Watching the Clock
 

OK…I am a coach asking a question about who is responsible for watching the time during the course of play?

Here is the situation…During the course of the game the officials had to put time back on the clock. I believe it happened twice in the 3rd quarter and once in the fourth quarter. Not a huge deal as there was a lot of time left in the game. But was correctly done. Fast forward to the end of the game. We felt there needed to be time put back on the clock ( a couple of seconds ).

I guess what I want to know is the procedure as a crew in order to keep track of this. I am a high school basketball official and I know the process for this in basketball. Is it the same……example official sees time on the clock as he blows his whistle to stop the clock….therefore time gets put back on. Or is it different in football then basketball. Thanks for any input. I am just wanting to learn so I am not that guy on the sideline coaching.

If any of us has positive knowledge that the clock is wrong, we can address it. It's not just one guy - and the clock is no one's primary focus - but at critical times, anyone off-ball could be watching it. BJ handles everything 25-second clock related. Stopping and starting it is R's.

Each official should have knowledge of the clock. Off the play officials will primarily look at it since those who with the action will be dealing with dead ball action and shouldn't look up at the clock during that time, but other officials will see the clock stopping signal and can look at the clock to make sure it stops. With all that said, (NCAA) we don't nitpick the clock operators for every single second. We use a 5/5 axiom, meaning that with more than 5 minutes in either half 5 or more seconds would have to run off before we make a correction, unless it was happening each time. We're not going to allow them to intentionally burn time off on every play that requires the clock to stop. If it's under 5 minutes, then we start tightening up on the accuracy of the clock operator.