1. It shares one flaw with soccer, as the only sports where the clock runs after the whistle blows and the ball isn't even in play. The average NFL game has 11-15 minutes of actual "live" play in a 3.5-hour TV broadcast, which pretty much makes it nothing more than an advertising con game.
2. It has developed to the point where grotesquely oversized humans have become commonplace in the game. Is it any wonder that performance-enhancing drugs are now the norm?
3. It's become so specialized that professionals don't even really play "football" anymore ... they play one position on the field on a part-time basis, and they're completely unsuited for almost any other position on the field. A decent high school quarterback, for example, would probably be a better NFL quarterback than an All-Pro linebacker would be.
I disagree with the points you made.
1.) That time in between plays is not like a pause in baseball where the pitcher scratches his crotch, steps on and off the rubber, shakes his head up or down, etc. That time in between snaps is the setting of the chessboard for each and every play. In between the plays is often where the most cerebral work in the game comes. The players don’t know or care what is going on with advertising, if anything, it annoys them.
2.) The size and speed of the athletes in every sport has increased over the years. Hockey and basketball are good examples as well. Performance enhancing drugs are a problem in every single sport, bar none. If you want to damn all sports, that would be fair. To single out football out of context with other sports isn’t.
3.) I don’t really see the point in point #3. All players in every sport are more specialized than they ever were before. It is fun to see a defensive lineman lining in the backfield up to block for a running back near the goal line, but why is that even important as a flaw? One of the things that makes football interesting to a vast swath of people is that to a greater degree than many other sports, the actual intricate teamwork required to run a play to a successful conclusion is far more demanding than many other sports such as baseball, hockey, or basketball. All eleven players have to do their jobs to a more exacting degree than most other sports, or the play fails. In baseball, you can have a single player win the game by pitching a no-hitter. In hockey, a goalie can stand on his head to stuff a team for an entire game. In basketball, you can get the ball into the hands of Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, or Lebron James, and offense takes care of itself. Doesn’t work that way in football. I don’t see this as an inherent or obvious flaw.
I also have to disagree.
Football is one of the most complex games people play. Each play is a choreographed ballet where the dancers weigh 250lbs and up.
If you watch the slow motion diagrams of the plays showing how everyone moves you get a real appreciation how these oversized behemoths have to move in unison.
most sports have designated specialty players. Thats not necessarily a flaw, imho.
That’s why I would go with a weight limit of 250 pounds, it’s dangerous for long-term health to be so heavy, even if it’s not fat.
Your really using that BS “11-15” minute crap?! Come on, you KNOW football better than that. You KNOW that 90% of what determines if a play succeeds happens between the break of the huddle and the snap. Pre-snap reads, adjustments, showing looks and dropping out of them, motion, those are all part of the action, the most important part of the action. Anybody acting like football only happens between the snap and the whistle is just lying.
Grotesquely oversized humans are in every sport but baseball... oh wait Big Papi hasn’t retired. Performance enhancing drugs are in every sport.
There’s tons of multiple position players in the league, one of the big stories of last year was moving Chris Mathews. Plus of course almost everybody on special teams is also somewhere else. And really there’s nothing wrong with an all-pro linebacker sucking at QB, I doubt any all-pro LB could have passed muster at QB in the last 60 years, 2 way players were gone before most of us were born.