The article is quite off base when obsessing about the play clock rules.
The officials had control of a game’s pace when college football had a 25-second clock. They stopped the clock at the end of a play and started it again before the next one through an orchestration of hand signals to the clock operator.
Switching to a running 40-second play clock in 2008 changed everything.
Under the new system, the play clock for the next play starts immediately after the previous one ends.
That put the pace of a game into the hands of the offense; the faster they lined up to the ball, the faster they could snap it.
The writer seems to think that if the play clock is counting down, the ball is snappable.
