By Ken Reed
The Wall Street Journal recently had an interesting article by Stu Woo about how little game action there actually is during some of our favorite spectator sporting events.
For example, a Wall Street Journal study found that only 18 minutes of a three-hour baseball game broadcast was actual baseball being played. No wonder it’s so easy to catch up with friends and family during a baseball game!
Moreover, America’s new national pastime, the National Football League (NFL), has less action during a typical game than our old national pastime. Based on another Wall Street Journal study, there’s only about 11 minutes of actual game play in a three-hour, five-minute NFL broadcast.
How about those long, grueling pro tennis matches? Those must be filled with action, right? It turns out they’re not so action-packed either, although they provide more action than baseball and football games. According to the WSJ piece, you can expect a three-hour tennis match to produce approximately 31:30 worth of tennis action.
If you’re sitting on your couch — or in a seat at the stadium for that matter –watching baseball, football, or tennis, you’ll have plenty of time to play with your smartphone or chit-chat with the people around you.
However, here’s an alternative to watching these sporting events as they happen: Stay home, record the game or match to watch later when you can speed through all the down time, and spend an hour of the two-plus hours you’ll save by chopping out all the non-action playing a sport — or exercising in another way — yourself.
— Ken Reed, Sports Policy Director, League of Fans
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