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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.
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.
Football—at least the American version—is the rare sport where it's common for the clock to run for long periods of time while nothing is happening. After a routine play is whistled dead, the clock will continue to run, even as the players are peeling themselves off the turf and limping back to their huddles. The team on offense has a maximum of 40 seconds after one play ends to snap the ball again. A regulation NFL game consists of four quarters of 15 minutes each, but because the typical play only lasts about four seconds, the ratio of inaction to action is approximately 10 to 1. (At the end of a game, if one team has a lead and wants to prevent the other team from scoring again, standing around and letting the clock run down becomes a bona fide strategy).
"'Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
Groucho Marx
I think that they found a similar stat with professional wrestling. Something like 4 minutes out of an hour program is actually wrestling. The rest is commercials, people mindlessly talking or attacking each other.
Tell me how long must a fan be strong? Ans. Always.
Football is the ideal sport to PVR. By using the "skip" button after every play, you jump ahead to the next snap of the ball and with FF during commercials a 3.5 hour game can be viewed in under an hour. purrfect for post Grey Cup NFL Sundays on the couch.
I recall once — this was back around the days of Donovan Bailey in his prime though I don't recall whether he was involved in it — TSN allotted half an hour (1800 seconds) of programming to cover a single 60-metre sprint race (6 seconds). No undercard of heats to advance from, no other races, just one 60m dash. That's a ratio of 300-to-1 — top THAT!
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
If it wasn't for the Senate scandal, I would have said any day of the parliamentary channel. They devote hours of coverage where absolutely nothing happens.
Tell me how long must a fan be strong? Ans. Always.
The Kentucky Derby probably doesn't fare too well in this sort of analysis, either. It only lasts about two minutes and how much on-air time do they devote to it?
Not quite as bad as the 60m dash, at least. But I admit I don't really know from horse racing anyway; do these things have any sort of undercard of other races?
I remember watching KD coverage for the first time as a kid and the pre-race stuff just seemed to go on forever. Finally the race started but when it ended I was like, that's it?
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
Sir Purrcival wrote:If it wasn't for the Senate scandal, I would have said any day of the parliamentary channel. They devote hours of coverage where absolutely nothing happens.
sj-roc wrote:The Kentucky Derby probably doesn't fare too well in this sort of analysis, either. It only lasts about two minutes and how much on-air time do they devote to it?
Not quite as bad as the 60m dash, at least. But I admit I don't really know from horse racing anyway; do these things have any sort of undercard of other races?
I remember watching KD coverage for the first time as a kid and the pre-race stuff just seemed to go on forever. Finally the race started but when it ended I was like, that's it?
Any horse race is part of a day's program or card of races, generally around eight to twelve of them. I think the KD is usually the eighth and last of that day's card at Churchill Downs. Likewise with boxing, wrestling and probably other "martial arts" type sports there are at least a couple of preliminary bouts featuring lesser players before the big match of the program happens.
sj-roc wrote:The Kentucky Derby probably doesn't fare too well in this sort of analysis, either. It only lasts about two minutes and how much on-air time do they devote to it?
Not quite as bad as the 60m dash, at least. But I admit I don't really know from horse racing anyway; do these things have any sort of undercard of other races?
I remember watching KD coverage for the first time as a kid and the pre-race stuff just seemed to go on forever. Finally the race started but when it ended I was like, that's it?
Any horse race is part of a day's program or card of races, generally around eight to twelve of them. I think the KD is usually the eighth and last of that day's card at Churchill Downs. Likewise with boxing, wrestling and probably other "martial arts" type sports there are at least a couple of preliminary bouts featuring lesser players before the big match of the program happens.
Yeah that's what I figured, much like a boxing or UFC undercard. Not sure if any of those undercard races ever actually air during the KD broadcast, though.
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
Just look at the last two minutes of a CFL game - it can be a life time for a team hanging on to a win when your opponent has the ball.
The NFL allows far too much time eaten up plus with fair catches and kick offs into the end zone not needing to be run out with no single point - yes, there is a lot of downtime.
CFL rules as Marc Trestman recently noted are very well thought and require plays even on missed FGs (unless you want to give up a single).
11 minutes is really ugly though.
"Ability without character will lose." - Marv Levy
Toppy Vann wrote:
The NFL allows far too much time eaten up plus with fair catches and kick offs into the end zone not needing to be run out with no single point - yes, there is a lot of downtime.
There is stuff going on Pre snap too. I mean a play may take 5 seconds but the decision to snap can take place anytime after the ball is set by the ref. I thought that was one of the things Chip Kelly's offence was really going to change and for one game I saw, it did but since then I think it has regressed to the norm................
TheLionKing wrote:Would be interesting to see the stats of a typical CFL game.
I remember in the 1970's when Herb Capozzi was running the Whitecaps, he timed the actual action at a Lions game and came up with 11 minutes also. The premise was the Whitecaps had 90 minutes of non-stop action while the CFL had only 11 minutes. Soccer was being touted as "the game of the future" with hundreds of thousands of B.C. kids playing in organized soccer leagues. We're still waiting.
