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Comment by spo81rty | Hacker News Reader

My complaints about the NFL is really the ridiculous length of the games and slow pace. The games are just boring. I've turned to be more of a soccer fan.

In regards to sports revenues, I thinkit makes more sense for us as consumers to just subscribe directly to the leagues for the content. I signed up for MLS Live and can watch any game I want. Cut the cable stations out of it. Make the leagues create a product that people want to pay for.

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It's always boggled my mind how popular the NFL is given that you get 5 seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of sitting around waiting for the next 5 seconds. Especially since "slow pace" is used as an argument against baseball.

It's a sport tailor made for TV. Watch the action, then rewatch it from a variety of angles and with analysis. The stopping is actually good for the game, since TV allows you to revisit the play over and over again. If that's not your thing, I get it, but if it is, they keep you plenty engaged.

You're supposed to watch the games with family and friends and share conversation and snacks during the game. The pauses in the action are there to give you time to spend with each other without letting any conversation get deep, meaningful, and awkward.

At least as of 1-2 years ago, NFL.com rebroadcasted games with everything but the plays themselves edited out. They took around 30 min. each, and were pretty watchable.

These types of game replays exist for both hockey and soccer. You lose context sometimes but for the most part the games remain cohesive and very exciting. Showing every pass, penalty, goal, turnover, and assist only couched by a few contextual seconds on either end of the clip gives you the full impression of the game without costing you an entire night... with the only setback being that you can't participate in the next day water cooler, if that's your thing.

To be clear: The NFL broadcast I'm talking about shows every play, every moment of action. NFL games have 60 minutes of clock time; much of that time is spent between plays in huddles, etc. Thus 30 min can show you everything.

Yup, it's great. $100/year. Watch "full" games (minus halftime show and commercials, so it's only like 2h) and "condensed" games where they cut out the timeouts, replays, and time between plays (which can be a bit jarring, but watchable).. and only 35-45min per game.

Why almost all of my NFL watching is via RedZone. (though I have it as a bolt-on to my corded service)

I find the popularity of RedZone to be bizarre; you're not watching football any more, you're watching a live version of sportscenter. If you don't find the games entertaining enough to watch, why do you want to follow the sport at all?

When my team (Cowboys) plays, I'll generally watch the full game. I also watch some SNF/MNF/TNF games. But yes, it's fair to say I don't find every part of every game interesting (like commercials, cheesy halftime commentary, endless review of plays that will obviously be upheld/overturned in replay, 2 and 17 draw plays, etc) However, filtering out noise doesn't make me less of a sports fan, any more than reading headlines on HN makes me less of an industry enthusiast.

If there's 8 games going on at once, and more than one of them turn out to be good, RedZone is awesome because you essentially get to watch all the good games at once while keeping tabs on everything else.

It's definitely a different experience that immersing yourself in one game and loses some of that richness, but to say RedZone is just like Sportscenter indicates you're not really familiar with either.

I am, my brother-in-law loves RedZone and I've watched it with him several times. To me, it is as I described. I don't know how you can say that you "essentially get to watch all the good games" if you only get to see the scoring opportunities. You can't really get a feel for the game in 30 second clips here and there. Things that happened before the 20 yard line matter too.

Maybe its what Sportcenter used to be. Today its filled with weird entertainment, clips from press conferences, ongoing stories, etc. I'd bet maybe 7 minutes of each 30 minute episode is actual daily sports highlights and scores (not to mention the commercials that aren't present on RedZone) I think that's why the comparison between RedZone and Sportcenter was considered less than apt.

Red Zone is mostly for fantasy football players. It's far too shallow for actual fans.

The deep, tense, complicated, sophisticated overtime tie game the Cardinals and Seahawks played last Sunday was among the very best games of the past year but would have had near zero profile on Red Zone.

That's a good point; fantasy and gambling are two areas where I could see RedZone as being valuable.

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