Originally Posted by gazzae

The waving arms signal is to let the time keeper know to stop the clock i.e if a player steps out of bounds or incompleted pass etc.

Yes the refs can call time outs but these are only used if they need to review the position of the ball or if a player is injured.

Refs do not call timeouts for ad breaks - they take place in the natural breaks of the game not during a drive (unless a time out is called).


Why would they even need this?? There is enough "natural" breaks in the games for ads as it is.
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Ok - I just asked a friend of mine on MSN, who lives in North America, about this.

In the NFL there are whats know as TV timeouts. A commercial break is called during a break in play and as the commercial breaks may last 3 minutes but the game is ready to be restarted earlier a TV timeout is called.

So as I was saying the coaches or refs have nothing to do with the timing of ad breaks its done by the TV stations in the natural breaks of play, but when they go to commercials a TV timeout is called and they wait till the TV station returns.