The thing that gets me about football is how out of place the use of a game clock seems. In every other timed sport I can think of the ball/puck is live every second that the clock is running, whereas in football the ball is dead at the completion of every play but the clock only stops based on arbitrary rules. It would make more sense to me if the clock never stopped, was reduced to reflect actual play time, or they switched over to a system of possessions.
That’s not true, though. The ball isn’t always live in soccer despite the clock never stopping. That’s the whole idea behind the concept of “extra time”, which to me seems even crazier.
I have three words for you, son: D.V.R.
(That’s digital video recorder, which is generic for TiVo). Not only can you whip through all the commercials, time-outs, warm-up pitches, twenty-second long pre-free-throw routines, and five minutes to kneel down twice, BUT you also get to rewind every important play, rather than hoping for a replay from the network. Did I mention how great it is to set late games to record, then whipping through them the next morning over breakfast (getting up half an hour earlier is much better than staying up two hours later).
Man, I can’t stand watching sports in real-time anymore.
My preferred method of watching almost any TV show (including sporting events) is “near-live”. I TIVO the game, start watching 15 - 30 minutes after the show starts. I fast forward through all the commercials and other crap. It takes about ~30 minutes to catchup to the live action, then I go walk the dog, do the dishes, rake the leaves, or some other task that takes ~30 minutes and start watching again.
Rinse, Lather, repeat.
- Plays which stop the clock (incomplete passes, out of bounds, scores, change of possession, etc.)
And how much actual ‘action’ is there in a typical chess game?
Fifty or sixty moves, at about 3 seconds each? So the actual action of a whole chess game could be shown in about 2-1/2 to 3 minutes.
Aren’t most games like this – many minutes of planning, preparation, and just plain waiting, and then a few minutes of actual action?
I’ve done this with NFL games and have it down to a science. My DVR has a 30 second jump button and if you hit it at the moment a play ends it you end up with the teams in formation on the line about to hike the ball again.
I can watch complete NFL games in under 25 minutes.
I subscribe to MLB.com. The condensed games are wonderful, but I wish they were a tad longer. A whole game takes about 10-12 minutes, 15 with extra innings. I wish they’d show you the entirety of tense at-bats, but hey, they can’t please everyone.
The fee’s only like $30 and you get every radio broadcast and every game in HD from either team’s perspective. I watched every Braves, Pirates, and Dodgers game last year. Mmmm. Baseball.
If you’re watching it, yes. If you’re playing it, then you play about 50 different games in your head, so the ‘action’ is much higher.
- half time
Strategic games, yes. Tactical games have nonstop action but much less planning and strategy. (By definition.)
I never found the “constant action” argument very compelling. As an example most of us can relate to, I think pool is a much better game with much higher replay value than foozball, though the latter is still tremendously fun in small doses. I also prefer watching pool to foozball despite there being much less action. By watching, of course, I mean hanging out drinking beers at a bar watching my buddies play while I wait to take on the winner.
Imagine a game of pool where you have to strike the cue ball before it comes to a stop from the previous shot, and if it does come to a stop before you hit it it’s a scratch. The net effect being that the cue ball never stops moving for the entire game. This would be a terrible dumbing down of the game.
I’m guessing you intended this to come across with a good-natured folksy charm, but I read it as condescending. I’ll assume the former.
I have a DVR. Fast-forwarding between plays is great; I got through the Superbowl in about an hour of gametime, though I watched all the commercials. Normally I DVR all four Sunday afternoon games and shorty through them all, each game taking 30-45 minutes to get through. It’s awesome. (I get four Sunday games because I get the NYC feed and the Hartford feed, which are different markets. Meaning I either get 2 early and 2 late games, or 3 early and 1 late: Giants, Jets, Patriots, and “other.”)
But it would be extremely tedious to do if I wasn’t into football. As an example, I shortied the last three games of this past World Series – my first baseball viewing since 2000 – and found the effort annoying.
But more to the point, you posted this in response to hockey shorties. You can’t shorty a hockey game without already knowing what’s about to happen, so that’s a complete nonstarter.
Yeah, see, exactly. That’s way cool.
Yesterday’s Super Bowl - Game action only.
14 minutes.
Average actual game time is well, 60 minutes. :rolleyes:
Not counting overtime. This was meant to be a sarcastic thread right?
No, it was meant to be a thread about how much play there is during the game. I assume one would understand this had they read the thread title.
This. I really like basketball but it’s much less cerebral than football. When you stop and reset after every play it gives more time for complex strategy. In basketball you can come down the floor and run the pick and roll time and time again. Try such a simple strategy in football and you will get your ass handed to you. Plus the downtime is perfect for instant replays. Basketball is better on DVR because I can replay stuff to see what I missed. The big slowness of NFL is the TV timeouts. Do away with them, by all means!
My English cousin was teasing me about the high scores in American football and basketball. I asked him what his last village cricket team score was: 126-8 to 125-6 so that shut him up for a while. Cricket makes baseball seem like F1 racing.
Although there are only ten or fifteen minutes of action in a football game, the rest of the time is also part of the game, such as preparing for the next play. I don’t mind reviews, time outs, those are not the problem. The problem is the fact that football has turned into something to fit around all those stupid, useless, meaningless commercials, and not the other way around. There is no reason, none whatsoever, why there should be four thirty second commercials between changes of possession. Oh yeah, “the players need to be paid.” Whatever.
Never mind the actual game time. How long would a football game really take if there was no such thing as television? Maybe 90 minutes, two hours tops. There’s at least 90 minutes of commercials?
My routine is to DVR the game, watch it in delay and then zip through those dumb interruptions. I wouldn’t mind a two or three minute break between quarters, but each and every “tv timeout?” That’s absurd.
[Obligatory “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973” Correction]
The Simpsons did an excellent job of demonstrating how * some Americans * feel about soccer. Anecdotally, I grew up in Northern California during the 90s and that certainly wasn’t the case.
[/Obligatory “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973” Correction and Certainly Does Not Want Thread to Become Cliched Flamewar between Soccer-lovers and haters]
Didn’t mean to sound condescending, I was just excited to share. I’ll go with bubbly valley girl instead of folksy + The Graduate reference next time.
But yeah, hockey is harder to speed up. Soccer works pretty well in press-FF-once speed on my DVR, with slowing back to real time for exciting moments. Hockey works less well since the exciting moments appear much quicker. (But in my defense, you did mention shorty baseball and football in your post).