Comment by paulmd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paulmd | Hacker News Reader

The thing I personally despise about football is that it is basically "made for TV". The constant stoppages for commercials make it terrible. I watched a rugby match the day before an away game and it was just so much more exciting because it didn't stop every ten seconds. Football just stops like every ten seconds, if it had a little faster tempo it would be more exciting, and it feels like the reason it's not is so they can cram in more commercials.

> Stadiums and Cities Matter - Even the stadium and climate in a city factor into a football team’s strategy.

The air force academy is a fair bit higher than Denver or even Colorado Springs itself (the cadet area is 7258 feet above sea level). I'd have to check but it's probably one of the highest stadium altitudes for any college.

Physical exertion at those altitudes is significantly more difficult if you're not acclimated to the altitude, ideally living up there but the first week can be tough if you aren't extremely cardio-fit. So Air Force had a built of an inbuilt home-field advantage, and when they went down to lower altitudes we had a bit of an advantage there too (living at altitude and coming back to sea level was wild, I could rock aerobic activity at sea level, you just didn't get out of breath much at all).

The crowd would heckle the away team in the gates, chanting: "the air is rare!"

Didn't stop us from sucking though, the football team was terrible.

We played against colorado college in college. This is a bit lower than the AFA field but not too much.

We just showed up the day before early and spent the day acclimating. It was like you were on your 2nd or 3rd wind sprint instead of your first. However by that point in football season we were running 80 plays without breaks in practice (the same as a big game but shorter time). It was annoying but not a factor.

Really funny thing was, because we played in hotter shittier weather, we were actually in better shape. And the game was in the low 80s. Colorado team melted, we went strong the whole game. Also helped we smoked them.

Also did an aussie rules tourney at the AFA about 10 years back. Much more running. We all showed up a day early. Just like skiing, it's not great the first day and you're pretty good the 2nd. Third day and everyone was normal. Sure we rotated players slightly more but unless it's soccer with limited subs it doesn't really matter. Or I'm sure what they're having cadets do, aka just running around with gear on long distance.

Most sports are more ATP based (windsprints) than full cardio based, otherwise everyone would just be moving at a constant rate.

I actually dislike a lot of non-american sports because there's no chance to do anything else. The best thing to me even at a game is to go, hang out, relax, talk shit with your friends, and watch the game. Not have the game take up all of your attention. I'm not paid to analyze them, so there's nothing so important about sports that I need to pay attention to them as I would for studying for an exam. Unless it's the playoffs, then sure.

> The best thing to me even at a game is to go, hang out, relax, talk shit with your friends, and watch the game. Not have the game take up all of your attention.

If the sport is actually engaging and doesn't stop every 2 minutes then you'll find it naturally takes up all your attention.

That was the point. If you can't spare any attention for your friends, then watching the game is more like watching a movie together in a theater and less like having a dinner party with background entertainment.

Exactly. I love baseball and games, but baseball is there to add spice to your life, or for the lull in the conversation.

Or this is how I choose to enjoy them.

I've done the hive mind thing as well. It's fun but I've got shit to do, relationships to build.

You don't get my point. It is not fulfilling to me to spend that much time passively watching someone else succeed or fail because of my city of birth.

My attention span is also very add. Only things like coding or math can hold my attention.

I played sports highschool, college and 9 years after. Sports are great when you are a competitor. To be good they have to consume a good portion of your life. Which is fine, you are exerting direct control on the world.

As a 45 year old sitting in a pub you have no impact on a team. Nor do you by angrily posting to internet forums or yelling at talk show hosts.

Spending 1-3 days a week 3 hours at a time getting very worked up about a thing you have little control over while gathering a side of mild alcoholism isn't great. Being sulky and short with your loved ones isn't either.

After college I started watching the nfl. My team was very good senior year, mediocre the next, and a fieldgoal away from greatness. The next year they were dog shit. I noticed I was short with my mom on Sundays which was our hangout time because of nfl. She watched sports so she'd have a thing to talk to us about. I had to step back. The team was purposefully rebuilding. I found new topics to talk to my mom about.

I get a lot of home repair, gardening, and side projects done while watching baseball or football in the background.

Sports fandom is best when they enrich your like not when they consume it.

For anyone north of the Murray River who is a bit confused about Aussie Rules, the game is quite aerobic.

The field is a cricket oval at ~200 yards by ~150 yards (~15x the area of a US Football field). There are 18 players on the field per team, for a total of 36. The game is broken up into 20 minute quarters with ~7 min of stoppage time per quarter. With all the breaks, it's about 2.5 hours long. Though it varies by match, you basically are doing windsprints the entire time while the other team is trying to climb on you and knee you in the head. Those guys are in very good shape even for professional athletes.

Here's a good video on some Aussie Rules highlights from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUoDPEyohE

Thanks, I forget people wouldn't know.

I enjoyed aussie rules as rugby seems almost as brutal as american football without the protection. Also at the time there was way more neck down contact. I saw multiple neck breaks that way 10 years of football.

Aussie had more glancing contact and seemed weirdly safer. for values of safe.

I would not play it at the level the pros do. They're brutal. Watched 2 games from the G and one from the gabba while I was in oz summer Aug 2019.

haha, I suppose that is the other side of the story without our legends added.

I'd like to think USAFA athletes were more fit than randos but...

In the spirt of the article, maybe it would help to think of football as a turn-based game, rather than a real-time game. Most gamers have a marked preference for one but can still appreciate the other.

Turn-based strategy is more fun to play but RTS is much more fun to watch.

Turn-based strategy is more fun to play when playing with bots, real-time strategy is more fun to play multi-player. Waiting for others sucks.

Civ5 multi was actually the best 4x multi until maybe hoi4 (and hoi4 is only good for micro nerds like me).

Thinking helps fill the waiting time.

Chess is the hot game to stream right now on Twitch.

Clearly, there's a bunch of people who want to watch Chess play.

That’s the ideal parallel. There’s so much math to the game in the coaching and strategy.

Clemson’s rise in college football has been entirely driven by it too. About 10 years ago we hired an offensive coordinator named Chad Morris who has a math degree. Stories about the detail in his playbooks was crazy. Player acceleration, top speed, directional changes, probability, specific angles. Almost every play had 3 things developing at once on a clock in the QB’s head based largely on his field of vision.

After Morris left, Tony Elliot took over. Elliot has an engineering degree (mechanical I think).

He missed our playoff game against Ohio State this year and the offense didn’t look anything close to what it was. Covid.

There’s just so much going on with every play it’s crazy. Every detail of every player on the field matters for each play. It’s not a sport where one guy can carry your team.

That's just because of the TV timeouts and greedy network deals. It wasn't always like that. You may have a better experience if you watch a sport like hockey, where there are only 2 or 3 TV timeouts per period, and all of the games are finished within 2.5 hours.

I love how it's turn-based. Everything is purposeful and strategic with football. Whereas games like hockey and basketball are very fluid, the strategy is more vague. There's a general sense of what you want to do, but it depends on a lot of factors. You could technically have a player deke between every player and score a goal or basket, but that would essentially be impossible in football.

With football, it's a reset every down, and everyone is ready, so the strategy is critical.

Take a look at Australian Football... there isn’t really any stoppage even when there is a stoppage. It’s an action packed game all around.

This always seemed like an advantage in NFL football to me, not a drawback. Sports like Australian Football and Soccer get boring to watch because there are no breaks. The continous action gets monotonous.

Football has the action broken down in breaks. Most times you have a good idea what the next play will be (for instance, 3rd and 10, its going to be a longer pass) producing suspense.

The other sports are like watching long distance running with extra rules.

This feels like it's spoken from a position of not having watched an AFL game.

It's not at all like soccer because the number of players and size of field make trying to just keep possession and slow the game down a much more difficult thing to do (it is attempted sometimes). AFL also has 4 breaks (for the quarters), unlikes Soccers 1 for the half.

I find all three entertaining to watch, but I don't thing the "breaks" make NFL a "better" experience. :)

This is what the XFL was supposed to fix, but that didn’t end well...

But seriously, it’s even worse in person. I’ve only ever gone to one football game in person and it was almost unbearable. At least on TV you have commercials to see.

Going to football in person is best done when you are in your early 20's, a college student, drunk, and a student of the university whose college football team is playing at home.

ok - what year and squadron were you? (10/23

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