Football Basics Timeouts

Football is played in four 15-minute quarters, with one 12-minute half-time period.  Each team gets 3 timeouts per half, and timeouts do not carry over from the first half to the second half.  There is a timeout at the two-minute point in the second and fourth quarters, called the two-minute warning, that is not charged to either team.

A regular season overtime game has one overtime period, and each team gets two timeouts for that one overtime period.  Pro football plays a sudden death overtime, which means that the first team to score wins, even if the other team didn’t get a chance to score.  College football gives each team a chance to score; if neither team does, they continue alternating turns until someone scores, and both teams have had an equal number of chances to score.

A playoff game that goes into overtime will have multiple overtime periods until one team wins.

Learning football is as easy as having a reference book to look up plays and terms, and jot notes in.