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Obligatory Super Bowl Post

I'm just going to come out an say it: I don't think football players are that great of athletes. Or, to put it another way, I think the amount of athletic energy they expend playing a game is way overrated.

Okay, I'm a runner; so I'm biased. But when I see a guy sucking air out of an oxygen mask after a play, what am I supposed to think? I ran a marathon and didn't need an oxygen mask. What I needed was a beer.

Let me just get the token running-vs.-any-other-sport argument out of the way: no timeouts, no halftime, no substitutions, etc...we've all heard that before.

But hear me out here on football specifically. An average game lasts 3 hours; only 1 of which is the play clock is running and people are actually playing. But if you figure an average play lasts 5-10 seconds, and the other 30 or so seconds on the play clock everyone is just standing around, what does that leave? On the football field, the players are actually moving (and isn't motion a prerequisite for sport?) for maybe 15-20 minutes during the 3 hour time period! Cut that time in half for the individual player (since rarely does anyone play both defense and offense anymore), and the time played is even more minimal.

And we -- the fans, the media, whoever -- build up football players as the best athletes in the world when they're only actually playing for maybe 10 minutes of a 3-hour game?! True world-class athletes can run 3 miles in not much more time than that.

I'm not trying to say that football isn't hard; I've never played so I can't know. But when I see guys -- who are supposed to be athletes -- gasping for breath, sucking oxygen, making an all-around hullabaloo of being tired, I can't help but think, these guys aren't even in shape!

(Stay tuned; more ranting about the NFL Combine later)
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