Your first three points make sense, but don't lead to this conclusion at all. People are not going to rationally say "football leads to traffic so I'm not going to watch it anymore." Football is entertaining, which is why it has an audience. Whether or not the negatives you outlined above are funded by the gov't is an entirely different matter.
I used to enjoy it, at least when the Steelers are playing. Then I got into soccer, eventually getting a more expensive cable package to watch the Premier League.
Now when I watch football again, I am painfully aware of the time between plays, the incessant commercials, and now the ever increasing number of "official reviews". Seems like every 3rd or 4th play, an official has to leave the field, watch the play over and over and over and over again for 5 minutes, before announcing that, yes, they got the call right in the first place.
Soccer, the action flows pretty constantly, and it's all done in under 2 hours. Watching football is a grueling, four hour commitment. There goes your Sunday afternoon (and evening, if you are enough of a glutton to stick around for Sunday Night Football).
It's starting to all seem like Farmville. Something terribly boring, that somehow the general public has convinced itself is a lot of fun.
(But please don't tell anyone I said this, I live in Pittsburgh!)
Shirling though... Now that's a sport.
Is it really such a crazy idea that people like things that you don't? I like football and don't like soccer. Some people have fun playing Farmville. There's no objective criteria for entertainment, everyones' brain is tickled in different ways by different activities.
Do they? I had this in mind when I made that comment:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cleverest-explanation-as-...
Makes an interesting argument about Farmville's success being based more on creating social obligations, than on being inherently enjoyable. I was wondering if some of football's continuing popularity also rests on social obligations, like people in your municipality talking about the team, wearing the jerseys, posting messages on social media, participating in fantasy leagues, and using support of the team as a proxy for civic pride.
I suspect there are those, like yourself, who actually like watching the games. But I also suspect there are a large number of people who watch for social reasons.
I just can't be on the internet anymore without reading about 'social' anymore.
People watch teen mom for 'social' reasons, or 'the bachelor' for social reasons. Top chef, hells kitchen, x-files, I can keep going.
Humans are 'social' creatures by nature. Competition is human by nature. Survival of the fittest, feats of strength, preening, showing off, being knowledgeable about current events, speaking intelligently about the goings-on on the world, communication and idle chat about pop culture, thats how some people relate in their day-to-day 'shallow' interactions with others.
I can't do this whole 'social' thing anymore. Its almost getting to the point where prime numbers are offensive, because they're too unique, its not fair to the other numbers. Am I alone in this? Am I just that ignorant? Sincere question, as I'm a fairly left-leaning person highly motivated to bring the 'little guy' up and make a positive impact on humanity.
"boring" and "fun" are subjective. That you find something boring doesn't mean that it is objectively boring and that those who find it fun have deluded themselves. It just means that people have different entertainment preferences. Which is, decidedly, not news.
You are not their target audience, I'm afraid
Amazed that people still think that other wide-held opinions can't be valid because one person doesn't like it.
Some people say "computer stuff" is boring. Doesn't change the fact that there are entire huge communities (this being one) dedicated to it.
Different people have different opinions. The inability to comprehend that says more about the person making that statement than it does about the people with a wide-held opinion.
Also, as a fan of all sports, I have to say there is probably nothing more entertaining(at least to me) than the NFL Red Zone Channel. Almost no stop in the action, skip most replays, see all the big plays, often in real time. Of course playing fantasy football plays a big part in that.
Hockey is a great game to watch as well with pretty constant shots and action.
Lots of people I know don't understand how I like hockey or soccer. Some can't stand football. Some like watching sports I find boring, but I don't begrudge them or declare that a sport I find boring must be boring to everyone in the world and they're all somehow brainwashed or confused.
When I played in high school, our soccer league had unlimited substitutions, and, even though the skill level was pretty low, the games were more entertaining to watch than professional soccer, because people were actually trying. You start dogging it, and you'd get the hook.
Yeah, but it's the same level of action in a single NFL play spread over an entire match.
There are constant one on one matchups of a dribbler trying to beat an attacker, or clever link up passes, or long balls contested by attackers and defenders, or, yes, shots on goal.
A fair number of NFL plays are just running up the middle for 1 or 2 yards gain.
So I really fail to see your point.
Football is boring too really.
I do not know a lot about American football but I recall hearing or reading somewhere that the breaks in play make it a more popular spectator sport. As it allows for discussion and analysis of the prior event in a way more freeflowing sports do not.
I agree! Why spend time on something that I have no effect on the outcome of? That's why I prefer gaming (especially online, against real other people). (Some people think online gaming is boring. But the fact that I do not understand how someone could possibly think that, is not an argument against their opinion.)
> the action flows pretty constantly
Ah, yes, those gripping 2 hour matchups ending in a score of... 2-1. :P
> Pittsburgh
I like Pittsburgh! I have a couple of good friends who live there.
(And I do love the organization and what it means to the city, just finding it harder to actually enjoy the games as much as I used to.)
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487042812045750028...
I dislike the game because the players get horribly injured, either immediately, or decades later. The NFL is a company that makes money by encouraging degenerative brain disease in its employees.
having some sort of depth is required for popularity, even if it is not sufficient. chess is not a popular sport for other reasons, probably the lack of money and the sheer marathon that is a high level game. soccer has been gaining ground in the US because moneyed interests have been pushing the sport and trying to build the franchises for years. the level of investment required for a nationally popular sport is steep. no one's going to put that money into chess any time soon. like all things in our world, capital is often the difference between "is" and "isn't", but other ingredients are also required.
That doesn't explain why it's more popular than, say, basketball, though...
When you think about what makes, say, movies exciting, it's plot twists. And a basketball game has a very high change of having none -- the better team plays a bit better than the lesser team, and at the end of the game, they have a few more points.
For football, baseball, hockey, and soccer, there are far more plot twists.
Football and baseball are more punctuated, stop-start action.
Besides the hits,
1. The short season
You're always left wanting more.
There's an order of magnitude fewer NFL games compared to the NBA, MLB, or NHL. And it's convenient - you can follow pro football and have most of the year off and, during the season, most of the week off.
2. The action
Yeah, the ball is only in play for a few minutes, but there are 60-70 plays per game - that's a lot of punctuated action compared to the snail's pace of baseball or the constant back and forth of the other sports. And the plays are more likely to be do-or-die drive or game changers than in the other sports. It's way more edge-of-your-seat.
Those two features are somewhat "drug-like," imo.
Strongly agree. I've tried many a time to 'get into' baseball, but every day is just way too much. It also tends to increase the importance of each individual game, which (ignoring the quasi-nihilistic "it's just a sport, man") is another reason for the popularity.
ESPN made poker entertaining. I wish they would try with Chess. I would watch something with good commentators explaining the game as it unfolded.
"I don't understand why it exists as a popular sport anyways, it's 5 seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of two guys talking about it. The average football game has 11 minutes of action[1]. Everything but the last ~8 minutes of the 4th quarter is boring. Yet Americans love it. I don't get it."
better framed as a question like such:
"I'm not quite sure I understand the American fascination with football. Can someone provide context?"
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-08-12/only-stupid...
I also never understood the appeal of professional football games, with no band playing there at all. It feels like the "spectacle" type of gladiatorial games--the re-enactments of the Battle of Wherever, with condemned criminals portraying the Foovians on one side, and slaves portraying the Barrites on the other. But instead of getting killed outright, the participants just get a very mild case of severe brain damage. And instead of non-stop action, they stand around planning their next stratagem, as though it were not essentially "push the other guy away, so our guy can run past him".
Some people just enjoy the sport without all the ridiculous fanfare!
Some people enjoy the game. Those who do not enjoy it should not be forced to pay for the stadium. I would even oppose using eminent domain to acquire a contiguous area of land large enough to build one, with the sole possible exception of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where the Packers are very nearly a municipal corporation due to their "ownership" structure (non-voting, non-dividend-paying, restricted-resale stocks don't count as ownership, in my opinion).
Selling the naming rights to the stadium to the highest bidder is just twisting the knife in the back, really.
This article is similar in character to economic retrospectives of cities that hosted Olympics competitions. The IOC always promises an instant boost to prosperity, but that never seems to materialize. I have been to Turner Field (formerly the primary 1996 Olympic stadium), and the surrounding area does not look very boosted (although other parts of Atlanta are admittedly much worse). The stadium is coming down in 2017, as a 20-year-old building is apparently no longer good enough for the Braves to play baseball in it. Their previous home at Atlanta-Fulton Cty Stadium only lasted 30 years.
For reference purposes, Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are both more than 100 years old and still in use. Stadiums in Kansas City, LA, and Anaheim are pentagenarians. Milwaukee County Stadium made it to 50 before the Brewers traded up. Yankee Stadium retired at 85. Tiger Stadium lasted 87 years. Candlestick Park retired at 53. Memorial Stadium (Baltimore, 2nd) lasted 53 years.
From a cursory examination of history, a city is much better off building its own smaller stadium, sized for basketball, hockey, and rock concerts, than one that can only reasonably be filled by MLB baseball, NFL football, Olympic track and field, club soccer (in Europe), and musical superstars. Offering public subsidy to a privately owned single-sport stadium strikes me as brain-damaged beyond all reasonable measure, especially when the sports franchise seeking to build it is currently leasing a publicly-owned facility.
Football is typically held up as the quintessential American sport in many regions of the country. Those who don't proclaim their interest or love for it do so at the risk of being seen as outsiders and potentially treated as outcasts.
This starts at a very early age for many Americans due to the close ties between the education systems and football programs. Starting while they're children, those who are capable of playing are often expected to play, and those who aren't capable are expected to participate as fans. This continues through to high school, college, and to the NFL.
Even if the fans don't particularly like the game itself, they often like the social aspect of it, or just pretend to like to to avoid being stigmatized.
Association football (soccer) and cricket play a similar role in other countries. They can be seen as a form of religion, in some sense.
"They can be seen as a form of religion, in some sense."
In my family it was Sunday School with mom and then football with Grandpa and Dad.
Football is kind of like drinking...even if you don't like it at some point it is easier to just pretend and fit in.
Ideally, all this effort would be put towards a more productive end, such as rooting for your local FIRST robotics team.
Though, since we're all humans, you'd think we have enough common ground with each other anyway, what with death, taxes, relationship problems, etc.
Baseball games are really fun to watch in person though, more so than football in my opinion. It's just an excuse to drink and shoot the shit while hearing a bat crack every once in a while, always a great night out
Also checkout basketball, especially if you're in the bay.
So, I couldn't imagine going just to have a few beers, in fact more likely to abstain on principle.
Didn't even see a minute of baseball.
Two totally different sports, really. Buy some tickets to some games and see what tickles your fancy.
If you do go to a baseball game though, I recommend at least once getting bleacher seats (basically equivalent to general entry). That's where the fun happens!
If you live in the midwest (the middle of the country; from top to bottom) or the south (southwest of the country), football without a doubt.
If you live anywhere else, you can pick and choose. To me, baseball is a lot more intellectually stimulating and has a lot more interesting strategy, but the more I learn about football, the more I see how much goes into it as well. I was a rabid baseball fan as a youth, but these days can't be bothered to spend the time required to watch a game (let alone 160 games a season). As such, I'm more of a football fan now-- frankly, there is more action, and there are fewer games per year so it's easier to follow a team.
Unless you live in St. Louis, then it's baseball.
"...or the south (southwest of the country)"
I think you mean the southeast?
Texas?
73.7 million attendance last year, by far the world's most attended league. There isn't a close second. To pull 30,517 fans per game to 2,417 games is truly astounding.
To put it into context, the MLB is almost as popular as the NBA and NHL combined.
College sports are also fun to follow.
College basketball can also be some of the most entertaining basketball to watch. There's a lot more variation in style and strategy than you typically see in NBA or international ball. As long as you don't get stuck seeing too many Big Ten style grind-it-out defensive slugfests.
It's kind of like the World Cup, with less flopping.
Football and baseball are things to which people are inoculated when young. I suppose the same is true of basketball but I'm just not familiar with it beyond attempting to play it in a pickup fashion while in school.
You'd think curling would be boring, but I've watched it a few times and there's a lot going on.
And never mind golf, which I love to watch. It's been compared to watching grass grow. I can't argue.
At least in the college game, there's the issue of "tempo", which has a tactical as well as (I'm sure) a desire to reduce that time between plays. "Tactical" because it puts pressure on the defense to assemble more quickly.
It gets even worse - I like college ball, but the pros look to me like they just run their pattern and stop, where you might find a college quarterback that will improve most of a game.
Watching with other people is pretty good. You chat while the commentators are going on about whatever or they are playing yet another incessant commercial then you watch the play and go back to talking.