Wanna thank Rando Mango for the following article...which basically sums up with some quantitative data what I've been preaching for awhile.
Your basic NFL games have approximately 12 minutes of "action." At an average of 3 hours, that means there are 168 minutes of "inaction." Or a ratio of 1:14
A larger offender is 9-Man-Stand-Around (often referred to as baseball in some parts). Baseball's ratio: 1:16 action to inaction.
Hockey comes in at 1:4 of action vs. inaction.
Soccer, meanwhile, is the only sport where the action far exceeds the inaction...90+ minutes to @ 25 minutes of inaction, giving it a 1 : .3 ratio of action vs. inaction.
Not sayin. Just sayin.
With that said...I'm SO jackt the Steelers start training camp tomorrow.
8 comments:
As much as I want to defend soccer, these figures are being computed using two totally different methods.
While, I agree with how football and hockey are being figured, soccer is being given too high an index and baseball too low.
If you count all the time that the ball is "in play" like you are in football, then the time between pitches where pickoff plays can occur, has to be counted, since the ball is still in play. I admit that it's not the highest level of action, but the ability for something to happen is still possible.
Now, in soccer, they are counting the entire 90 minutes of game time as if the ball is in play for the full 90 minutes, which we all know is false, even with the added time. Between injuries, setting up throw-ins, corner kicks, kicks after a foul, time between goals, and the big time killer taking dives and arguing penalties, you know that you are not getting a full 90 minutes of action.
Now, soccer is still much higher than football, baseball, hockey, or basketball, but this method of proving it is total bullshit.
Sorry Gary
You...you...you....
DEFENDER OF BASEBALL!!
you're just mad your Bucos are selling out...
AGAIN :)
dy,
what 65 minutes of "action" are they referring to, then, if it's not the ball-in-play action?
sincere question...aren't they saying the ball is in play about 65 of the 90 minutes?
seems possible...or am i reading this wrong? (possible too.)
next toronto fc game i'm bringing a stopwatch. though i might have to do the first half and just multiply by two. come half, feeling pretty boozy.
gbvh,
You are figuring it wrong. What they are doing is taking the 90 minutes of game time as the 90 minutes of action, they are then counting the halftime as the 25 minutes of inaction. So, the action to inaction index is 90:25 which works out to 1:.3.
What they should be doing is taking all the time that the clock is running but the ball is out of play, and put that into the inaction side (which is what they are doing in football). I would take a educated guess that out of the 90+ minutes of running time, you will lose 7-10 minutes to dead ball time, which would make the ratio 80:35 or much closer to 2:1.
I'm going to take a hit for the team tonight, and work out a truer action:inaction index on tonight's rockies/pirates. I'll keep the action clock running for the entire time the ball stays in play, then work out the ratio based on the official scorer's total game time in the box score. This, my friends is a dangerous combination of nerdiness and boredom.
RE: "I'm going to take a hit for the team tonight, and work out a truer action:inaction index on tonight's rockies/pirates."
AND YOUR #1 STAR FOR TODAY'S EC POST...
EVGENI MAAAAAAAAAAAALKIN.
oops...i meant Dan Yost
dy,
well, halftime of soccer games is only 15 minutes, not 25.
i didn't read the article word for word but read the soccer part a few paragraphs down and saw no mention of halftime being part of the equation. perhaps it is (?)
but halftime plus playing time is 90 +15, meaning 115 minutes.
(not including injury time.)
when i think about how much time in soccer is wasted waiting for plays/throw-ins/fake injuries etc. i don't think 65 of 90 minutes "playing time" sounds far-fetched.
i'll break out the stopwatch though.
for the record -- i'm a soccer nut but am from the school which believes they should play stop time. maybe two 35-minute halves. the time-wasting from teams which are winning is beyond embarrassing.
and i've never heard FIFA ever mention it as one of their issues.
when montreal played toronto last week, the former only needed a draw. it was 1-1 in the second half and braz (former toronto player) went down with injury for five minutes.
then the montreal keeper decided that the streamers slung 20 feet behind him were a distraction so before every goal kick etc. he'd waddle over trying to clear the area. he got a yellow for time wasting but in the end, what's a yellow?
ok i did a re-read.
basically they took the lazy way out and just did the halftime thing (which they still misinformed us as being 25 minutes, not 15.)
either way soccer is still miles ahead of others ... i'd bet ball-in-play action is 60ish minutes, give or take five.
while there may be 60 minutes of action in hockey, games take about two and a half hours to finish.
soccer is done in an hour 45 -- always. (give or take a few minutes for injury time.)
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