The break near the end of each half of an NFL game, at approximately two minutes remaining on the clock, is a much-anticipated time stoppage for teams and fans alike. Appropriately named the "two-minute warning," this professional football contribution to the gridiron had a somewhat different purpose at its inception.
In the period before World War II, there were still many stadiums that did not have an excellent working scoreboard game clock, so officials kept the time on the field on a watch or stopwatch. The NFL devised the official timeout near the end of each half to allow everyone in the stadium: coaches, players, media, and the fans, an official announcement of the actual time left. The term "two-minute warning" had been used for years to announce danger from severe storms to war-time enemy torpedo attacks and more. There are many instances of the term being used in early twentieth-century newspapers, so it was not an unfamiliar term when the NFL adopted it as a rule in the 1940s. It was even the title of a 1976 Charlton Heston Hollywood Movie. The game clock was not the official timepiece of contests at the professional level until the 1960s when the AFL sanctioned it as such in their play, and the NFL soon followed suit but retained the now traditional two-minute warning break. The LA Times reporter Sam Farmer wrote an article on the subject in 2016 where they interviewed Jon Kendle of the Pro Football Hall of Fame for some insight into the history of the rule. The report states, "In 1942, the rulebook stipulated that the umpire must notify the referee when two minutes remain in each half. Kendle said that 1949 is the first time in the rulebook that a timeout is granted upon the signal that two minutes remain in each half." Kendle gave input that; "My best guess is that they began stopping the clock for two minutes in 1942, but I haven't seen that in any of the rulebooks I've read," Some of the other levels of gridiron competition have incorporated the feature at times, especially as a courtesy for fields without working public game clocks. The question arises as to why the NFL still has this break in place with all the modern technologies and super-expensive scoreboard clocks available at each venue. The main answer is television advertising breaks, in which sponsors have a captive audience many times on the edge of their seats. Secondarily, it is an extra time out that the coaches and teams have gotten used to and often use as clock management strategies. Another important aspect of the two-minute warning is that it creates excitement and drama. Fans know that anything can happen in the final two minutes of a game, and teams are often fighting to come back from a deficit or to protect a lead. The two-minute warning has been the setting for some of the most iconic moments in NFL history, such as the "Hail Mary" pass from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson in 1980 and the "Drive" by John Elway and the Denver Broncos in 1986. Remember the last minutes between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs playoff game 2021, where Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen used every precious second to entertain the masses. It is not a needed item, as high school and college games do not use this warning.
