Two-minute ‘timeout’ or two-minute ‘warning’? College football’s hottest question, explained

College football introduced a new rule this season, but the biggest debate over the rule has nothing to do with the change itself. Instead, we can’t seem to agree on what to call it.

Is it the “two-minute timeout” or the “two-minute warning”?

The name of college football’s stoppage at the two-minute mark of the second and fourth quarters has become such a pointed issue that even the TV announcers have poked fun at the “timeout” term, compared to the “warning” the NFL has used for decades.

“There is a new two-minute timeout. We’ve been asked not to call it a warning,” ESPN’s Rece Davis said during the broadcast of the USC-LSU game in Week 1.

“There is a new two-minute timeout. We’ve been asked not to call it a warning.” – Rece Davis 🏈🎙️ pic.twitter.com/URmtnhJM0I

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 2, 2024

Then last Thursday, during the NFL season opener between the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens, NBC’s Mike Tirico called out the distinction again.

“As we get to the two-minute warning — we can call it the two-minute warning in the NFL, not the two-minute timeout like they do in college,” Tirico said with a laugh. “I’ve been waiting all weekend to do that. … You’ve been warned.”

“We can call it the two-minute warning in the NFL. Not the two-minute timeout like they do in college. I’ve been waiting all weekend to do that.”

Mike Tirico had fun with this one. pic.twitter.com/NMUYnsbYZj

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 6, 2024

It doesn’t really matter, but it’s a little strange, right? So what’s the deal? And could it change?

The original two-minute warning dates back to 1942, when NFL stadiums only had analog clocks and the game time was kept by officials on the field. The stoppage was literally a warning, the official notifying the teams when two minutes remained in each half. College football never took it up.

Then in February, when The Athletic broke the news of the NCAA rules committee discussing the addition of a two-minute stoppage, NCAA coordinator of officials Steve Shaw told me they wouldn’t call it a “two-minute warning.” I replied in good humor that people would call it that anyway. When the rule and its official name were formally introduced in March, I got the first crack at asking questions to the rules committee. My second question was why they didn’t call it a two-minute warning. I know, this is hard-hitting stuff.

Shaw’s response, on behalf of the whole committee, was that it’s not a warning because people can see the clock: “We’re not warning anybody of anything, so we’re going to adopt those words,” he said of the “timeout” phrase.

For Shaw and the committee, it may have been as simple as that, but in practice, the name has added some low-stakes confusion to the season’s opening weeks.

Many fans first experienced the rule change in July when EA Sports College Football 25 was released. But in the video game, the timeout is called a two-minute warning, including in pre-recorded commentary by Chris Fowler and Davis.

Two-plus weeks into the season, I checked back in with Shaw. Yes, he has seen the jokes.

“Our TV partners have been pretty good about recognizing the name is a little different than the NFL,” he said. “There’s been jokes here and there, but I think it describes what it really is. It’s that timeout. … We’re not warning anybody. Everybody knows the time. We just named it that.

“We didn’t think that would be a big thing and that anybody would talk about it. But it’s been funny. If it’s brought more attention to it, I don’t know. But I think we’re settled in on the language and everybody gets it.”

It may just be semantics, but not everyone has fully accepted the term. Coaches and administrators still say “warning” in casual conversation, so much so that there is support for changing the name to align with the NFL.

“The Big Ten would be in favor of using ‘two-minute warning,’” a Big Ten source told The Athletic. “It is consistent with terminology currently in use and familiar to our fan base.”

I also checked with EA Sports. The company has no plans to change its use of “warning” in the game, and no one has asked it to.

I asked Shaw and multiple people around the sport about fan speculation that the phrase “two-minute warning” is trademarked or protected in some way by the NFL. No one had heard of that speculation, and they didn’t think it would be an issue even if that were the case. Shaw said the word “timeout” was just where the rules committee started.

One fair criticism of the two-minute timeout brought up by some fans: It’s not necessarily a timeout that lasts two minutes, creating additional confusion. During Week 0, they lasted two minutes and 30 seconds each in the Florida State–Georgia Tech game and exactly two minutes each in the SMU-Nevada game. The break length depends on how many TV timeouts a television broadcast has built into a game.

Regardless of the name, Shaw says the rule is working as intended so far. He said the early weeks of the season have seen only one instance of TV timeouts on back-to-back plays. With the certainty of a fixed TV timeout position late in the half, broadcasters feel less pressure to create back-to-back breaks to fit the right number of commercials in, a practice which everyone hates. The new timeout doesn’t add an extra commercial break on top of previous years’ totals. It has also helped with college football’s clock stoppage and 10-second runoff rule changes that take effect in the last two minutes. The one part that remains a work in progress is coaches’ understanding of how to use the extra stoppage to their advantage.

Shaw said the two-minute timeout hasn’t lengthened game times thus far, though it’s too early to know whether that will hold up. He also noted that anecdotally he has seen more huddling since coach-to-player helmet communication was permitted, so it’s hard to differentiate each new rule’s impact. The Football Bowl Subdivision’s plays per game average so far this year (66.2) is virtually unchanged from its average last season (66.9).

College fans are adjusting to the two-minute timeout itself, having seen it in the NFL for all of their lives. As college football tweaks its own rules, bringing some more in line with the NFL, a different name for the same rule feels like an unnecessary quirk. The red zone isn’t literally red. It’s OK if the two-minute warning isn’t a warning, right?

Apparently not. So if you’re in the TV booth calling a football game on a certain day, make sure you get it right.

(Photo: Michael Hickey / Getty Images)