While American football has action, it is the chess aspect that makes it intriguing. Set-up,Move, Counter move. If you like Chess, you will like it. Soccer is pure sport, constant thinking, reacting, exerting. Apples and oranges.
Most commercials are run during natural stoppages in play. However, these breaks are usually extended to fit in more commercials, and THAT's what slows the games down. In baseball, commercials add three extra minutes between innings. In football, changing possession suddenly takes two minutes each time so we get our full slate of ads in. Don't get me started on basketball and its TV timeouts every 4 minutes of play. Most people only watch sports on TV, (where other shows are interrupted every 7-10 minutes), so we don't notice how commercials suck the life out of the action. You'll notice the difference if you see in person a non-televised game and a televised one. The televised ones have a lot more dead time. Ever been at a stadium wondering why they're standing around for minutes on end? TV Timeouts!
The truth of the matter is Soccer is an American misspelling for Football. A game that is played with the feet and a ball is called football. The Football played in America is gridball. Everything is in blocks including the game and should be called what it is. It is not football but gridball. So my answer is there is no comparison. Football as we in Britain know it, is the beautiful game. Arsenal are the best exponents of the beautiful game.
No, there are many kinds of football, including American, Australian, Canadian, Gaelic, Rugby and your favorite, association football, or soccer. "Soccer" is a word of British origin -- and still used in that country -- that is universal in the English-speaking world and, unlike "football," unambiguous.
Not a good analogy. A 100-meter dash stops after 10 seconds because it is finished. Its ultimate goal -- crossing the 100-meter line -- has been accomplished. There's nothing left to do. In gridiron football, the stops come EN ROUTE to the ultimate goal. Or, more accurately, en route to possibly accomplishing the ultimate goal. I understand that you're saying each "play" is its own little goal. That's fine, but that's not how it's going to be viewed by many fans immersed in the world of soccer, because they're accustomed to seeing plays come rat-a-tat-tat, one after another. The explosion of soccer on American cable the past few years has dramatically changed my life. I simply cannot watch football and baseball anymore. I can hardly bear to watch even highlights. Basketball I can still dig, but even then I'm more content if I have my DVR remote in hand to fly past the stoppages.
What ratings are there that show that people who have watched lots of soccer do not find baseball and football boring? I, for one, would be very interested to see them.
Of course it's not a perfect analogy, but my point is someone who watches an American football game and wonders why the game keeps "stopping" clearly doesn't "get it." I was watching, or trying to watch, rugby on TV recently, and I realized why people in rugby-playing countries might not get American football. They probably think it is just like rugby, and a game of rugby that stopped every 10 seconds would seem pretty stupid. In order for American football to become more popular in those countries, it would have to emphasize and explain how it is different from rugby.
Just coz somebody doesn't like it, doesn't mean they don't get it. I think I have a pretty good understanding of football ... I watch at least one NFL game per week for many years. But even I'm losing the passion for the league. There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is the rhythm of the game. There is just so much stoppage that is unnecessary. For example I know it doesn't take 3 minutes to get the offense on the field after a punt. Those guys should be able to get in and snap the ball in 30 seconds if they wanted to. Instead they have a 2-3 minute break so they can shove an extra 4-5 commercials down our throats. That's just one example, there are many more. You can't hide from the fact that it takes more than 3 hours to play a 60 minute game. The other 2 hours is replays and commercials. Unless you have a profound interest in seeing the same play 5 times in a row, and a very high tolerance for commercial interruptions, you should be put off by this somewhat. If you are a neutral objective observer that is. I understand people will put up with anything if it's ingrained in them since childhood.
I draw a distinction between those who don't like all the commercial breaks of the NFL -- a category I'm in myself -- and those who don't understand why the game stops between plays. Those in the latter group don't understand a key tenet of the game. One of the reasons I like college ball is because there's fewer commercials. I hope one day the NFL broadcasters do a study that finds there's a limit to the number of ads they can show before they start to lose people to channel-flipping, DVR-pausing and kitchen breaks. That is, unless they use that as an excuse to put the games on pay-per-view.
I think that the average American understands 'why' there are so many breaks. We all played high school ball and have watched it our whole lives. I was a die-hard Rams fan until they booked on me and I have watched every UCLA game this season. Football is a very procedural game. There are countless rules, procedures, specialized players, yadda yadda. Really the two cannot be compared. I am much more likely to watch a soccer game that I have no vested interest in than a football game I have no vested interest in, though. No contest. They definitely don't please the same parts of the brain, though. And for those that believe American football is tougher... I was watching an American football match the other day and a player lost his helmet and still dived forward for a first down. The announcers went on and on about how he tough he was and how unnatural it is to thrust one's unexposed head into danger. Now, a human head is not as hard as a football helmet but soccer players constantly thrust their unexposed heads into danger. And that takes guts.
I was out of town for a wedding and visiting the house it was held at, an MSU football game was held. Whenever the stoppages came on they would just fast forward through thos and I got bored after watching 5 minutes of it. I do agree with the above post, especially for the keepers.
Yah but people arent trying to knock the crap out of that soccer player going for the header. Theres a reason (concussions anyone??) why football players wear helmets.
American football is alot like baseball. You can only watch 1 quarter or in baseball 2 innings. I would love to meet a person who can actually sit and watch both full games. I have friends who are football fans and when we get together they put on football, but we never sit to watch the whole game. I also believe football games are nearly impossible to watch unless you are gambling on a team or you're watching for fantasy reasons, and this is why they link both things heavily on the sport. It's also very easy to follow(sunday games, stop after every play) and this is why women follow it big time.
Um... I don't know about your friends, but I can watch football nonstop from 1 o'clock to midnight every Sunday. (Not that that would be a healthy habit.) Considering the TV ratings and attendance levels of football, I don't think I'm alone. And I'm pretty sure football, like all the major spectator sports, is far more popular among men than among women.
Theres a nation of 300 million who do it every sunday. And are you complaining that games are only held on sunday? Because I know alot of premier league fans moan on how games are not just on saturday anymore at 3 pm. So youre saying women are too unintelligent to watch soccer?
Huh? Anyway, yes there's a reason that football players wear helmets; they don't want them to get hurt.
No you're wrong. From the time the 100 meter race starts until the end takes 10-11 seconds. They complete it without stopping. I know how Am Football works. I respect the players, they are tremendous athletes. But for me, I cannot watch a game on TV because it is as slow as molasses.
But if you were to watch the 100-meter event at the Olympics, which would include several qualifying heats leading up to the medal race, you'd see them standing around 99% of the time. Only 1% of the time would be action. Yet it would still be far more exciting to watch than a marathon, in which there is continuous action for two hours but little actually happening. You could say the same about other sports. When you go to a racetrack, you see several two-minute races separated by 17-minute gaps. Horses can run for more than two minutes at a time -- they could simply to a two-hour race at a slower speed. But no one would show up to watch (and the tracks would lose the vast majority of their income from wagering). And which gets more interest during the Winter Olympics: the downhill or the 50-kilometer cross-country ski race? The exception that proves the rule, if you will, is auto racing. Hundreds of thousands of people will pack in to watch drivers turn left for three hours. But non-fans don't get it at all, and that's just my point. On the other hand, I went to a sprint track once to watch races that lasted only a few minutes, and it was great. A 100-meter dash, downhill-skiing or sprint-racing competition can last just as long as a marathon, 50km ski race or 500-mile NASCAR race, but they're all more exciting because they are done in short bursts rather than one long slog. When you watch an American football game, you know something is going to happen every 30 seconds or so (except during those damned commercials). When someone unititated watches soccer or rugby, several minutes can go by where nothing seems to happen. I trust that you know a little bit about American football. But I can't imagine that you really "get" the game, because I don't see how someone who gets the game can consider it slow. Americans complain that football is too violent or too complicated, but never that it is slow. Baseball, yes. NBA basketball, maybe. Soccer, of course. But never football. Only foreigners say that.
Now that we are n playoff season, soccer is a very different sport to baseball and football. Soccer is a game of passion; you have to live it with the players to enjoy it. Probably not easy for the casual American Sports fan. Baseball and Football are cerebral sports, where you analyze it from the perspective of a coach. Both are excellent for repeated replays and strategy discussions with their many breaks. You can watch both while doing something else like studying or having a conversation. Soccer is all encompassing, if you can get into it. I think Soccer will be the third tier sport at best in the US as it asks a lot more of the viewer, which few people want to give. Even I as a soccer fanatic have to limit my intake. Theother two are more laid back to watch.
I don't see baseball as a strategy game. I think that any 6th grader with 3 years of little league on his resume' could manage a MLB team from a strategic point of view. I do see it as a chess match, though, where the pitcher, catcher and batter are concerned.
What about the decisions about your batting order, who you walk, your pitching order, designated hitters, defensive players, stealing bases, sacrifice flies, and bunts. It sounds like a lot of strategy and tactics; I am pretty new to it. I think if you watched soccer in slow motion, you could analyze it the same way. In fact, the funny thing about baseball is that most of the game you watch is in replay mode. Hilarious.
I thought most decisions made by baseball managers are made based on statistics. I'm talking about pitcher - batter history stats. Talking about pitcher effectiveness at different pitch counts. I'm talking about knowing where a batter is most likely to hit a ball in a certain situation. All that stuff is in the numbers...