between Wisconsin and UNLV in Las Vegas was called and considered official when a power outage hit the stadium with 7:41 left in the fourth quarter and the Badgers leading 27-7. As I recall, the teams waited awhile and when it became apparent that the problem wouldn’t be fixed quickly, the coaches and the referees agreed to consider the game finished.
Googling around for accounts of the game I found this:
That being said, I thought the Nevada sport books weren’t allowed to take bets on the Nevada college teams (dating back to the seemier stuff going on at UNLV in the early 90s). There was an investigation into the circumstances of the outage (and car hitting a transformer) but it was called an accident in the end.
Although it was only an exhibition game, the 1976 College All-Star Game was canceled in the third quarter with the Pittsburgh Steelers ahead 24 to 0 when a summer monsoon hit Soldier Field and thousands of besotted fans, oblivious to the obvious hazards posed by lightening, invaded the field to play Slip n’ Slide. That turned out to be the last College All-Star Game ever played.
I don’t recall any recent NFL games ever being cancelled or delayed because of fog.
Most definitely not stopped by ground-level clouds was the now-famous Fog Bowl between the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles on December 31, 1988 at Chicago’s Soldier Field. The game went on, and television coverage (IIRC) was limited to ground-level cameras because the field was no longer visible from press box height.
The Bears won, 20-12.
The Las Vegas sportsbooks have been taking action on UNLV and Nevada games for the last few years. The state decided it was OK. Probably because there was more money involved.
One big sports book doesn’t take NBA action because it’s owned by the Maloof brothers, who own the Sacramento Kings.
I believe a Miami Dolphins game was resecheduled or moved due to an impending hurricane within the past few years. Couldn’t get people/equipment in/out of town, so there was no way to hold the game.
There have been regular season games rescheduled for one reason or another (hurricanes, wildfires, 9/11), but in the last sixty years, there has not been an NFL game that was started that wasn’t completed.
Let’s not forget The Play… In a nutshell, Stanford was leading Cal Berkeley very late in the game. Stanford squibbed the kick to Cal. Madness thus ensued: after several lateral passes, the Stanford band thought a player was down (and thus, the game over) and rushed the field. The officials had not ruled the ball dead, so fans were treated to the sight of Kevin Moen taking a lateral and running through the band members, knocking down the trombone player as he entered the endzone.
Of course, this play happened very late in the game, with only seconds left on the clock - in fact, most of the play occurred after the clock read 00:00 (as you probably know, in football play continues (even after the clock reads 00:00) until the ball is down). So it’s not really relevant to the OP, but it’s hilarious and worth checking out if you ever get a chance to see the video.
That “other game” with the Chiefs may have been in Chicago. I seem to recall a Monday Night game a few years ago against the Bears that was stopped because of a hellacious lightning storm, but I don’t remember for sure if it was a preseason game or not.
There was a preseason game between the Bears and Chiefs on August 22, 1996 that was called off in the 3rd quarter due to lightning - I suspect this is what you are remembering, Shoeless. From an ChicagoSports.com article:
Here’s a recap of the August 4, 2003 Hall of Fame Game between the Packers and Chiefs, which as aahala recalled was also stopped early due to lightning & rain.