25/40 Play clock

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by CT1

That’s just plain wrong.

Assuming that (under the old rule) the RFP was blown within 12-15 seconds after the end of the previous play, that provided a 37-40 second window to snap.

Even under that generous assumption, that's still a variation of 3 seconds. 3 seconds that one team might want to have, and the other team not want them to have. If it didn't matter, this discussion wouldn't arise. It's not a matter of the time's being sufficient, but of its being fixed.

Whether the game clock is running or dead has no bearing on the time period between the end of the previous play and the next snap.

No, but the conditions that determine whether the game clock is running or not do.

If the amount of time allowed in which to play the ball didn't matter, why was that adopted and left unchanged since so long ago? The 40 second clock or something like it could've been adopted in 1940; why wasn't it? What's changed about the game or people's opinions of it? Was it that nobody much noticed until visible clocks came into use?