During a typical NFL game, the ball is only in play for 11 minutes!
Yes. For every 3 hours you spend sitting on the couch watching an NFL game, you are only witnessing about bathroom break’s worth of actual football being played! What’s worse - 56% more of a broadcast’s time is devoted to things you have already seen - replays! On average, an hour of the program is spent on commercial breaks and up to 75 minutes (60% of the total time) shows players walking around between plays, huddling, or just standing at the line of scrimmage! Remarkably, shots of cheerleaders are only shown for an average three seconds, while coaches and referees receive around 7% of the total facetime of an NFL game!
I know what you’re saying - “that can’t be right, a single quarter of an NFL game is 15 minutes long!” But American football is not like most other sports. In football, the clock often keeps running regardless of the level of activity on the field. Look at it this way - a typical NFL play takes up about 4 seconds of clock time, but the players are allowed TEN TIMES this interval to just mill about behind the line of scrimmage! In fact, wasting time in this fashion and cheating viewers out of any potential action becomes a strategic advantage for the team that is ahead near the end of a game!
(source)
