If you ever start talking to me about the NFL, MLB or even the NBA, the first words out of my mouth usually are something along the lines of “I don’t watch (insert sport here).” I don’t watch said sports because they just aren’t entertaining to watch.
A big part in me and other people not watching these sports, is the commercials. An average NFL broadcast has 63 minutes of commercials as opposed to 11 minutes of actual game play according to a study by The Wall Street Journal. On the list of the things that take up screen time during a game, game action takes up the least, even behind instant replays. When the game itself is only taking up 5.7 percent of the broadcast, it’s not worth watching.
To quickly get MLB out of the way, I don’t like watching people stand around. Okay well, that was easy. Next!
Now comes the NBA. Yes, it’s fast paced. Yes, it has more game play time than the NFL. No, I don’t watch it. I am not an offensive minded person. I strongly believe that defense is the best way to go, which is the complete opposite mindset of the NBA. The NBA has even put in place rules to help facilitate offensive scoring and sky-high scores. And it frankly doesn’t entertain me to watch a shot get put up every 23 seconds. The shot clock takes away the one thing I can stand about offense. Passing. Watching a team work the ball around, get favorable matchups and then push to the basket is what I enjoy about college basketball (which I do watch from time to time). But sadly the NBA has no room for that. They would rather have Russell Westbrook bum rush the basket every possession. Which, for some, is very entertaining. Just isn’t my thing.
I would offer some suggestions on how to make these sports bearable to people like me, but there are some problems with that.
Firstly, there is just no saving baseball, it’s just too boring. Secondly, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The NFL effectively owns Sunday. Why would they change? I wish they would speed up the play, but why would they? They have no outside competition to push them to make their product better. I mean for crying out loud, the NBA won’t even put a game on Sunday when an NFL game is on. And for the NBA, let the players play some defense. Don’t make defenders vacate the paint every three seconds. That rule effectively cuts the defense in half. But those couple changes won’t make it better. It’s just the sports themselves that have gotten to the point where they are no longer entertaining to watch. At least for me, not the average American apparently.
And on a completely unrelated note, it’s been great writing this column. I’ve learned a lot and I feel like maybe one or two people read my column this year which is an improvement on all the other stories I wrote combined.
Carlson out.