This is for all of you ignorant, condescending, self-righteous, thick-skilled simpletons who insist on endlessly whining about how boring you find the sport of soccer. Please set aside for a moment that the above descriptions could easily apply to me as well. I submit that soccer is in fact more entertaining, as well as less time consuming than more American wastes of energy such as football or baseball. If most of you malcontents had an attention span beyond that of a house fly you might be able to see this for yourselves. Fear not, however, as I shall spell it all out for you here.
First of all let's discuss actual viewing time for a soccer game compared to football or baseball. Certain rare exceptions aside, soccer will take up a total of two hours of your time. This unfolds in two forty-five minute halves, a twenty minute halftime, and under ten minutes of extra time due to injuries on the field and other dicking around. (It should also be noted that a soccer player is not permitted to lay on the field for minutes on end, either---malingerers who might delay the game are placed on a stretcher and removed from the field post haste.) Compare this to American football, which is thirty minutes shorter in game clock time, the proceedings somehow take a full hour more to complete in real time. Don't even get me started on baseball.
I say football “somehow” takes an hour longer rhetorically, of course. We know exactly why football takes so long: there is precious little actual action, punctuated by committee meetings, (also known as “huddles”), and seemingly endless commercial breaks. Two minute warning, you say? I'm pretty sure all parties, including the viewer, are perfectly able to make note of this on their own, should they wish. Thanks for caring just the same, NFL! And to make things worse, viewers are now subjected to periodic bouts of a “play under review”, in which officials painstakingly examine the previous play to make sure the referees on the field ruled correctly. Never mind that these calls will inevitably even out over the course of a game or season; the authorities seem to insist on making this game still more tedious, (and of course sell more advertising). In the process, any natural ebb and flow of the action is compromised even more, and the overall product suffers.
Crass, flow-canceling advertising and officiating interruptions of football aside, consider the actual time of action, i.e. when the ball is actually in play. In soccer, the ball is in play for well over 90% of the time the game is in progress, and there are no commercial breaks. In addition, during the time a typical soccer hater is insisting that “nothing is happening”, stellar plays are being made at a decent clip. Well thought-out passes, superb control of the ball, inspired movement to avoid defenders, brilliant defending itself, etc. Then of course there are free kicks and corner kicks, both of which can be quite entertaining, and actual goals, which are nothing less than little slices of magic. Football, on the other hand, has a total time of action of barely over 10% of the actual game time. The ball is in play really only occasionally, and the bulk of that time consists of plays that are wholly unspectacular, e.g. plain runs up the middle, incomplete or dumped-off passes, or penalties. Yet somehow soccer is the sport more boring and unspectacular of the two.
Obviously no one sport is right for everyone. All of them have their flaws in officiating, player behavior, rules, and time consumption. The folly is in dubbing soccer to be “boring”, when the fact is it probably takes more skill and endurance to play, is far more continuous, and most certainly takes less time than your favorite. In a final burst of arrogance, I must say America has many attributes of which to be proud, for better or worse. It seems safe to say that a decent attention span and appreciation of subtlety is probably not among them, hence the general distaste for a game that the entire rest of the world embraces as their favorite. American football fans in particular really need to get over themselves. God knows you have enough down time during games to stop and consider it.
