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The NCAA rule change that drew the most notice in the offseason might go mostly unnoticed by fans once the college football season is underway.

For the first season since 1967, the clock will continue to run, as it does in the NFL, when a team makes a first down on a play that ends inbounds rather than stopping until the chains are set and the referee signals ready for play. The exception is during the last two minutes of the second and fourth quarters.

The primary rationale for the change was to cut the number of plays to reduce players’ potential injury exposures, national supervisor of officials Steve Shaw said — not to necessarily shorten the nearly 3 1/2 hours it takes to play the average game.

The importance of limiting exposures will grow as more teams play in the College Football Playoff. The playoff goes from four to 12 teams in the 2024-25 season, and further expansion is possible after that.

The NCAA Football Rules Committee projects that the new rule will trim seven or eight plays from the average of about 180 per game in 2022. An eight-play reduction over a 12-game season would save 96 potential injury exposures per team, and there would be over 100 fewer exposures for teams that advance to the playoff.

The new rule will be used on every NCAA level except Division III, which was granted a request to delay its implementation until 2024.

Shaw said he expects consternation about the rule to wear off much like changes to blocking-below-the-waist rules did last year. The blocking rule drew initial outcry from coaches, Shaw said, but the transition went smoothly and the net result has been fewer lower-body injuries.

“No one is going to look up in the middle of the first quarter or middle of the second and say, ‘They didn’t stop the clock on a first down and that just ruined this drive. That’s just awful,’” Shaw said. “It’s just one of those things that will disappear, and when you get your final numbers at the end, you may see seven plays less in a game that no one would have known at all.”

A couple other changes address pace of play. One bars a team from calling consecutive timeouts during the same dead-ball period. The second eliminates playing an untimed down when a penalty occurs as time expires in the first and third quarters. The play following the penalty will carry over to the following quarter.

Coaches’ opinions vary on how much it will impact games.

North Carolina’s Mack Brown and Maryland’s Mike Locksley are worried fewer plays will cut down on opportunities for backups who need development.

“Unlike the NFL, we’ve got 85 scholarship players, 120 in our program and they all want to play,” Locksley said.

Of course, the way a game unfolds usually determines the number of snaps for reserves, with more available when the score isn’t close.

TCU, for example, had 10 of its 15 games last season decided by 10 points or less. It had no starting defensive linemen play fewer than 590 plays from scrimmage, according to Pro Football Focus, and only two D-line backups got 100 snaps.

Georgia had two of its 15 games decided by 10 points or less, and no starting defensive lineman was on the field for more than 531 plays. Eight backups got at least 100 snaps.

Oklahoma State’s Mike Gundy said the new first-down clock rule will allow teams to more easily protect leads in the fourth quarter if they are effective running the ball. Gundy’s offseason emphasis was to upgrade his run game, which ranked ninth in the Big 12 last season, and the new rule adds urgency.

“If you can’t rush the ball, and you have to throw passes and the pass is incomplete, the clock stops,” Gundy said. “The new rule allows us to effectively rush the ball and use the clock if we want to.”

Texas’ Steve Sarkisian said his players, especially quarterbacks, will need to heighten their awareness about potential clock management changes late in second and fourth quarters.

Central Florida’s Gus Malzahn, Clemson’s Dabo Swiney, Pittsburgh’s Pat Narduzzi and Oklahoma’s Brent Venables said they expect the rule to make no tangible difference.

Then there’s Big Ten coordinator of football officials Bill Carolla, who joked that the guys on the chain crews will notice the difference more than anyone.

“They’re old, broken down players or officials who just want a front row seat to see coaches,” Carolla said, “so they’re going to have to get down there a little bit quicker.”

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s fight song begins, “There is no place like Nebraska.” When it comes to volleyball, those words never rang more true than Wednesday night.

The Cornhuskers laid claim to the world record for largest attendance at a women’s sporting event with 92,003 filling Memorial Stadium for their volleyball match against Omaha.

The university took aim at the record last spring when it announced it would hold a daylong celebration of a sport that enjoys immense popularity in this state of fewer than 2 million.

“We took a chance by playing in Memorial Stadium, and to go for the record and break it. … I don’t think anybody could have envisioned that when this whole thing started,” Nebraska coach John Cook said. “It feels like a great accomplishment for this sport called volleyball played by women. It’s a state treasure. We proved it.”

The event began with an exhibition between in-state Division II powers Nebraska-Kearney and Wayne State and was followed by the Huskers’ three-set sweep of Omaha in a regular-season match. Country artist Scotty McCreery performed afterward.

The previous attendance record was 91,648, set during a Champions League soccer match when Barcelona defeated Real Madrid 5-2 at the Camp Nou Stadium in 2022.

Memorial Stadium’s official capacity is just over 85,000 for football, but that number was higher for this event because there were seats and standing room on the field.

Fans in red and white started their tailgate parties outside the stadium hours before first serve of an exhibition Wayne State won in three sets. The stadium was one-quarter full at the start of that match and gradually filled to capacity as players for Omaha and Nebraska were warming up.

There was a flyover during the national anthem and, minutes before first serve, Cook led his Huskers into the stadium to the Tunnel Walk, the longtime tradition of the football team. Synchronized chants of “Go Big Red!” were heard all around.

Conditions were 83 degrees, clear skies and a south wind listed at 4-mph at court level with gusts that sometimes moved the ball in unpredictable ways.

Though 91,648 was widely acknowledged as the women’s sports attendance record, at least one match at the unofficial 1971 Women’s World Cup in Mexico City reportedly drew 110,000 people.

The American record attendance for a women’s sporting event had been 90,185 for the 1999 World Cup soccer final between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California — the game where Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt after scoring the decisive penalty shot for the U.S. win.

The NCAA does not track attendance across all sports, but associate director of media coordination and statistics Jeff Williams said a crowd of 90,000-plus was easily among the largest for a non-football game. A 2010 outdoor hockey game between Michigan and Michigan State at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor drew more than 113,000 fans.

A message seeking comment from officials of Guinness World Records was not immediately returned.

Nebraska has sold out 306 consecutive regular-season matches. (Wednesday’s event won’t count toward the streak because it is not being held on the team’s Devaney Center court.) The Huskers have led the nation in attendance every season since 2013, and eight of the top nine crowds in NCAA volleyball history are matches that have involved Nebraska.

Nebraska has won five national championships in volleyball, and its program is one of the few in Division I women’s sports that turns a profit — $1 million last year, according to athletic department CFO Doug Ewald.

“This is a statement on Title IX, and having two daughters of my own, what Title IX has done for women’s sports is huge,” fan Troy Pfannenstiel of Omaha said before the matches.

Chancellor Rodney Bennett canceled classes for the day. NCAA President Charlie Baker, Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti were on hand, as was Gov. Jim Pillen. So were Husker volleyball players who were part of iconic coach Terry Pettit’s teams over four decades. High school teams from across a state stretching 430 miles border to border were excused from classes to attend.

There are 75 women from the state of Nebraska who are on Division I volleyball rosters this season. At 44 players per million in population, the state trails only Hawaii (67 per million) in Division I players produced per capita, according to volleyball statistician and historian Rich Kern of RichKern.com.

“You don’t think you’re going to be part of a world record event, and seeing how much everyone supports volleyball and wanted to be part of that record is awesome to see,” Omaha’s Shayla McCormick said.

Volleyball has surpassed basketball as the No. 1 girls high school team sport in the United States. It’s long been No. 1 in Nebraska.

About 7,000 girls play high school volleyball in the state. Volleyball has been played in varying forms in Nebraska since the early 1900s. For many years, girls volleyball matches were warmup acts for boys basketball games. Volleyball became a sanctioned sport in 1972 and took off in the late 1970s when Pettit invited many of the state’s high school coaches to work at his camps in Lincoln.

Pettit also conducted so-called “satellite” clinics in small towns across the state. In a place where boys grow up dreaming of becoming Cornhusker football players, many girls are equally passionate about some day playing volleyball for a Nebraska team that annually ranks among the nation’s elite.

Ella Beck, 10, came with a group from tiny Pierce to see her first college volleyball match and root for her favorite player, setter Lexi Rodriguez.

Neveah Kehr, 10, came with her mom, Nicki, from Bismarck, North Dakota, to be part of the event. Nicki graduated from Nebraska, and she brought up her daughter watching the Huskers on television.

Neveah wore the No. 5 jersey of middle blocker Bekka Allick at a pep rally before the matches and, with more than 1,000 fans cheering, was invited to walk to where the players stood and was introduced to the woman she called her idol.

Neveah teared up, and Bekka gave her a hug.

Zach Arnett, Mississippi State’s new head coach, has revealed the permanent captains who will lead the Bulldogs this season.

During Wednesday’s SEC teleconference, Arnett explained the criteria for selecting the captains. First-year players had votes worth 1 point, second-year players had a vote worth 2 points and so on. In the end, QB Will Rogers and LB Nathaniel “Bookie” Watson were named the permanent captains.

Arnett also revealed the Bulldogs will rotate 2 additional captains on a weekly basis:

“Will Rogers and Bookie Watson are our 2 captains permanent captains and we will kind of rotate captains of the week, 2 additional captains,” said Arnett. “So either one from either side of the ball, or a special teams guy because we’ve got a pretty veteran group with a lot of guys who are well-respected amongst their teammates.”

As for the distribution of votes, Rogers and Watson were clearly the team-leading vote-getters but a “big chunk of guys” finished with similar vote totals.

“Will and Bookie were the 2 highest vote getters, but then we had a big chunk of guys kind of all got similar vote totals, so that guys us the opportunity to kind of honor those guys, those vets who have done a lot for the program,” Arnett explained. “But then also as we get into the season, too, kind of have an honorary captain of the week if a guy’s playing really at a high level, doing whatever’s best for the team, kind of celebrate and honor those guys as well.”