Not trying to start a fight over it, but I have gone to many Big 10 games over the last few years, and their Rs basically never 'chop' before winding the clock in those circumstances. Just my observation.

I'm not a referee at the college level (with the exception of an occasional undercard game), but I can say that I've not seen my referee give the chop nor do I at the HS level (the wind is also the RFP -- I have never seen the point in doing both).

At higher levels, I've noticed the R's don't even blow a whistle when starting the clock if there's a 40 second clock already running.

Fair enough -- different observations at different levels (I run the clock / scoreboard at a JuCo).

I disagree bison, I see no mention of the RFP being blown in the OP and both plays described read like pretty standard DBF's to me.

I was referring to this quote and the conversation that took place after this. There is no RFP blown in many plays so this isn't a specific point of reference regarding 1st and 10 or 1st and 25.

That's funny, I thought it just meant "ready for play". Traditionally. As in ready. For. Play. The ball's either ready for play or it's not.

I have a related question. In a high school game, how do the officials know how to set the clock back to the proper time. I was at a playoff game, and opening play of the fourth quarter the offense commits an illegal procedure penatly. Four seconds ran off the clock, and the clock wasn't reset back to twelve minutes. Was this just an official error?

What's "illegal procedure"?

We check the clock when it is supposed to stop or shouldn't have started and can relay corrections up to the press box. 4 seconds run off at the beginning of the quarter would probably not warrant the hassle of having to correct clock. Many college conferences have guidelines for when to correct timing mistakes.

The most common one I've heard is more than 5 seconds or under 5 minutes in the half. Anything outside let it go. It's not worth the hassle.

We would fix it on the first play of the quarter. It's too obvious to let go, IMO.

This past year we had a kickoff that was touched inbounds by R and went out of bounds. The clock didn't move despite the covering official(s) winding it. As the on-field timekeeper, I went to the R and told him what had happened and that we should take 2 seconds off the clock. He did.

We had an observer and it was one of the positive comments mentioned in our postgame with him.

This was at the college level with a field microphone. My threshold is a bit different in the game where I have to go over to a coach and have him relay information to an assistant coach in the booth who has to then relay the information to the timer.

false start them.....................:o