Alright, so I was curious the other day about how long those NFL games actually last on TV. I mean, we all sit down to watch, and it feels like it goes on forever, right? So, I decided to do a little digging and time it myself. What I found was pretty interesting.
First off, I grabbed my stopwatch and settled in for a game. Now, they say a game is supposed to be 60 minutes, with four 15-minute quarters. But man, it’s way longer than that in reality. There’s the 12-minute halftime in the middle, which is fair enough, but then you’ve got all these other things that stop the clock.
I started noticing all the breaks in play. You’ve got timeouts, which each team can use three times per half. Then there are the TV timeouts. These are for commercials, and they happen a bunch of times during the game. Then you’ve got time for the officials to review plays, and players take their sweet time to get in their place. Every time the ball goes out of bounds or there’s an incomplete pass, the clock stops too. All these little things really add up.
So, I’m timing all this, and the game I watched ended up taking almost three hours and 15 minutes from start to finish. That’s a whole lot more than the 60 minutes of actual playtime! And it wasn’t even a close one. Also, some games have an overtime period that can add another 15 minutes to the game. I read somewhere that the average NFL game lasts around three hours and 12 minutes, and that sounds about right based on what I saw.
Then I got curious about the Super Bowl. We all know that’s a big deal, with the halftime show and all. From what I found, the average over the last 20 years is about three and a half hours! That halftime show is super long, and they pack in even more commercials than usual.
Here’s a little breakdown of what I figured out:
- Regular season game: Around 3 hours and 12 minutes on average.
- Super Bowl: About 3.5 hours or even longer.
So, yeah, NFL games on TV are a serious time commitment. But hey, it’s all part of the experience, right? You get the game, the commercials, the halftime show, and all the other stuff that goes along with it. Just make sure you’ve got plenty of snacks and drinks on hand, ’cause you’re gonna be there for a while!
Why it turns so long?
The most impressive thing is not how long the games are, but how much actual action takes place in them. I found some information from Pro Football Network that says in those three hours and 12 minutes, there’s only about 18 minutes of actual gameplay. That’s crazy! The rest of the time is spent setting up plays, waiting for commercials to end, or reviewing calls. So, while the games may be long, they are packed with breaks.
But hey, that’s football, right? It’s not just about the non-stop action; it’s about the strategy, the anticipation, and the whole spectacle of it all. And for us fans, those breaks give us time to chat, grab more snacks, or just take a breather before the next big play.
