I cannot abide football, for it’s brutal and the action occupies just a few minutes of a one hour-game (which often lasts 2.5 hours or more with time-outs, half-time, and commercials.

Reader Diane G. called my attention to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, which, although four years old, surely applies today. It shows that—get this—there are eleven minutes of action in an NFL (National Football League) game in the U.S.:

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.

If you watch a professional football game, you’ll be occupied watching commercials five times longer than you’ll be watching action on the field.

Yes, I know that football is a big deal in the U.S., especially in universities and colleges (no time was provided for action in those games, but if they’re televised, which the important ones are, I’d guess the ratio of action to total time would be about the same.

I don’t understand the love for football, especially given this. Yes, a good run or pass play is satisfying or even thrilling, but you wait long and hard for one of those.   Now you might object that soccer has even less action in terms of scoring goals, but that’s bogus. In soccer there are always 90 minutes of pure action, and even when a goal isn’t being scored, the play is often beautiful, and emotions can run high.

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