One of the biggest reasons I didn't stay an engaged US football fan is that to keep up with what's going on you need to watch dozens of hours of games per week. Just a ludicrous time investment. Wild how many people (mostly men) appear to have the time to do this, especially the ones with kids.
This is what’s great about being a fan of an out-of-market team. I only care to watch one game a week, and half the time I can’t even watch them
1 game a week, and it’s Georgia football. Anything else and I feel like a lazy slob or neglectful husband/dad. It’s this kind of self inflicted guilt that helps me grind harder.
Having College Gameday Live self-immolate by focusing the entire program on Pat McAfee and an ever more feeble Lee Corso, really helped free up 3 hours of my Saturday. But also, the recap shows do a pretty good job of distilling everything that happened, so you don't have to keep up live
TV is just on NFL all Sunday. You passively come in and out when you’re around.
Sydney I am never "around" hahaha
Well come on OVER George
Saturday is all college football.
They don't have the time is the thing, they just neglect their families
It’s become all consuming, hasn’t it? It used to be just Sunday + Monday night. Then they added Thursday night & now the occasional Tuesday. If you play fantasy ~ you have to care about every game for your players points. Layer on betting & who has time for anything else? So glad I don’t watch
When I first became a baseball fan (early 20s, single) I said to one of my male friends, how do you watch games and get anything done? It’s like 9 hours just on the weekend! He said, well, your mistake is in thinking we get anything done.
I used to be this in my early 20s. Impossible now. Can’t even find games, and too much of the weekend. Finally get why some stick to one NFL team and ignore anything about the league. CFB you have to know the landscape.
Following one team solves all these problems. I like watching all the games, but idc much about missing the neutral ones. (Skipping brunch for preseason football is true sicko behavior)
Skipping anything for preseason football is sicko behavior.
It's easy to have time as a Dad if you neglect your kids, wife, and household duties to watch sports all weekend.
Fantasy leagues exacerbated this.
And sports betting.
If you record the games and watch later, you can get each done in about an hour, give or take. Limiting yourself to 2-3 games per week and that’s no more than normal tv watching
It took me three having three kids and keeping up with their school, social and sports calendars (including coaching) to realize how much one can accomplish when one isn’t spending every Saturday and Sunday watching football.
you can watch only your team. that's 17 games.
Before I had kids I would block out entire Saturdays in front of the TV with a 6 pack of beer, a bag of tostitos and a jar of salsa/gauc. And then order a pizza. Super healthy stuff. Probably for the best that NIL has made CFB unwatchable.
Baths/reading are first, catch the 2nd quarter on
Watching hours upon hours of football on a Saturday and/or Sunday should really only be for singles under 25 (& maybe even under 18). If youre over 40 with kids let them tell you what’s going on besides your 1-2 favorite teams.
That and CTE
Having a racist name and a shitty owner got me to stop following my childhood team 10 years ago. Thanks, Dan Snyder!
Exactly this, I tell people I quit watching football because "I needed room in my life for other things."
I was going to stay in the house anyway on sunday
This is why I became an F1 fan. There's a much lower time commitment and you can easily tune in and out while working around the house. The variety of highlights and clips they post on YT and F1TV also makes it easy to catch up if you miss a race.
Easy here in Ireland, games on Sunday don't start until 6pm so it's just 6 till 11 for me. Some podcasts and articles during the week and thats it. Maybe 8 hours a week tops. Helps that it doesn't even last half the year
College football’s coverage (NFL to a lesser extent) is handled like soap operas, with evolving plot lines, interpersonal feuds, and drama driving the interest
This is why boxing (maybe UFC now?) was the best when I watched. you need like a handful of big fights and maybe a random few sat/fri night cards to catch an up and comer and you're good. I haven't watched in a few years, and still feel like I know what is up for the Canelo/Crawford fight.
One team here, so one game a week and have the family time watching the game. We even have the grandparents over so my daughter loves the family time it brings.
This was me until my late 20's when we moved to South Florida where nobody cared about college sports, and I realized it was too nice outside to watch TV all weekend. Now people think its weird I stopped watching football even though I played in college.
I did fantasy football for a few yrs and then realized that the analysis time allocation to win a $500 league was better spent on stocks. As for fandom, I haven't missed an Eagles game in years. I don't watch commercials. I show up for the game, and that's about it— maybe some YT vids over the wk.
Each of the games (with commercials) are so long too.
I have no idea what's going on in the NFL anymore, and it used to be the center of my life. Of course, I chose to make soccer my vocation, a sport that never has an off-season...
Conversely if you're only interested in watching your team, it's only a 3 hour/week commitment. It's the easiest and least time consuming of the 4 major American sports to be a fan of one team.
I just so love the Carmina Burana in the background! A phenomenal opera
One of my favs!
The easy way to do it is to follow just one team and watch only its games. One game per week is fine.
That's me. I don't even watch all the games.
Are the Vikings consistent dream crushers? Yes. Do they crush my husband’s dreams so much that watching other teams isn’t high priority? Also yes.
Honestly kind of shocked by this take because I think a huge reason the NFL is the biggest American sports league is because of how little you need to pay attention to it. You can just watch your teams games of which there are 17 a year (vs 82 or 162). Weekly highlights will do for everything else
I do not have 3+ daytime weekend couch hours in my family's schedule tbh. I'm lucky to get half that.
Hey I feel that, I'm just saying comparatively speaking it's the lowest time commitment required by far.
Totally disagree. Especially if you actually go to games. I can do an MLS game in 3h flat round trip (from my house). NFL is more like 6 if you're lucky.
Maaaaaaan OK if you're going to games you're already into it far more than the median fan. Remember I'm talking about why the NFL has mass appeal not why the die hards are...die...harder...(?) It's also kinda unfair to compare anything to soccer because it has a fixed clock* and no TV timeouts
I agree though, lots of people don't want to go because going is a whole production.
Yeah, one of the many reasons I stopped following football is if I told my wife that she needed to watch the kids all Sunday afternoon so I could watch tv… I don’t know what would happen, but none of it good.
Early on in our relationship (pre-kids even) my wife made me classify games as “my team games” and “hobby games” and she was free to schedule activities during hobby games haha.
That said, she recognizes interest in sports is my favorite hobby. Games are on in the background a lot as we move around our life (especially as it gets colder). It’s pretty much the only screen time our kid gets
Divorce rate also very high btw
In my single days I would only go on dates on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the season
That’s some dedication to Thursday night MACtion
If you follow just your team, it has the least time commitment of any sport though. Just one game a week. And there aren’t dozens of hours of games a week. If you watch every time slot, it maxes out at 15 (maybe 18 on the weeks with an early Europe game)
Especially considering the game is just a series of “set pieces.” - 130 plays × 5 seconds = ~650 seconds → about 11 minutes of actual football action.