No, college football’s new two-minute warning isn't adding extra TV timeouts

College football fans have long viewed the games’ television timeouts as a scourge. The official wearing a red hat who takes the field at each commercial break, holding up play for a preset amount of time before the broadcaster can return to the action, has become a universally hated character, including by yours truly.

Even though broadcasters and data show the TV timeouts haven’t increased, the way they can wreck game flow is obvious to anyone who watches a game. We just want to see football.

So when the NCAA added a two-minute warning (we’re not calling it a “two-minute timeout,” as Saturday’s broadcasters did) earlier this year, the reaction from many fans was that this was simply a ploy to add yet another TV timeout while other rule changes try to decrease plays. At the time, officials said that was not the case. The two-minute warning was meant to help game flow by providing a fixed point for a scheduled TV timeout, so broadcasts wouldn’t have to cram them in at inopportune times to meet their quotas. The two-minute warning’s presence would make the dreaded touchdown-commercial-kickoff-commercial sequence a rarer situation. (It would also help game officials now that many rules change in the final two minutes, including the clock stopping on first downs.)

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Week 0’s four FBS games offered a first look at the two-minute warning in college football. Many fans on social media, some of whom had only learned of the new rule during the game, expressed their displeasure during the Georgia Tech-Florida State game in particular, again blaming the change for what felt to them like an increase in timeouts.

So I went through the tape. The verdict: The two-minute warning did not add any extra TV timeouts. Week 0 just had some unusual games.

For background, most college football games have a TV timeout format of 3-4-3-4 or 4-4-4-4 for the number of commercial breaks in each respective quarter. The length of those breaks depends on the broadcaster and quarter but ranges from 2:00 to 3:20 in most cases. Sometimes an extra 30-second spot or two is thrown in. Pull out your stopwatch during a game, and you’ll see the time of each break adheres to the predetermined format down to the second.

The Georgia Tech-FSU game was a 3-4-3-4 game on ESPN, with three TV timeouts in the first and third quarters and four breaks in the second and fourth quarters. That’s exactly how it played out — but in a frustrating sequence. Here’s how it broke down:

The Yellow Jackets and Seminoles played a quick game with long drives, lots of runs and just seven possessions per team. Per statistician Brian Fremeau, the 14 total possessions were the fewest in any FBS game since 2020.

There were only 14 possessions in yesterday’s Georgia Tech vs Florida State game (seven for each team), fewer than in any FBS game played since November 28, 2020.

— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) August 25, 2024

As a result, three TV timeouts were crammed into the final two minutes of game time: one for the two-minute warning and two for Florida State timeouts stopping the clock. That is annoying for viewers, teams, fans in the stadium, everyone.

But it wasn’t unusual or different from the past. It was just a weird game because there were essentially two possessions in the fourth quarter. Georgia Tech scored on the first play of the quarter, Florida State responded with an 8:24 touchdown drive, and then Georgia Tech went on a 6:33 drive culminating in the game-winning field goal.

If you’re wondering whether viewers would’ve gotten out of that game with one fewer TV timeout without a two-minute warning, the answer is no. The broadcast didn’t go to commercial when Florida State used its final timeout with 55 seconds left. Without the two-minute warning, the quarter’s last commercial break could have gone there. (Or maybe ESPN would’ve gone to commercial three seconds into the fourth quarter, after Georgia Tech’s touchdown. Perhaps it passed on that opportunity because of the presence of the two-minute warning later in the quarter).

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If you didn’t like all the commercial breaks at the end of Georgia Tech-Florida State, you’re not alone. But things wouldn’t have gone much differently in years past. It was just a weird game.

I also checked a second game. SMU-Nevada on CBS Sports Network was a 4-4-4-4 game that actually ended up being 4-4-3-5: The broadcast took five TV timeouts in the fourth quarter because there were just three in the third. Every TV timeout in that game lasted exactly two minutes. (There was an additional 30-second break late in the first quarter after a touchdown, an option CBS has exercised in the past for SEC games.)

*Includes 20 seconds of bumper ads after returning from commercial

So no, the two-minute warning is not adding extra TV timeouts. It may not always be noticeable, but it will help game flow earlier in quarters, when broadcasters will feel less pressure to jump to commercial. But every time that stoppage arrives with two minutes left, fans are still going to be unhappy.

If you don’t like the idea of the two-minute warning at all, that’s understandable. I asked SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee about the first experience this weekend, and he said it wasn’t a major adjustment. If your team is ahead, you won’t like it. If you’re behind, you’ll like it. It provides a little more time for a comeback.

But nobody likes commercials in games; the contrast between this summer’s Olympic basketball action and a typical stoppage-loaded NBA or college basketball game was a reminder that broadcasts can be more enjoyable for fans if the people running the show really want them to be. And in college sports, where the broadcast money paid for by those commercials has reshaped everything and destroyed conferences, fans understandably have some extra animosity for the people who keep sending the game to commercial.

As the season wears on, perhaps the two-minute warning’s contribution to game flow will be more obvious in pass-heavy games with lots of possessions. This change is designed to prevent back-to-back commercial breaks, which even the broadcasters dislike. So when we hit the two-minute warning next Saturday, know you’re not getting extra commercials. You’re just getting the normal annoying amount.

(Photo: Charles McQuillan / Getty Images)