History
The origins are from the days in the NFL when the official game time was kept by a member of the officiating crew, with the stadium clock being unofficial. Its purpose was a checkpoint to ensure that the teams knew how much time remained in the game. Since the late 1960s the NFL stadium clock has been official, but by then television was an important factor in the NFL, so the two-minute warning was retained as a commercial break and to serve as "tension building" time, and thus has become an important part of the game's flow.
Read more about this topic: Two-minute Warning
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