Running Shorts

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 pre...