I flew from Philly to San Fran today on Southwest, and in their airline magazine they had the findings of a Wall Street Journal report on last years playoff games that i found very interesting. 185 minutes - the average length of a game broadcast 11 minutes - the time the ball is actually in play 75 minutes - the players are huddling or mulling around the line of scrimmage 17 minutes - the announcers showing replays 13 minutes - cutaways to the refs and coaches 60 minutes - commercials (i dont know how/if the Super Bowl skewed things) 3 seconds - SHOCKER - theres only three seconds of cheerleaders, now i find that hard to believe, so maybe there was a typo, but the mag expressed shock too
Football is a very different sport than soccer, basketball, nascar, etc. In those other sports there is constant sustained action but much of it is back and forth ho hum... although points can be scored at almost any time in soccer and basketball, it doesn't happen much in soccer and in basketball the back and forth frequent scoring dilutes the excitement. The start-and-stop action of football creates anticipation, especially on 3rd down and red zone plays. Waiting for the QB to take the snap an engaged fan has a chance to get the adrenaline pumping for either a big play or a big defensive stop. Since so much happens on every single football play, the time between allows television viewers to see the instant replay again and hear the analysts give their insight on an aspect that is not superficially obvious (the running back picked up 8 yards, but look at this big block by the right tackle). In baseball the action is start-stop between pitches, but the action is less enthralling with a ball being thrown to a batter who stares at it go by, compared to 22 guys knocking the piss out of each other and chasing each other down on even the most inconsequential plays. It's like going on an afternoon nature hike compared to going on a 30 second roller coaster ride. Do you want your excitement spread out across several hours, or jam packed into a few seconds? Those 25 seconds between every football play is just enough to munch on a few chips and take a swig of beer!
And I would say the cheerleader time is greater... at least 5-10 seconds a couple times a game. Maybe a total of a minute of cheerleader time... not that it's much but certainly no 3 seconds. It takes more time than that to rattle off 3 or 4 sponsers with cheerleaders shaking their pom poms in the background.