Why I fall asleep during football games...

This is me, at least for a little while, on almost every Steeler Sunday...

ZzzzZZZzzzzzZzzzz.

I get chided for it, but I can't help it. In a city that lives and breathes football (to the point that I'm actually sick of saying/typing 'a city that lives and breathes football'), my inability to stay awake is close to sacrilege. I don't really like football as much as other people from around these parts do. To be blunt: it bores me. I watch a play that takes about 2.5 seconds, and then, unless it's the end of a half, 40 whole seconds tick down until the next play begins. The first ref runs in waving his hands above his head. Then the second ref runs in waving his hands above his head. Then the third...and then the fourth. Until however many refs and umpires or whatever their technical names are, are all running around, waving their hands above their heads. Then, one of these jokers has to spot the ball - a completely arbitrary decision. I swear I can hear them working this out in their heads: "hmm, this looks like a good spot. I mean the guy was somewhere around this area when he went down - but who the hell really knows? There were ten, 300+ pound dudes lying in a pile on top of him." Then there's a commercial. Then there's a time out. Then, finally, there's another play in which the entire process starts again. Some people go bonkers watching this stuff. I don't get it. I prefer the beautiful game...soccer. People give me crap for liking soccer, claiming the relative average score totals makes it boring. I just don't see how one can seriously say that soccer, a sport in which there is virtually no extended stoppage (save for serious injuries) is boring in one breath, and in the next say football is thrilling. Years of hearing this nonsense prompted me to action. So, for two seasons (2008/2009 and 2009/2010), I timed every Steelers game with a stopwatch. Here's how I did it:

1) On kickoffs, I started the clock once the ball was kicked and stopped it when the whistle was blown.

2) On regular plays, I started the clock when the ball was snapped and stopped it when the whistle was blown.

3) On field goals, I started the clock when the ball was snapped and stopped it when the ball appeared to pass the uprights.

4) Even when a team would spike the ball at the end of a quarter, I would start and stop the time as it's part of the 'action'.

My undergraduate degree is in economics, so I particularly enjoy breaking down arguments like this in a logical and quantitative fashion. I had fun doing it and was really happy when I put all of the results into Excel and had my final product. Then, for some reason, I sat on my findings for over a year. I don't know why I did it but in the meantime, the Wall Street Journal released a report detailing almost the same findings: that NFL games have minuscule action. At first, I was upset because in essence, someone beat me to it. Now, however, I'm glad that report was released because it serves as a validation of my point. Before we get to the results there are a few things I should mention:

1) 'total at each q' indicates the total amount of time in seconds of football played at the end of each quarter.

2) 'total per q' indicates the amount of time in seconds of football played in that quarter.

3) 'in minutes' indicates the number of minutes those times in seconds equates to. So, for example, in week 1 of the 08/09 season, the total amount of time of football played in the first quarter was 178 seconds. 178/60 seconds = 2.97 minutes, or approximately 2 minutes and 58 seconds.

4) 'Season Total' (in Season Summary) is the total number of seconds and minutes of action for the entire season.

5) 'Official game time' (in Season Summary) is simply the total amount of time the game was being 'played'. It's merely 15 minutes/quarter x 4 quarters a game x 16 games = 960 minutes.

6) '% of time actually played' (in Season Summary) is the total number of minutes actually played (Season total)/Official game time. This shows what percentage of the total time there is actually football taking place.

Note: Having looked at this stuff for so long it's hard to see what could be difficult to understand. My apologies if anything isn't clear.

Results-2008/2009 Season

08/09 Season: Weeks 1-11

Note: Week 4 against the Ravens was an 8:30pm start and I fell asleep and missed the entire fourth quarter. The fourth quarter of this game is the average of all of the fourth quarters for that season. Because I fell asleep, I employed a friend, Matthew Alan Baguet, to record the times on his own in the same fashion from then on. At the end of the season I compared the two sets of times and there weren't any significant differences. The largest differences were three and four seconds.

08/09 Season: Weeks 12-17

08/09 Season Summary

So, for the 2008/2009 season, the longest game played was 15.68 minutes, or approximately 15 minutes 41 seconds. An entire football game that probably lasted 3.5 hours all told, you watched 15 minutes and 41 seconds of action. On the season, less than a quarter of the total number of minutes of 'football' actually involved effort on the part of the players. The rest was waffle.

Results-2009/2010 Season

09/10 Season: Weeks 1-11

09/10 Season: Weeks 12-17

09/10 Season Summary

Not much difference between the 2008/2009 season and the 2009/2010 season. The average game time in 08/09 was 14 minutes and 25 seconds. The average game time in 09/10 was 14 minutes and 17 seconds. The total percentage of game time in which there was honest-to-goodness action still hovered around 24% - or - slightly less than a single quarter.

To take this a bit further, and to maybe cross a line I didn't really want to cross with this post, I offer this breakdown. Let's say that the average game time is an even 14 minutes. We can't break the game up by offense, defense and special teams evenly, because of the nature of the game. It's never an even 33.333% split. However, if we were to disregard special teams altogether (which I realize isn't possible but let's face it, as important as special teams may be, relatively they're rarely out there) that means that the offense and defense are on the field actually playing football for only about seven minutes a game. Seven!



To conclude...

Listen, I don't expect this to make anyone not want to watch football. Your taste is your taste. Besides, any shred of credibility I had in regards to this experiment no doubt vanished after you clicked on the picture of my co-researcher, Matthew Alan anyway. Also, I am not diminishing the Pittsburgh Steelers. I like them. I have never and will never support another NFL team. Lord knows that other NFL teams play just as little as the Steelers do. I hope they win next week and the week after and the week after that and I hope they are the first to seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, etc. Super Bowls. But now that you've read the research presented above, I hope to endure less malice and chagrin when I'm not awake for all of them.