Why did college football not adopt "two-minute warning"?

This season, college football games have a new rule: a stoppage of play at the 2:00 mark in the second and fourth quarters.

If only there were some familiar term to apply to those timeouts that fans could readily grasp. Wait, how about “two-minute warning,” the term the NFL has used to signify that stoppage since 1942?

No, for some reason, the NCAA opted not to use that popular term for the timeout. It’s instead called the “two-minute timeout.”

During Sunday night’s USC-LSU game on ABC, play-by-play announcer Rece Davis sounded almost apologetic when he said “two-minute timeout” in the second quarter.

“There is a new two-minute timeout. We’ve been asked not to call it a warning,” Davis said.

For many college fans, the plain vanilla term may take more getting used to than the stoppage in play itself. Fans everywhere are asking, why? Is the “two-minute warning” trademarked by the NFL? Does the NCAA really feel the need to differentiate itself on such a trivial matter? Is the word “warning” offensive to some people?

There have been plenty of bizarre theories floating around on X, but The Athletic ‘s Chris Vannini asked NCAA director of officials Steve Shaw recently why college football is not using “two-minute warning.” Shaw said it’s because the timeout is not a warning as originally intended in the NFL, when officials were the only ones keeping time, and they literally warned teams the clock was nearing expiration.

As Vannini wisely observed: “I said, ‘OK but everyone is going to call it the two-minute warning.'”

Announcers like Davis seemed to toe the line in the opening week of college action, going with the “two-minute timeout.” However, as of Sunday night, other media, such as Wikipedia, had apparently not gotten the memo.

College football fans and even sports media seemed baffled by the NCAA’s decision to use the bland term.

[ABC]

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