The Saints lost today. I found out on Facebook. Where I find all my NFL news. Well, there and Twitter. Whether you want to hear about it or not, you can’t avoid the pigskin prattle. Just a simple “NNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!” post from a friend tells me all I need to know.

I don’t watch football and never have. It’s one of two things my husband enjoys that he says would make me the perfect wife if I did too. The other?

Coffee.

What? What’d you think I was going to say?

It’s not that I don’t understand the game. I grew up in an “all-sports-all-the-time” family. I have two brothers who played football – one who was the star receiver of our high school football team. Football was always on at our house, along with baseball, basketball, golf, tennis… even bowling. We were encouraged to watch it all, learn it all and play it all. And we did.

The problem for me is, football is B-O-R-I-N-G. Not that I can watch much golf or bowling either, but, who does?

This isn’t such a big deal at home where luckily for me, Danny only watches the Saints and Broncos. And always on DVR. Never live. It’s over quick. But, when we visit the in-laws as we did for two weeks at Christmas – different story. Football is on all day and all night. Live. Every game, pre-game, post-game, highlights, lowlights, college ball, pro ball, who’s got the ball… my father-in-law watches it all. Being a Saints and LSU fan is a full-time job.

At home in New Orleans is the only time Danny allows himself to watch that much football, because it’s his “father-son bonding time.” I get it. So, Reagan and I find other things to do.

It always comes as a bit of a relief to be headed home where we don’t schedule meals around halftime. On our plane ride home this time, I was amused to find this story in Southwest’s Spirit Magazine (always a good read), which summed up with statistics exactly why football is so boring to me…

During an NFL game, the ball is in play less than 11 minutes!

“To wrap your helmet around that, consider this: The average broadcast of a game lasts 17 times longer—a grinding 185 minutes. Where do the extra 174 minutes of downtime go? Not far, according to a Wall Street Journal study that analyzed last year’s playoff games on four major TV networks. Players spend roughly 75 minutes in huddles or milling around at the line of scrimmage. On average, broadcasters dedicate 17 minutes of airtime to replays. Typically, cutaway shots to refs and barrel-bellied coaches total 13 minutes. (By comparison, cheerleaders get a shockingly scant 3 seconds of tube time.) And up to 60 minutes go to commercials, which, come to think of it, are the reason most of us watch the Super Bowl in the first place, right?”

Thank you, Spirit Magazine. Now I know exactly how long it should take for Danny to FF through his games before I can have the remote back.

photo credit: Micah Taylor