I have a confession. I have spent most of my life in Europe. Although I grew up in southern Louisiana (representative of the New Orleans Saints!) and went to college in Georgia, I married a Spanish girl and made my home on the other side of the pond. All my adult experience, paying pensions, getting mortgages, and having children, all came through the lens of Europe. My mother claims that I am more European than American now. If it weren't for my love of baseball and the NFL, I might agree with her.

But with the NFL now playing four regular season games in London every season, and there are constant rumors that there will be an expanding team there in the near future, Europe and the NFL are definitely not mutually exclusive, you say. You will be right of. Tens of thousands of European fans, and possibly hundreds of thousands of fans across the continent, love the sport like anyone in Green Bay or Dallas. But there are some common questions. As an American, I have heard and answered them a million times. They all revolve around two things, namely the mat and the clock.

Europeans, even anyone outside of North America, repeat the same words when they first encounter American football. "It stops and starts like this. Why does it always stop?" This is like a record-breaking. After years of interpretation and reinterpretation, I think maybe it's time to handle the NFL clock situation correctly.

The game clock and the manipulation of the game clock, usually at the end of halftime, are the core and soul of football. However, this is by no means unique to football, because even the most cursory glance at falling to the ground, pretending to be injured, and making meaningless substitutions within minutes of the football match will tell you. The difference may be that the clock management strategy is an important part of the entire American football game, not just the weakening moment. A set of well-designed rules determines when the game clock stops and when it continues to run.

The game lasts 60 minutes and includes four 15-minute sessions. At the turn of each quarter, the two teams face opposite directions on the court, and there is a 15-minute intermission at the end of the second quarter. In its basic form, the idea is simple; any time the ball is in the game, the clock counts down from 15 minutes to zero. In the early days of the game, this was simple and straightforward.

Early rugby originated from rugby, mainly a running sport, the ball is almost always in the game. The clock rules associated with running games pay tribute to this era. Even if the offense chooses to huddle together instead of directly entering the melee line, the clock will run. The clock will stop only when the ball goes out of bounds, and even so, there is only enough time for the referee to reset the ball on the court before restarting the timing. Adjusting the rules seems to be the NFL's greatest pleasure, resulting in a separate set of rules used in the last two minutes of the first half and the last five minutes of the second half, and the clock restarts the next game when the ball goes off.

The dominance of prequels in modern games has completely changed the state of clock management. Back to the origin of the game again, the idea is to stop the timer when the front pass is incomplete, so that the referee has time to reset the ball on the court. However, unlike running out of bounds, once the ball is set, the clock will not simply restart automatically. The clock will restart only when the offensive team starts the next game. And this regulatory quirk is the key to modern criminals using and managing such an effective clock.

Another legacy of the origin of rugby is the delay of the rules of the game. However, unlike rugby, there is no time limit in the rugby game, but based on the judgment of the referee, the NFL sets the game clock. This counts down from the end of the previous game and gives the attacking team 40 seconds to put the ball back into the game. In some cases, the game clock is only 25 seconds, usually when possession of the ball changes. The referee can ask to reset the game clock to 25 seconds by raising his hand vertically. This is the most memorable action in recent years and has become the subject of controversy. At that time, Tom Brady used this signal after the Deflategate controversy. Request to reset the playback clock. When officials agreed with him, the impression of opposition fans was one of the cheating of the New England Patriots.

#NFL #PatriotsNation Tom Brady is here again. Reset the game clock during the game against Pittsburgh. pic.twitter.com/Jl7LKTLtlp

One of the most unique ways to stop the game clock in the United States is to use timeouts. These have been used since the beginning of the sport, with each team using three for each half. They must be used or lost because the unused timeout will not continue into the second half. These allow the clock to stop for 60 seconds at any time in the game.

In addition to the 12 team timeouts provided during the game, there are free timeouts for every two minutes of halftime. This two-minute warning was issued by the AFL and was later brought to the NFL as a measure to create tension among the crowd and allow TV channels to switch to commercial channels. Similarly, modern games stipulate 20 "television timeouts", of which a two-minute warning and the end of the first and third quarters are mandatory, and the rest may occur at any suitable time.

"The first time they stopped the game to cut into the ad, that was the ending."

Now there is another element that can be added. Instant replay review. Each team has two challenges per half, if successful, in addition to their three timeouts. When the referee views the game in question, the timer stops and the game restarts when the next game starts.

The complex relationship between the NFL and the clock is often watched, and the changes in 2006 and 2008 have resulted in more chaos and fewer games than before. Especially catastrophic. In the 2006 season, the number of appearances per game of fans decreased by 25-30 times. The 2008 rule change caused the NFL to adopt most of the rules that are in effect today. Have they learned the lesson of interfering with their father's time? Somehow, I doubt it.

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