I am a fan of Major League Baseball and a fan of NCAA Football. Each sport shares the same problem. The games are too long and getting longer.
I've watched as much of the MLB post-season as I can, but I just don't have four hours a night to invest in a baseball game. Last night's Game Five in Houston will go down as a classic, but because I was tired I could not stay awake and went to bed in the eighth inning. When I watched the highlights this morning I saw what all the shouting was about. The game which started at 7:10 p.m. where I live, didn't finish until after 12:30 a.m. Sure, it lasted ten innings but the time to play it was way too long. Baseball needs to cut back on the amount of commercials between innings and keep the batters in the box and the pitchers on the mound. That will go a long way to speeding things up. But, something else that will help is having the umpires call pitches as the strike zone is defined in the rule book.
The NCAA is now apparently owned by ABC / ESPN. That TV network keeps adding commercials to each TV timeout it imposes on the game. Again, if the NCAA would cut back on the number of commercials allowed in its breaks and make the teams stay on the field when play is stopped, the games would not last three hours and 45 minutes on average. I love college football, but the length of the games has me thinking about not renewing my tickets next year.
