In my last several games I have had coaches ask me for a 20-second time out. As far as I know (save some church/rec leagues) the NBA is the only place they use 20's. I just turn around to the table and say “30-second coach’s time out white.”

The scorebooks my younger brother’s team uses also list full and 20-second time outs. I'm sure the NBA is not buying their scorebooks from Oshman's!:)

gostars:

Since 20-some people have already read your post and did not respond, I guess they were all waiting for the bald old geezer to respond, so I am now responding.

I am not sure of the NBA/WNBA rules are with regard to long and short timeouts except I think that the long timeouts are 100 seconds in length and I am sure that if that is wrong somebody will correct me.

As far as the NFHS and NCAA are concerned, in the mid-90's (I do not remember off hand which year it was.) the NCAA Men's went added 20 second timeouts to the rules (and the NCAA women's used it during the regular season as an experiment on a conference to conference basis, I know that the NAIA women's did that.). The next year the NCAA Women's added it to the rules and I think the NFHS added also added it that year or the next.

The warning signal came after 10 seconds. A few years ago, the 20 second was changed to a 30 second timeout in both the NFHS and NCAA Men's/Women's rules codes. In both codes the warning siganl comes after 20 seconds, but under NFHS rules, the teams must break their huddles and be ready to play by the 2nd signal (the 30 second signal). Under NCAA Men's/Women's rules, the teams must break their huddles at the second signal and procede to get ready to play.

MTD, Sr.

As far as I remember, NFHS had 20-second timeouts my freshman year (1997-98), but had switched to 30-second timeouts my sophomore year (98-99).

I may be off by one year, though, in which case it was changed to a 30-second timeout in 99-00.