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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
caddis If my memory of his account is correct, the three-hour extravaganza that is an NFL game comprised something like eleven minutes of players actually playing.
I always heard growing up that it was six minutes. And yet, on the DirecTV Sunday NFL Ticket satellite package, there's a feature called "Short Cuts," which is every game edited down to just the action. It goes: play, whistle, cut to both teams at the line. There are a couple of non-action scenes included in each game, such as a particularly relevant referee announcement, but I doubt those add up to more than 30 seconds. The games tend to come in right around 23 minutes, not 11 or 6.
And I find that the editors cut those games too close. I'd like them to let the plays run a little longer, rather than cutting right as the ballcarrier falls, often before the whistle, and I'd prefer if the scene started when the offense stepped up to the line, not with the quarterback in mid-cadence. So I think there's more than 23 minutes worth of "action," though I don't define action as "players running." I define it as a part of the game I want to see. Similarly, I wouldn't say that the action in a baseball game starts when the ball leaves the pitcher's hand.
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