Why is it so difficult to adjust the time on a scoreboard clock?

All sports fans have seen this. The referees confer, then one of them says “Add 15 seconds back on the clock!” or some such thing. Then we wait. The clock jumps around a bit. It goes blank. Finally after several minutes the correct time is finally up and play can resume.

I mean, if we can send a man to the moon and all, why are stadium scoreboard clocks so seemingly hard to reset?

Maybe the same guys who design VCR timer controls designed the scoreboard timer :slight_smile:

Arjuna34

I scored a season of youth basketball games last winter.
The basic apparatus was a large(24" by 20") plastic box with about ten buttons on top. The clock could started and stopped with a toggle switch. There was also a button that’d take one minute off the clock with each push, then right to zero, before going back up to 19:59.

So, if I wanted to add fifteen seconds; I’d need to push the button about two dozen times and bring the clock to XX:59, then let time run until it had reached the desired level. That’d take at least thirty or forty seconds, and if I were lazy with the toggle switch I’d need to do the whole thing all over again.

Turning the screen would just keep the crowd from being aware of the timer’s trauma and tribulations.

The point-adding system was even worse. No “2 point” and “3 point” buttons for me, no sir. I had a “10 point” and a “1 point” button. These were also independent, “89” + “1 point button” equaled 80, not 90.

While the technology doesn’t seem too difficult, there aren’t a lot of scoreboard timers that easily allow you to enter a particular time that doesn’t end in :00. Usually, you just have to put the clock at an even minute and run it down.

The minutes usually change because not all events use the same time for periods.

I think this question should be taken to the Fair-Play Corporation which seems to have a monopoly on scoreboards in the United States.