And the baseball goes for so long. I think they should swap. More footy and less baseball.
A guess here…
Football season is shorter than baseball because the game is more physically abusive on the players. If they tried a 162-game schedule (say 4 to 5 times a week for 35 weeks, with three bye weeks), there would be a rapid shortage of NFL players due to injury.
Sorry I didn’t mean that there should be 100+ games, just more than there currently is. I believe around 25 is a nice number, it seems to work well for Aussie Rules football. At least my team the Detroit Lions would then have a chance of getting a W (maybe)…
I believe the football season already lasts six months (if you count pre- and post-season games).
The preseason is just for practice (and most of those players will be cut before the regular season begins), so it doesn’t count. There’s a fair amount of training camp time before the preseason, too. The actual season normally runs from the beginning of September to the end of January, a period of just under six months. (The Pro Bowl is an exhibition game; it too does not count as part of the “real” season.) Because of the unforseen one-week layoff this year, the Super Bowl has been moved to February.
It may sound like a short season, but again, there’s quite a bit of preparation time even before the preseason, and football produces an INORDINATE number of injuries even for a contact sport. This is the only sport I know of which produces a comprehensive injury report with probable, questionable, and doubtful players for each team every single week. Some teams are stretched to the limit well before even the current final regular season game. In contrast, baseball, in addition to being one of the least strenuous of sports, is very easy on the body. Most ordinary people, let alone athletes, would have no trouble playing three or four days in a row. Don’t forget that doubleheaders used to be commonplace. Hockey, despite its speed and hard hitting, produces very few injuries and can safely have a long season.
Football players take quite a bit more physical abuse then baseball players. Think of how many times a game a lineman has to hit the guy in front of him, how many times the running back is tackled, or how many times the quarterback gets hit.
Marc
Fewer fatalities that way.
IMHO <harumph…clearing throat…harumph> It’d suit me fine if ALL professional sports went away. Over the past few years when every professional sports went on strike I went on strike against professional sports. Thing is they came back but I didn’t.