Play clock
Encyclopedia : P : PL : PLA : Play clock
A play clock (also called a delay-of-game timer) is a timer designed to increase the pace (and subsequently, the score) in American football and Canadian football, similar to what a shot clock does in basketball. The offensive team must snap the ball before the time expires, or else they will be assessed a 5-yard delay of game penalty. If a visible clock is not available (or not functioning), game officials on the field will use a stopwatch or other similar device to enforce the rule.
In Canadian football, the offensive team must run a play within 20 seconds of the referee whistling the play in; in American football, teams have 25 seconds – except in the National Football League where teams have 40 seconds from the end of the previous play.
In the strategy of clock management, a team can slow the pace of a game by taking the maximum amount of time allotted between plays. A team wishing to do so would wait to snap the ball until there is one second left on the play clock.
[All-American delay-of-game timer]
[Daktronics delay-of-game timer]
[Electro-Mech football scoreboards]
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.