Time of "officials" time outs in various sport, how long is too long?

[APG]

In my personal experience, these kind of situations resolve themselves in under a minute...the longest timeout I've had is when there was a clock situation. Took maybe 2-3 minutes including getting the clock set correctly and talking to the coaches. The only time I could imagine this kind of timeout taking five minutes or longer is if there's a fight situation. In those circumstances, there are various rules and enforcement that are different for players on the playing field vs. bench areas. Also, in sports like football, there's more of a chance of this taking longer because enforcement in that sport can be complex at times.

Again, most of these kinds of situations (both pro and amateur), in the major sports (football, basketball, baseball, hockey) are taken care of in less than a minute. It's usually a case where an official is giving another additional information rather than officials debating.

[redwhiteblue]

Yes, that's been consistent with what I've seen over the years. The situation of fighting and the need for expulsions (whatever the sport), seem to be a major issue that can drag official's timeouts out toward the five-minute-or-beyond mark.

Injuries, "media" timeouts in televised sports, and nuisance issues like weather/spectators/debris on the field-of-play are other factors that I can think of that would or should cause unnatural stoppages in play beyond a minute or so in any sport.