Patience isn't a virtue: the case for shorter sporting events

Sometimes, when you love something, you say "I can't get enough of it." Except I can. I love sports, but one of my biggest pet peeves is that they last too long. I may have a short attention span, or I may watch so many events (some weekends up to 20-30 games) that brevity has become a virtue.

Or then again it may be that sporting action is painfully repetitive. Yes, the point of sports isn't just excellence, but consistent excellence over time -- but that's why we have leagues and championships. Consistent excellence is already tested over the course of a full season against multiple opponents in different playing conditions, so it need not be tested at length in each game too.

This is a matter of nuance, not of nature. Each game must be of some length, including ample time for breaks, warm-ups, build-ups, and a variety of physiological factors; for example, optimal physical performance in association football/soccer is generally achieved about 20 minutes into a game and begins fading about 20 minutes from the end. But I don't suggest that games be so short that optimal performance cannot be achieved, for that would be counterproductive. Rather, I think that too many games last way past the point that optimal performance and audience attention have begun to fade, and thus that they're unnecessarily long.

Ultimately, I realize that my proposals are unrealistic in a number of ways. For one, most past records and statistics would be void, or at least would have to be reconsidered. While sports already do change rules from time to time -- the extra point in football, the backward pass in soccer, the rally point system in volleyball, the introduction of various video review technologies, etc -- the changes I suggest are rather radical and may alter the way the game is played, possibly forcing new strategies and new training regimens. Also, most owners, broadcasters, and sponsors would oppose such strong reductions in air time and thus in ad revenue; the financial drawbacks may be massive in some cases.

So, once again, these are perfect-world, best-case-scenario proposals. At the very least, they can point out flaws in the current system and allow us to understand what we really like about a certain sport. And while I don't believe in "I can't get enough of it," I definitely believe there can be "too much of a good thing" and that "less is more."

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American football

10 minutes to a quarter (a 33% reduction) or 15-minute halves (50% reduction). Typical games last three and a half hours, which amounts to 3.5 minutes for each minute played. My version would cut it down to a reasonable 2 hours per game. Also, in a full-contact sport like football where safety and head injuries are a significant concern, less playing time would also equal less danger.

Association football

30 minutes to a half (a 33% reduction), which would reduce the overall game length to just under 90 minutes including breaks. Alternatively, which has been discussed for a while now, introduce a "time played" clock management like in American sports, where the clock stops whenever the ball is not in play. 20 minutes of effective time played per half would be more than enough, since that's a little less than what we get now (25-30).

Tennis

For sure eliminate 5-set matches for men: they're drawn-out affairs that every tournament except for the Majors has already done away with. Three sets is plenty enough. For that matter, also reduce each game to 6 points max: first to score on 40 wins, with no deuces and advantages that make certain games last 10+ minutes. Alternatively, eliminate sets altogether and play five games with the tie-break format: alternate serves with the usual 1-2 formula, and first to 7 points wins (or 15 to keep the match length to around 2 hours). Tennis is one of the sports that suffers the most from drawn-out repetitiveness, and thus one where I think that changes would be most beneficial.

Basketball

5 minutes to a quarter. Basketball games are unnecessarily lengthy and most fans know that "the score doesn't matter: games are won or lost in the last 5 minutes anyway." Since the other three quarters are basically warm-up, at least make it a shorter warm-up.

Volleyball

This is the only major sport that already did change its rules recently in the interest of brevity, switching from a side-out to a rally-point scoring system. But it could be taken a step further and drop the best-of-five format, for again, as in tennis, three sets is enough.

Baseball

Five innings. While I wish that extra innings were gone, baseball's compartmentalized offense-defense structure doesn't lend itself to more timely tiebreakers. But even then, extra innings could be shortened to one or two outs instead of three, just as rules change in overtime in many other sports (first score wins, start from 25-yard line, etc). And, of course, there's also virtue in games ending in a tie..

Road cycling

Perhaps surprisingly, I don't think that Grand Tours should be made shorter. The three-week race format is congenial to the sport, highly spectacular, and not at all boring. But there is zero need for 200-mile stretches in a single day. In the distant past, some Tour de France stages were as long as 400 miles and took almost a full day to complete. That has changed, so it can change again. My proposal here is indeed modest: 100-mile stage cap.