Before the game started, I was surprised to find out from a Wall Street Journal article that “the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is [only] about 11 minutes.” So what are we watching during the other 174 minutes?

Studies from the four recent broadcasts show that “60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps.” And the rest of the time we’re watching a whole lot of replays, shots of the head coaches and referee, couple seconds of injured players, celebrating players, and a lot less of the cheerleaders than we think, because apparently cheerleaders are “bigger in college.”

The Steelers and Packers don’t have cheerleaders, so we didn’t see any of them this year. But we sure got the replays, the coaches and the injured players (couldn’t get more of Maurkice Pouncey). I definitely believe that there was only about 11 minutes of action.

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