Football fans like me (How ’bout them Cowboys?) like to think the sport is more action-packed than more boring games, like golf or soccer. But research shows that minute-for-minute a Beckett play has more action than an NFL game:
According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.
In other words, if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there’s barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg. In fact, the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays.
So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps. In the four broadcasts The Journal studied, injured players got six more seconds of camera time than celebrating players. While the network announcers showed up on screen for just 30 seconds, shots of the head coaches and referees took up about 7% of the average show.
Another surprising fact is that cheerleaders get no love from the cameramen: “In these broadcasts, only two networks showed cheerleaders at all. And when they did, they were only on camera for an average of three seconds.”
January 15th, 2010 | 10:47 pm
Football is a lousy sport, as it has virtually no aerobic element and so little actual playing time. Rubgy is a real sport boasting both of those lacking elements.
January 16th, 2010 | 12:05 am
“More boring games like golf…”??
Cancel my subscription! There’s no more boring game than NFL football. Golf is very exciting to watch, and even better to play.
No wonder our culture is going to the dogs, with dysfunctional values like yours.
January 16th, 2010 | 12:48 am
Golf is very exciting to watch, and even better to play.
Oh, Joe, Joe, Joe. Golf is many things (I actually love to play) but “exciting to watch” is not one of them. But if that’s your speed, I’ve just painted a wall in my house if you’d like to come over and watch it dry. ; )
January 16th, 2010 | 8:42 am
I love football too…it’s the closest thing we can get to the war of life without actually hurting each other. Only the players get physically hurt…we, the watchers get the thrills.
However, the players are well paid. Don’t feel sorry for them. I think I read that the average NFL player lasts between three and four years…they deserve whatever they make.
Love college football too.
January 16th, 2010 | 10:28 am
Joe, this is a little off the subject you mentioned above, but it is the reason that after 50 years of following pro football I have finally thrown in the towell on the sport.My reason should logically extend to all pro and most collegiate big time sports, but I’m just not ready.
One of the key elements in following the pros is a suspension of disbelief i.e.; lets pretend that these guys represent our town, they’re our boys fighting for us. I had always been willing to do this, that is until the day that the Phila. Eagles decided to pull back the curtain and reveal what lay behind it. In effect this is what they did when they hired Michael Vick. They made it difficult if not impossible to avoid the conclusion that this was about money and only money.I have nothing against money, I like it, I’d like to have more but after the Vick hiring I could no longer maintain the above mentioned suspension of disbelief. They had rubbed it in our face, they showed us the figure behind the screen, I saw many zeroes, and I thought I heard them say, We can do anything we want and these rubes will buy it even when we tell them that we count their loyalty as so much fodder for our cash cow. Kill some dogs, he’s really sorry. Well yeah it was a lot of dogs and many were tortured but it was a business and I had a responsibility to the business and the mony was good don’t you know and oh by the by it was our way of life, a cultural thing that you wouldn’t understand.
To your point about action on the field, if they used 11 starters with, lets say, 1 reserve and the starters played both ways and there were no huddles or TV dictated time outs and they were allowed 20 seconds between the end of a play and the beginning of the next but the above mentioned arrogance and avarice still prevailed I would remain
a non follower. The likelyhood though is that they will continue in their ways, continue to have a rabid fan base that will continue to feed the cash cow. Fine, but count me out.
January 16th, 2010 | 11:08 am
I love football – even played it enthusiastically (if poorly) in high school – but I find the classic George Will quote appropriate given this posting:
Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
January 16th, 2010 | 1:59 pm
If one timed the how much time the ball is actually moving, golf and baseball would come off far worse than football.
As to soccer, you’d be lucky to get 11 interesting minutes in a 90 minute game. The painful thing about soccer, is that you have to suffer 80 minutes of guys playing keep-away with their feet just to get 10 minutes of brilliant athletics.
American football is and always has been a game of set pieces. Complaining that too much of the game is spent between plays is like complaining that zebras would be beautiful white horses, but for those black stripes.
January 16th, 2010 | 1:59 pm
[...] First Thoughts) Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments » Leave a [...]
January 16th, 2010 | 3:31 pm
If one timed the how much time the ball is actually moving, golf and baseball would come off far worse than football.
As far as baseball, I doubt this would be the case. I bet just the pitches and throwbacks by the catchers would take about 5 minutes a game. Add the time for base hits, and it would easily surpass 11 minutes per game.
January 16th, 2010 | 5:19 pm
@Donn – you’re absolutely right at between 200 and 300 pitches and 2-3 seconds for the pitch/throwback you get 10 minutes.
January 16th, 2010 | 7:54 pm
Well–so far no one is intelligent enough to refute my assertion that golf is the best choice of any of these–either to watch, or to play!
Nice try. This means you too, Joe.
January 17th, 2010 | 6:40 pm
My frustration is not so much with the quantity of commercials as it is with the content. As a female sports fan (how ’bout them Cowboys . . . next year?) I get very offended by the number of commercials advertising for weight loss programs, the new Taco Bell fresco menu diet, etc. along side beer and junk food ads. The message is conflicting and manipulative, particularly for women. It makes those gratuitous three seconds of cheerleader shots after each commercial break seem a lot longer for women who end each football game feeling a whole lot more dissatisfied with their bodies. I think women especially should make a concerted effort to mute the TV during commercial breaks and divert their eyes when the camera pans to the flat-bellied cheerleaders as they enjoy their Sunday afternoon light beer.
January 17th, 2010 | 10:14 pm
I actually would have agreed with Joe, that is until the Vikes beat the Cowboys – right now I love football. Ask me again next week after we play the Saints.
January 18th, 2010 | 5:41 pm
Ask Tony Romo how he feels today after “only” eleven minutes of action.
January 18th, 2010 | 7:30 pm
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by ROFTERS: I Was Watching a Commercial and a Football Game Broke Out http://bit.ly/6rQC7d…
January 24th, 2010 | 10:56 am
Footbal is super boring.
February 5th, 2010 | 9:02 am
[...] because the television viewer is seeing commercials than actual game play (in an average game, the ratio of commercials to playing time is seven to one). The reality, however, is that most of the commercials aren’t all that memorable. Only a few [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact