So the NFL opened its season last night. Its theme is, "Are you ready for some commercials?" I was in the gym, and I began watching the New Orleans-Indianapolis game when I got on the exercise bicycle, with 4:11 left in the first quarter. I watched the game for the 42 minutes I spent on the exercise bicycle, at which time there was 4:46 left in the second quarter, so I saw just under one full quarter of football. Can you guess how many commercial breaks there were during this time? Would seven be a lot? Six? There were 10 breaks for commercials during one quarter of football. A half of soccer has exactly ZERO breaks for commercials (unless ESPN2 loses its feed late in the second half and decides to kill some time with a few spots). I don't follow football closely, but I watch it if it's on TV. It can be entertaining, but it is becoming unwatchable. I do follow soccer closely, and it is compelling. Perhaps a reason is that the game isn't interrupted 10 times in a quarter for commercials.
This belongs in MLS General. See avatar. I saw that football and soccer are about equal to me. But a random college or pro football game will keep my attention longer than some average MLS game.
Number of commericals really depends on the game. They generally break when the ball switches sides or injury. The thing to remember though is that they front load them for the game.. they try to show as many commericals as possible at the beginning of the game because that's when they have the most viewers. In the second half it calms down a bit and is much more watchable.
Good answer. Though, the more soccer I watch the more upset I get at commercials in the other sports I watch.
The big thing I took away from last night was how atrocious I thought NBC's coverage was. The pre-game concert was, aside from John Mellencamp, about MLS all-star game level.
It doesn't sound to me like he's bashing the sport, he's bashing the presentation of it. The commercials really frustrate me too. They've chased me off of games sometimes. If the game isn't absolutely riveting, I sometimes decide I have better things to do than be marketed to (with the occassional interruption of football). My least favorite maneuver is: Touchdown, commerical, kickoff, commercial, three plays and a punt, commercial. It'll chase me as often as it doesn't.
I have always loved baseball. Grew up with it. It was always my favorite sport. I thought nothing of watching a 4-hour game, parked on my couch. ...Until I became a soccer fan. Now watching a baseball game is almost unbearable. So slow and boring most of the time. Don't get me wrong, I still love the game - I play in a men's slow-pitch softball league and love it. I also love going to a game live. But TV? Not anymore. One of the things I've loved most about soccer is KNOWING (except for tournament games which might go to extra time and PKs) that a game is going to be over in two hours. 45+, halftime, 45+. Done. Brilliant. You have no idea how long a baseball game is going to go. (Or a basketball or a football game, with all the timeouts, for that matter. My wife loves to sarcastically remark how the last five minutes of a basketball game usually take about an hour to complete.) I remember watching Greg Maddux Braves games when he would masterfully keep the game to a two hour time and everyone would gush about how fast that was.
I'm not bashing football. As I said, I find it entertaining. I just find the way it is presented on television to be annoying. I wouldn't mind three or four commercial breaks per quarter. But 10? I love baseball, too. No need to bash.
I watched minor league baseball growing up. Most games were about 2 hours. No TV for commercial, just radio. About a minute between innings. It was lots of fun. I find today's MLB unwatchable. The games are long, and with the players changing teams so damn often, how can anyone care? Pro football (including the "pro" BCS teams) is the same way. I went to a 49ers game once. You sit around most of the game waiting for play to resume. All pro sports other than soccer suck. And that's the truth. Edited to add: I rue the day they took Monday Night Football off of free tv. It used to be a guarantee that I could get to sleep early on a Monday night. Just turn it on, and snoooooooooze.
I have no beef with American football, the sport. I actually find games to be pretty exciting. The game has it's flaws, but so does soccer. My biggest beef with football is that it's overcoached. I don't like looking at the sideline and seeing two coaches for every player and two assistants for every coach. They overdo it, and it looks ridiculous. Everyone has gadgets and wires hanging everywhere and they're linked to the booth where you have another team of coaches sitting over computers and clipboards. Whatever happened to throwing the guys out there and letting them play? Football is increasingly becoming a chess game between two coaching staffs IMO. Another beef I have with football is commercials, but that's just me. I personally can't watch any TV channel that has commercial breaks every 15 minutes. I have an abnormal attention span ... I guess I'm the opposite of ADD. Once I start watching something I get into it, and if I'm interrupted it's unlikely that I would want to submerge myself again.
i agree with you on this one. these folks worried about commercials, go figure!!! how many commecails i can fit in before goals in a prem match loloo
It's gotten to the point that unless one of my teams, Univ. of Nebraska, Chicago Bears, or KC Chiefs is playing, I can't watch football. It takes 3½ hours to play a 60 minute game in which there is maybe 20 to 30 minutes of action.
This is the problem that most soccer fans in America can't seem to wrap their little heads around: a lot of people I know that watch baseball are Yankees fans or Mets fans or Red Sox fans etc. Despite what Tommy Lasorda thinks, I don't know of many pure baseball fans, in the sense that if their team fell into the sea, they would still watch the game no matter what. They appreciate the sport, but it's not like they'll turn on the TV and get all excited about a Royals-Blue Jays game just because it's a baseball game. Same with most other sports in America. You only watch all the NFL games you can get your hands on if you're in the office betting pool, and there's only a pool if a lot of the guys at work watch football, and that's only true if most of them grew up with a local team. Here's a secret of mine: the reason I got into soccer? The MetroStars. They were a team just up the Turnpike that we could watch, because going to Giants games on a regular basis didn't seem to make sense when you have our budget way back when. Then I would watch other soccer games, and look, we have a national team too, and there's this World Cup thing that happens every now and then. Interesting. And not much of a debate that soccer was better than football or vice versa because that wasn't the whole point of it. That's the bottom-up approach that most fans of American sports have naturally followed. Eurosnobs and purists, however, come in with a top-down approach, trying to impose a different mindset on most everyday Americans who grew up following sports in the way that I have. That's why you get these ridiculous concepts from the "pure" soccer fans that say you're crazy if you care about a friendly result between Argentina and Togo, and Togo wins. It's also why these soccer vs. football arguments are ridiculous. Not many fans in America woke up one morning and thought football was a great sport; they had a local team to support, and became fans of other teams when the players of their local team got traded away or went up for free agency, etc. Given that that's human nature, I'm pretty sure that's how it works in soccer in the rest of the world. Then there's the idiots who start threads like these and tell you the world is flat.
One thing about televised american football is the ability to replay each play in slow motion. This lets the analysts point things out, as well as alow the audience to see 250 pound freaks of nature colliding full speed with each other. In slow motion, you can see the enormous amount of physical strength, control, grace, and power it takes to play football, especially at the highest levels. This makes it so that even a deaf, blind idiot can see the passion and ability required to play the game. It's contagious and I love it. I wish it would happen for soccer! With American interest growing in soccer, I hope that producers are able to spend more on resources in order to package soccer better than it currently is. I know some games are done pretty well. For example, ManU games tend to have slow motion replays of Ronaldo juking somebody, but I think in time this level of "spotlighting" needs to improve. I have one specific example in mind. U.S. v Germany 2002 World Cup. Landon (love him or hate him) is going towards goal FAST. On his way, he nutmegs a defender and then shoots on goal. My mouth dropped because I KNOW HOW HARD THAT IS!!!! BECAUSE I PLAY IT!!! Here's another one, Feilhaber stupifying 2 Paraguayan mid-fielders as he calmly steps over them, with the ball, as they both go to the ground trying to tackle the ball away.... The list goes on a on. Anyway, I don't think we can expect Joe Sixpack to get it until plays like that are re-played in slow motion and explained by the GOOD analysts.
I don't know that it's a matter of better as much as what you prefer and what you'll tolerate. Pro pig skin to me is a very boring game I think more than anything it's the start stop start stop that drives me up the wall. That and the amount of time wasted to advertising. If I want violent contact sports then I'll watch my Pumas or the All Blacks. For me futbol is pure improvised jazz. Once the rythym is laid down, the game becomes joy to watch, fluid and simple.
A beautiful sentence. Sorry Jeremy but I really can't see how anyone living in the U.S. can say that they 'hate soccer fans bashing other sports.' Soccer is probably the most bashed sport in this country, especially by football fans, so for it to upset you so much just seems a bit strange to me. And any sport where an 1/8-inch head twitch is an infraction and a cause for the game-play, which is already paused, to be paused some more does suck.
Actually, soccer is probably not the most bashed of all sports in the U.S. The big 3 sports each probably get bashed more by fans of the respective sports than soccer does and by a large margin. Soccer does not occupy nearly enough of newsprint, radio or tv airtime to be bashed regularly as are the other sports. Heck, soccer does not even come close to baseball when it comes to taking a pummeling in the media.
Well, I guess that one could do an experiment and call several mainstream sports talk radio shows. Over the course of a week just change your opening line... Hi >Host Name< I am a huge baseball fan and... Hi >Host Name< I am a huge football fan and... Hi >Host Name< I am a huge basketball fan and... Hi >Host Name< I am a huge soccer fan and... Honestly, I don't think you would need to go much beyond that to see who's right.
Couldn't agree with you more. I remember watching a NFL playoff game a couple of years ago. Touchdown. Whole batch of commercials. Kickoff (touchback). Whole bunch of commercials. On the ensuing play, a player got an injury. Whole bunch of commercials. CLICK!
Everyone loves to sarcastically remark how the end of a basketball game takes forever to finish. There's actually four big sports in North America. Seeing as how you're from Texas, I'm going to assume you intentionally left out the best one.