Quote:
I dunno…I like the game clock and the need clock management in football. I think it lends a bit of urgency/strategy to the game. Think of the great plays that have been manufactured in the face of the ticking clock…like Elway’s across the field drive with less than a minute less. Good suspense.
Neurotik, I’m from Cleveland, could you try to pick a less painful example? Elway is retired and I never want to hear his name again…
Elway, Elway, Elway, Elway, Elway, Humperdi…I mean, Elway 
It’s interesting you bright that up Hoolihan, because I was just thinking today what a great QB Elways was. Did you know he also played baseball in college? Man, Elways was just an all around good athlete. I sure miss John Elways.
stolichnaya wrote:
My main concern was that, under the current rules, each team’s 3 time-outs per half are basically reserved for use as clock-management tools.
Quite often, during the “normal” (non-2-minute-warning) part of the half, a quarterback reads the Defense prior to the snap and sees something he doesn’t like, and the Play Clock is ticking down to 0. He must “burn” a Time-Out in order to call a new play. Considering he only gets 3 time-outs in the half, that in itself is bad enough. But if he’s also forced to hold as many time-outs in reserve as possible for use as clock-management tools when the two-minute warning does arrive, then by calling a time-out to reorganize his play he has not merely used one of his three time-outs, he has wasted one of them.
I guess I don’t like seeing this kind of pressure on a team. Time-outs, in my not-so-humble opinion, should be for regrouping and gathering your wits. Taking away the Game Clock, so that clock management is no longer an issue, “restores” the role of the Time-out to the position I personally hold in highest esteem for it.
That, plus, you don’t have to worry about getting out of bounds, or whether your forward progress was stopped before you got out of bounds, or what kinds of things stop the Game Clock and what kinds of things don’t. This would simplify the game rules, perhaps substantially, and heaven knows the game rules in NFL football are some of the most complicated of any sport.
Incidentally, my understanding was that in Rugby (from whence American Football evolved), the Game Clock works pretty much like the Game Clock in soccer – i.e. there’s almost no occurrence on the field that will stop the clock, and a 15 minute quarter is pretty much a 15 minute quarter. Is that correct?
[nitpick]
Actually, he had over 3 minutes and 2 timeouts. IMO, there have been plenty of better game-winning drives.
[/nitpick]
tracer asked:
Pretty much, except that rugby games are divided into two halves of 40 minutes each, not quarters.
In the normal course of events, the clock is not stopped for balls going out of play, a “try” (touchdown, in NFL parlance), a penalty goal or field goal etc. Loss of time when the ball is kicked out is minimised by having ball-boys on the sidelines who have spare balls to throw in immediately.
The clock is stopped for any injury that necessitates stopping play. Also, in any of the circumstances mentioned in the above paragraph, if the referee feels that excessive time is being used up for any reason (ballboy not having a ball handy; one team trying to run down the clock by wasting time), he can add that time on at the end of the half.
Another aspect of rugby that changes the nature of the timing is that, at the end of the half, if the ball is in play, then play does not stop until the ball is legally dead. This means that if your team is behind by a touchdown and they have the ball, they can keep it in play as long as possible in order to try and score the winning/tying points. Of course, if the other team gets the ball, all they have to do is kick it out of play for the game to be over. But, if the other team makes the ball dead by an illegal act (standing offside etc.), the team with the ball receives a penalty and is allowed to keep playing. I’ve seen quite a few games where play goes on for a few minutes after the official end of the game, with one team managing to keep the ball in play and advance their position. Of course, this situation is only really important if:
(a) The trailing team has the ball in the final moments of play.
(b) They are trailing by seven points or fewer (a converted try gets 7 points), because any score ends the match. So if you are down by, say, ten points, all a touchdown gets you is the self-respect of a closer scoreline.
Hope this helps.