Each quarter in American football is 15 minutes long at the professional (NFL) and college levels, making the total game time 60 minutes divided into four quarters

. In high school football, quarters are shorter, typically 12 minutes each, totaling 48 minutes of play

. The 15-minute quarters are game time, meaning the clock stops frequently for various reasons such as incomplete passes, players going out of bounds, penalties, and timeouts, so the actual duration of a quarter in real time is much longer. Consequently, an NFL game usually lasts about 3 hours and 12 minutes from start to finish despite the 60 minutes of game time

. There is a halftime break of about 12 minutes between the second and third quarters in the NFL, and a longer halftime in college football, typically 20 minutes

. Additionally, there are short breaks (around 2 minutes) at the end of the first and third quarters as teams switch ends of the field

. In summary:

• NFL and college football quarters: 15 minutes each
• High school football quarters: 12 minutes each
• Halftime: 12 minutes (NFL), 20 minutes (college)
• Real game duration is much longer than 60 minutes due to clock stoppages and breaks