Parrotheader.com

I've been known to do 3 hours worth of work in a short amount of time at the office on occasion - when somebody needs something at the last second (granted it'll be a little sloppy.) But this time I'm talking about something far more important. Football.

Now that the season is upon us I'm gobbling up every moment of it I can find on TV (much to my wife's chagrin.) College, pros. Whatever. I'm usually not this bad, but for some reason I'm just glad it's on TV again. Football is just far and away the ultimate TV sport with its hard hitting action, the replays, the multiple camera angles, etc. Yes, there are brief pauses in between plays just like in baseball. But unlike baseball, they can usually fill that void with a quick replay of the previous play's action. It's hard to do that with the dime-a-dozen strike/ball. As a result, I've always found baseball quite boring to watch on TV (even though I always thoroughly enjoy the in-park experience.)

But last year I discovered something that I plan to put to full use this year. If you have a DVR or Tivo with a 30-second skip button you can record (or pause and time-shift a game) and watch a complete 3-hr game in roughly 30 minutes without missing a single snap. On average, from the end of the action on one play to the time the ball is reset and snapped is a little over 30 seconds (the NFL can sometimes be a bit faster to reset.) So as soon as one play is dead simply skip ahead 30 seconds and you're instantly watching the snap of the next play. Since most plays only take about 4-5 seconds to complete you can quickly breeze through the raw action. Granted, you lose a lot of the subtext and nuances that come with watching the real-time action. Penalties, injuries, etc. But for quick and dirty viewing of a game you don't want to dedicate 3-hours of your life towards it can't be beat. It certainly works well for SportsCenter.