Hurry-up. Up-tempo. Two-minute offense, all the time.

Guns Up: Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Davis Webb preside over the nation's fastest offense. Â© Kirby Lee USA TODAY Sports Images

Whatever your phrase for it, college football teams are going faster and faster, maximizing tempo to catch defenses off guard. Sure, there are some old guard coaches like Nick Saban and Bret Bielema who have voiced their displeasure with it, but make no mistake: as long as offensive coaches feel that going up-tempo presents an advantage, they'll continue to check their stopwatches to see just how quickly their team can get lined up and snap the ball.

Here's the question though: how much, if at all, does it really help?

Today, as part of a three-part series on pace and offensive efficiency, we'll take a look at some of the teams that set the fastest pace in college football. By the end of the series, there should be a more accurate look what kind of correlation exists between up-tempo teams and offensive efficiency.

So, how does one measure the pace of a team? We'll start with plays per game, largely because a number of coaches use that statistic as a goal when talking about pace.

All statistics are from the complete 2013-14 season.

Plays Per Game

1) Texas Tech — 87.38 plays per game

2) California — 87.08

3) BYU —Â 85.46

4) Fresno State — 83.69

5) Virginia —Â 82.92

6) Baylor — 82.61

7) Nevada —Â 81.17

8) Clemson — 79.77

9) Arizona — 79.23

10) Boise State —Â 79.15

11) East Carolina —Â 79.08

12) Hawai'i — 78.92

13) SMU —Â 78.75

14) NC State —Â 78.75

15) Arizona State — 78.71

16) Washington — 78.69

17) Mississippi — 78.31

18) Marshall — 78.07

19) San Jose State —Â 77.33

20) Indiana —Â 77.33

21) Texas —Â 77.30

22) Idaho —Â 77.08

23) Washington State —Â 76.85

24) Wyoming —Â 76.83

25) Troy —Â 76.67

But plays per game is a pretty imperfect measure of pace. For one thing, a team can have a high number of plays by playing at an average pace, but by possessing the ball for a long period of time. And it's also opposing-team-reliant —Â that is to say that the opponent has a huge effect on how many plays per game a team gets. If the opposing team grinds things out and controls time of possession, a squad just might not get a chance at many plays, no matter how fast a tempo their offense operates at.

And that doesn't even take into account that some teams that operate fast 1) aren't great at possessing the ball and 2) can score too quickly at times, also leading to fewer offensive plays.

Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty helps Baylor snap the ball in under 20 seconds per play. Â© Jerome Miron USA TODAY Sports Images

To fix at least part of this issue, here's a look at time per snap for the same 25 teams listed above. It's exactly what it sounds like: the number of seconds a team has the ball for (time of possession) divided by the number of plays a team runs.

It too, is imperfect: a perfect statistic would calculate time per snap in competitive game situations — read: non-blowouts — while also taking out drives just before the half when a team takes a knee. But the time it would take to calculate that is astounding, and a general "Time Per Snap" statistic gives a pretty good general picture at who's hurrying up, if not a perfect picture at exactly how fast they are hurrying.

Time Per Snap

1) BYU —Â 19.51 seconds per play

2) Texas Tech —Â 19.52

3) Wyoming — 19.56

4) Baylor — 19.81

5) Indiana — 20.03

6) California — 20.18

7) Hawai'i — 20.26

8) Fresno State — 20.34

9) Clemson — 20.53

10) Marshall — 20.70

11) Boise State — 21.52

12) Arizona — 21.58

13) Washington — 21.87

14) SMU — 22.04

15) East Carolina — 22.25

16) Washington State — 22.35

17) Mississippi — 22.79

18) Arizona State — 23.14

19) Troy — 23.44

20) Texas — 23.51

21) San Jose State — 23.77

22) Nevada — 23.97

23) Virginia — 24.15

24) NC State — 24.29

25) Idaho — 24.32

Oregon is another oddity here, because the Ducks score so quickly. The Ducks averaged 74.85 plays per game, almost two per game shy of the top 25 above. But the Ducks average 20.44 seconds per play, a pace that would put Oregon in the No. 8 spot above. The Ducks just don't hold onto the ball very long —Â they score quickly. And just for fun, on the other side of things, we have Alabama, which averaged 63.54 plays per game last year. The Crimson Tide milked the clock for all it was worth, snapping the ball every 30.22 seconds.

Wyoming and Indiana were near the bottom of the Top 25 in plays per game, though both teams are obviously operating at a hurry-up pace. On the flip side, Virginia was a top-five team in plays per game, but really only operates at a slightly above average pace. Instead, the Cavaliers did an outstanding job of possessing the ball, and thus rang up a high number of plays per game.

Those are the outliers —Â several other teams are exactly where you'd expect them to be based on the plays-per-game statistic. Texas Tech had the most plays per game in the country, and the Red Raiders had the fastest time per play. Baylor and California were also within range. And even teams that dropped some from their places in the plays-per-game Top 25, like BYU, which fell from third to 10th, have obvious links between their high plays-per-game and high pace of play.

That's it for pace of play. Tuesday, we'll take a look at the country's most efficient offenses, and Wednesday, we'll take both pace and efficiency to see if there is a link at all between going faster and being more efficient.