Is Football Actually Slower Than Baseball?

That's the question being raised by SportScape, and the answer may surprise you: "It certainly appears...that baseball provides...80.3 percent more action every hour than football (or four minutes)." Don't try to fight it, they used math.

This study looked at two games, White Sox at Angels and Bears at Packers, both played on Sept. 13. The rules were simple: pace was measured by only counting the time "action is taking place in either game." On the diamond, that was "from the time the pitcher throws toward the plate to the time the play is dead," and on the gridiron, "from the snap to when the play is dead." But enough with all that, let's hear the results!

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Baseball: [...] By the end, at 5:04 pm (2h26m in real time), the game yielded just 21m11s of game play.

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That's approximately 8m50s of actual game for every hour that passes in real time.

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Football: [...] At the end of the game's 3 hr. 14 min. running time, only 15m27s of football was played.

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...approximately 4m54s of actual game is played for every hour in real time.

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Baseball Fans: "See, our sport isn't slow and boring! Bring on those four-hour playoff games!" Football Fans: "Our sport may lack 'action', but it most certainly does not lack violence, large men running into each other, or exciting plays like 'touchdowns.'" There's a George Carlin riff somewhere in all of this.