Photo illustration: Jeff Mangiat, photos, Getty Images (2), Associated Press (cheerleader), NFL (replay)

Have you ever watched a football game and felt like there was a whole lot of everything else but not much actual, y’know … football? Well, you were not wrong. According to an article at the Wall Street Journal, the average football game broadcast lasts 3 hours yet contains only 11 minutes of actual live football action. The study involved a frame-by-frame tear-down of several broadcast games and showed that even replays got more time than live action.

So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps. In the four broadcasts The Journal studied, injured players got six more seconds of camera time than celebrating players. While the network announcers showed up on screen for just 30 seconds, shots of the head coaches and referees took up about 7% of the average show.

Check out the breakdown chart:

… just something to think about while you spend 12 hours watching 45 minutes of football this weekend …
Source: Wall Street Journal