Baseball vs. football-an apples and oranges comparison

I never quite understand the people who dump on baseball by saying it's slow, and then turn and around and tell us that football is a fast, action-packed game. Here I demolish (haha) those arguments.

First, pro football isn't a "game" at all- it's a strikingly successful TV show. NFL teams no more compete with each other (due to the enormous, evenly-split pile of national network cash) than my blog competes with Elmore Leonard's books. Of course, they need to appear to compete. So you have the weekly TV "event."

That lack of actual competition is exactly why the NFL union has so little pull-why would an NFL team owner hike salaries, make the money guaranteed, etc., when an NFL franchise is a money-printing machine even if you go 0-16? The financial incentives just aren't there-and the people who run football are, believe me, all about the money.


It's interesting to note, by the by, just how many NFL teams still can't sell out consistently. Baseball fans pay money and go to games...including spring training games-the Phillies have sold out nearly every meaningless spring training game this year. Football fans, even if there are more of them, watch on TV. There's a big difference in intensity of interest, I'd say.

And I really wouldn't want to argue football is faster than baseball. Time an NFL game, and see how much of the three hours is actually consumed by play. It's about 15 minutes...of three yards and a cloud of dust, over and over again. Exciting plays are few and far between. But I guess it's like NASCAR-their fans will wait endlessly for a crash, football fans will wait endlessly for that five yard TD pass, to be followed by guys strutting around in their ridiculously over-tight unis as if they'd just cured cancer. A huge number of them are fat, too..especially linemen. Only football players, of any major sport's participants, die younger than the population, on average. Wonder why that is?

If you want a continuous action sport, flip on soccer and see how thrilling that is.

Jayson Werth, funnyman

Phillies' soon to be free agent outfielder Jayson Werth fields a bunch of questions, on MMA (ugh), his new beard (cool), and how his hometown of Springfield, IL is like Homer Simpson's fictional Springfield. (Actually, having watched the Simpsons for so long, the fictional Springfield seems more real than local Springfield, PA).

Anyway, Jayson's a fun and likable guy, whom we all should try to get to know, since he soon will be very, very rich, assuming his 2010 season is anything like the last few impressive ones, and maybe even if it isn't.

Bashing the NFL for fun, if not profit

On the eve of yet another Roman-numeraled Super Bowl and a rescheduled Pro Bowl, herewith are one sports fan's gripes about football:

I guess on a basic level I don't really understand the appeal of football. It's not that I don't like sports. I'm a huge fan of sports that have an element of real competition.

It's just that professional football is a charade, as a competitive enterprise. There's so much national TV money, equally divided among the teams, that the notion that these teams compete with each other is silly. Each team makes huge profits, regardless of whether they go 0-16 or 16-0. And that's why the NFL Players' Association is so weak-putting together a good team is largely irrelevant to profitability, so the players have no leverage over management. It's hard to charge a premium for athletic talent when acquiring more talent doesn't significantly affect whether you make money. This isn't so with real sports.

I have a lot of other problems with football, but, to single out one more, as with all other sports with a clock, a decisive lead late in the game settles the issue. What could be more anti-climatic than the last few minutes of a football game when one team has a big lead? If they're ahead, they run out the clock, culminating with the thrilling walk off the field before the clock has even run out. If they're behind, they take a bunch of timeouts to organize hopeless plays, and two minutes of clock time can take 25 of real time. Dull as dishwater.

As George Will wrote, football features two of the worst aspects of contemporary American culture-violence interspersed with committee meetings (huddles.)
I'll add that the NFL also has a shameful record when it comes to taking care of its retired players with medical issues-which is most of them.

This isn't surprising, though, when you consider that history doesn't matter in the NFL. There was a poll in the Philadelphia Inquirer today asking if the current Patriots are the best team of all time. None of the other choices go back farther than 1962. Imagine a poll like that in baseball, or even basketball. Fans of other sports realize that their sports' history didn't begin with national television contracts, but nobody cared about football before the early '60's.


This was originally posted on my other blog, Rene's Apple, on Feb. 3, 2008.