General Question

hoopski's avatar

Why do NFL referees explain the rules of overtime before it begins?

Asked by hoopski (49points) October 19th, 2008

When an NFL game goes into overtime, the captains of each team meet at midfield for the coin toss. Before the coin toss, a referee explains that overtime is a single 15-minute sudden-death period, each team gets two timeouts, there’s a 2-minute warning, etc.

Why do they do this?

The captains obviously know how overtime works. I assume it’s for the benefit of the watching audience but why do they assume that the audience doesn’t know how overtime works? They assume the audience knows about all the other rules of the game. Why is overtime any different?

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7 Answers

MrItty's avatar

Possibly because the rules of NFL overtime and NCAA overtime are so completely different? Just a guess….

marinelife's avatar

I think it is because overtime is a fairly new thing in the history of the game. It does seem pointless at this point in time though.

ctimm15's avatar

hey maybe they do it just in case the people (new) who play it might not know the crap

Spargett's avatar

Many things occurr in this world fo no good reason. This is most likely one of them.

“Just, uhhh BECAUSE!! Jeez!”

gooch's avatar

Overtime does not occur very often in pro football so fan who do not know the rules will now know.

ctimm15's avatar

yeah Wat he said is probably write

Jaxxer0's avatar

You can probably find the information about this in a football blog – http://www.oleole.com/

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