Stop the Clock

Chapter Two

Stopping the Clock

On November 27,1994, after being down 24-6, Dan Marino threw his fourth touchdown to Mark Ingram and beat the New York Jets.  Other than the remarkable come from behind victory it was the manner in which Marino did so with a touchdown pass in the final seconds of the game.  Just a little background.  Football has a rule that no other sport has and that is called the 2 minute warning.   Most other professional sports and even not yet professional teams have a coach responsible for managing the clock. They are the people who keep track of the action as it pertains to the amount of time left to play. (Of course we have to address the difference between sports that have a clock and those that don’t and ultimately why some clocks count down and some count up – but hang in there we will get there.)

In football, regardless of what is going on, with two minutes left to the half or two minutes left to the game, the clock stops and everyone has a chance to get their bearings.  While football like other sports have timeouts, football alone has an objective time stopper to ask the simple question, with time running out what do we want to do the same or differently than we have done until this moment. In chapter X we will explore how tv timeouts and other outside influences change the nature of the game for now let’s stick with the rules within the sports.

Wouldn’t it be great if in life just before time expires there would be a mandatory time out.   Unlike sport most times we have no idea when the end is coming. And for the few who have that luxury, whether it be from their death bed or for those who have more time and greater energy, the two minute warning or in some cases it is called the doctor telling you to get your affairs in order” can be useful.    In football, neither team gets to call it.  It just happens.  In fact, the assumption is that everyone is so caught up in the action that they forgot about the clock. So true of life, we get caught up in and wonder where did the time go?  And if that is not crazy enough, the rules actually change a little in those last two minutes.  Also a blazing life lesson.  The rules do change as we get older and find our time is limited. 

Back to Dan Marino.

What regularly happens towards the end of the game as one team marches down the field to score, is a series of plays that are designed to stop the clock and preserve whatever little time is left.  Passing routes to the sidelines will stop the clock. Running out of bounds will stop the clock and what is called spiking the ball.  Spiking the ball is different than intentionally grounding, however, I don’t know how, given that in both cases the passer throws the ball on the ground on purpose. 

Spiking the ball, preserves the clock while simultaneously spending a down.  It is a calculation, like we all make in our lives, that one thing is worth more than another.  More time is worth more than the number of plays we are allotted.  Certainly towards the end of life time is what we want more.  Spiking the ball stops the clock, while preserving a time out.  Again another calculation.  The calculus isn’t so simple and most likely every team has thought all of this through long in advance.  It is called the two minute drill.  With the urgency that only comes at the end of the game (or maybe the half), the two minute drill is all about managing the clock and expectations.

This is where Dan Marino did something unexpected.  Everyone and I believe everyone (maybe even including his own staff of coaches and players) assumed he was going to spike the ball, stop the clock and live to execute another play. Instead through some sort of magic he and Mark Ingram were on the same page.  While everyone stood around thinking that of course Marino was going to spike the ball. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Ingram made a cut to the end zone. Marino threw him a pass and they won.  What they did defied expectations.  Life presents us with opportunities and those opportunities come with expectations.  Some will rise to the moment, some will do exactly what is expected and some will fall well short of the mark.  

It is the clock that adds to the imperative.  Slowing the clock permits us to gain some otherwise misplaced perspective and each sport has its own way of managing the clock.  In some sports there is a clock already established and yet a subclock is introduced and there are some sports in which there is no clock and yet a clock is added.  

In basketball there is the shot clock and in tennis there is the serve clock and coming this fall to baseball there is the pitch clock.  All make sure the game keeps moving. In those circumstances there is a need to keep things going, as opposed to ways of stopping the game.  In fact, in tennis you are permitted a bathroom break, you just can’t take too long.  All are keenly aware of the role of momentum, an issue we will address in chapter x.  Yet the juxtaposition of slowing the game down and speeding the game up is a way of using time properly.  

My father used to say, when trying to get from one place to another people often speak of making good time.  He said rather we ought to strive to make time good. We ought to use our time properly.  But from the beginning of time we have tried to control it.  We wish at times we could slow things down, like keeping our children little or speed things up like wishing our children would grow up already. 

I have often watched sporting events thinking about how the first ¾ of a game can go by so fast while the last two minutes can seem interminable.  The incessant fouling in basketball in order to trade time for missing foul shots can be excruciating especially when, to me, the outcome seems inevitable. Sometimes I wish they would simply run out the clock. In explaining to my family that the game is almost over, that there is only a minute on the clock, I usually suggest that the last two minutes is sometimes longer than an entire half.   Some sports just move faster and limit the amount of times the time can be stopped.  

Both hockey and basketball waste no time between offense and defense, while football and baseball extend that time.  The speed of hockey requires transitions on the fly, players coming in and going out happens while time keeps moving while in basketball there has to be a stoppage of time for player substitutions.  Towards the end of a basketball game or on a penalty, certain players are brought in for a specific role, while in football players have assigned roles from which they almost never deviate regardless of the time on the clock. 

How we take on different roles in life and whether or not we are playing defense of offense are also determined by circumstance and by time.  As we get older our wisdom may take over from physician ability, like the athlete who understands the game within the game as Brad Gilbert and Steve Jamison point out in their great book, Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis–Lessons from a Master.  

Managing the clock is one of those great insights we gain over time. Yet there is one last insight worth exploring.  All sports that have a clock count down except soccer.  Every sport thinks in terms of time running out except soccer where the clock just keeps going and even when the time is up it is still not up.  Soccer has “stoppage time” time that is added at the end of regulation because of time wasted during play and no one really knows except for the referee how much time will be added.  

Can you imagine getting extra time? The student says to the teacher I meant to hand in my assignment but I just need more time.  Lawyers and accountants ask for extensions.  At the end of life, we wish for one more day. Sometimes extensions are granted and sometimes the clock simply runs out.