More Cuts at ESPN

Please show your math

 

MLS is making gains and the NFL is over saturated and dealing with the very serious brain trauma issue.

But bigger than the NFL in five years? Maybe 50.

Or I have a bridge to sell you. Right down the street. Good deal. Goes to Brooklyn.

 

Just look at the thousands of people driving into Atlanta from the Carolinas for MLS games.

 

Attendance is growing, but the league is still losing money. And if the generations of kids who grew up playing soccer STILL haven't generated the long-talked about boom, and the success on the world stage hasn't done it - MLS likely will never crack the Big Four.
It is funny though - you look at all the rules innovations the Big Four (and other sports) have implemented to become more fan friendly and soccer is still soccer.

 

This is because the most fan friendly aspect of soccer compared to other sports has been built into the rules forever -- games take roughly two hours of real time. Around the ninth time out of the last two minutes of any college basketball game, or that fourth seventh inning pitching change, a nice nil-nil draw sounds as appealing as a cold beer when you're walking down the 18th fairway on a hot day.

 

The Atlanta Uniteds had 40,000 at their first home game this year and their season ticket waiting list is longer than the Falcons. Plus they have no PSLs

 

Didn't realize Kaylee Hartung had left for CNN until she was reporting in CVille yesterday.

 

It's amazing how college basketball and football administrators and TV execs don't see any problem in length of games. Like you said, it's so boring at the end of games with all the saved timeouts. And baseball is absurd. Umpires don't care to try to speed it along; players certainly don't. They've got to limit catcher's trips to the mound to five per game and put a clock on pitchers and actually automatically call it a ball if they take too long. Call a strike on any batter that leaves the batter's box more than one time per at bat to re-velcro his batting glove. Millenials won't be attending baseball and college football and basketball games in the future, that's for sure. At least NFL pretty much has it down to 3 hours or 3:05. College football is 3:45 minimum and that is ridiculous. College basketball is approaching 2 hrs, 45 minutes which is insane. College basketball games should take 2 hours on the dot!

 

Ruben?

 

College football is a great sport in many ways, but the fact almost every FBS game is on TV, and others, I mean the Ivy League and even FCS games are on weekly here, means they take longer due to commercials. There's nothing to be done about that. But the insane rule stopping the clock on first downs must go, or cricket will seem like a more time-efficient take before too long.

 

I hate teams being rewarded for doing a "bad" thing.

Throwing an incompletion, running out of bounds, fouling are not things you try to do in the normal course of the game.

Yet you get rewarded for those things when you need to stop the clock.

I hate those more than I hate stopping the clock momentarily to spot the ball after a first down. At least getting a first down is a GOOD thing. You earned your clock stoppage.