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Commercials are running out the clock in football games

There's too many commercials in football broadcasts

SPORTS FBN-SUPERBOWL 56 CC
The game's Most Valuable Player, Denver Broncos linebacker Von Miller, celebrates as he holds the Vince Lombardi trophy after a 24-10 win against the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group/TNS)

As a child of the '90s, I’m no stranger to commercialization. I grew up watching cartoons with strategically placed advertisements made with bright colors and wacky noises; ensuring any child under 12 would be magnetically attracted to whatever cheap toy was being peddled on TV.

Now, years later in my mid-20s, I realize nothing has really changed, except instead of watching juice commercials where kids magically turn into the Silver Surfer, I’m bombarded with commercials for travel apps and fantasy sports while watching football.

There’s too many commercials in your average football broadcast. I didn’t notice when growing up, but now after having matured in the digital-first, media-streaming culture it’s almost too much to handle. How can a game with four 15-minute quarters last over three hours on television?

Furthermore, how can we justify three hours of broadcast time for a game with only 12 minutes of actual playtime? Games are artificially becoming longer, partly due to the fact that advertising brings in the big bucks.

Skyler Keyser, a communications junior at ASU, agrees with me.

"The fact that there are only 60 minutes of play in a football game, and a game takes 3 to 4 hours is ridiculous," Keyser said. "There is a whistle every couple seconds and we are bombarded with advertising all the time." 

It wouldn’t be as bad if commercials didn’t somehow interrupt a football game in the stadium, too. Have you ever been to a game and noticed a break in play, then seen a guy wearing over-sized mittens walk into the field with his hands up? That’s Commercial Guy, and it’s his job to do that whenever the broadcast of the game is in commercial.

Watch for Commercial Guy at your next live football game, and time his stays on the gridiron. Then, while timing, I want you to reflect on the special sort of hell you find yourself in knowing there’s a commercial break and you don’t even get to watch them.

“But Chris,” some of you may be asking, “what can we even do about it?” Well, I don’t know exactly. I think a good alternative can be found in soccer.

Soccer is, without a doubt, my favorite sport to watch either live or on TV. Part of the reason is that I know a soccer game will hardly last more than an hour and forty-five minutes; two 45 minute halves and maybe fifteen minutes for halftime.

In soccer, the clock never stops. There’s no commercial breaks during the game, because the game itself never really stops. Advertisers make up for this by sponsoring teams, so their logos appear directly on the jerseys. Soccer fields are also often surrounded by a ring of video screens, enabling constant advertising during the game.

It makes for a better fan experience. I don’t have to sit through the boring repetition of:

1. Coin toss

2. Commercial break

3. Kick-off

4. Commercial break

5. A four-down series

6. Commercial break with commercials I saw in the first break, ten minutes ago

7. Death

“Sure Chris,” some of you may say, still not persuaded, “but you love baseball, and those games can take four hours!”

Okay, sure. I do love baseball, it’s my favorite sport. However, I knew what I was getting into when I picked baseball as “my sport." There are no clocks in baseball, so there’s no illusion of a game only lasting one hour when in reality it takes over three. There’s natural breaks in a baseball game, almost tailor-made for commercial placement so they don’t feel unnatural.

The bottom line is, football has too many commercials and it makes it a chore to watch anything other than RedZone on DirecTV, where you can just watch whatever team is about to score.

Football isn’t a game that has to be played with so many commercial breaks. I don’t remember Commercial Guy strolling onto the field during a break in play to signal that the high school football game I was at was in commercial break.

I’m just … over commercials. Is there nothing sacred? Can I not watch the Sun Devils or Cardinals march downfield to glory without getting bombarded with competing Viagra and Cialis commercials?

Apparently that’s the competition I should be watching anyway, since they take up so much more screen time than the game itself does.


Reach the columnist at cjwood3@asu.edu or follow @chriswood_311 on Twitter.

Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.

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