Baseball vs Football

I get into arguments all the time with friends about which sport is better, baseball or football.  My allegiances clearly lie with baseball, but many of my friends favor football.  The more I think about it, though, the more I realize how flawed their arguments are.  The biggest complaint I hear is that baseball is slow.  Well, I could say the same thing about football.  There are so many breaks in the action in football.  First of all, the pace of play itself isn't exactly hyperspeed.  There's anywhere from 25-40 seconds between plays complete with huddles, audibles, and substitutions.  I'll admit that these no huddle, up tempo offenses are making up for that a little, though.  But in baseball a pitch is thrown every 10-12 seconds.  At least it should be.  Some pitchers work much slower than others.  But, still, point for baseball.  Then there's the penalties in football.  They stop the action and take up time.  Plus, officials often have to huddle up to discuss what the penalty is.  Baseball doesn't have penalties, and umpire conferences are few and far between.  Another point for baseball.  Next we have injuries.  A football game usually has a few injuries which stop the action.  It's understandable because football is a violent game, but it still slows things down.  Baseball injuries rarely stop the game, and they don't occur during every game like they do in football.  Point, again, for baseball.

So far baseball is winning the pace of play of argument.  Here's where it gets competitive, though.  Timeouts.  In football, each team has six timeouts per game.  That's twelve times where the action can be stopped.  This doesn't even take into account official reviews, which could add countless more stoppages based on the complicated replay rules that I don't understand.  Baseball isn't a timed sport so there are no official timeouts.  But managers can stop play to go talk to their pitchers.  In fact, catchers can do that too.  I don't know the exact average of mound conferences per game, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was around twelve or even higher.  And baseball currently only has reviews on disputed home run calls, which don't happen every game.  This could change though.  Based on this evidence, we'll call this one a draw.  Next we have commercials.  A football game has a lot of commercials.  One of my biggest pet peeves about watching football is after a score, they go to commercial, come back for the kickoff and then go to ANOTHER commercial.  Why?!  Just get on the field and play.  I found a stat that said during an average NFL broadcast there is an hour of commercials.  During an average MLB game there is 34 minutes of commercials.  Advantage, baseball.

I actually found an interesting article about football broadcasts in which the Wall Street Journal broke down exactly what we see when watching an NFL game.  They found that the average amount of time the ball is in play during an NFL game is 11 minutes.  11 minutes!!!!  The average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays.  There are 75 minutes of players huddling, standing around, or just waiting for the action to resume.  Here is a link to the full article in case you'd like to read it http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406  Those are some telling statistics though.

I will admit that the moneyball approach to baseball which encourages running deep counts at the plate has lengthened games a bit, but there's still plenty of action to keep the game moving.  But the idea that baseball is a slower game than football just doesn't hold any water with me.  There are just so many breaks in the action during a football game.  That's why I prefer baseball, because things are always moving.  Now this is just one argument that people have against baseball.  I will look at some others in future posts.  Until then, I will enjoy the rest of the World Series.