This is my most lightweight post to date, but I must weigh in on this issue.

See, I love football. But I need to rant. Again.

I played quite a lot when I was young. And now I enjoy watching it, although not nearly as much as I used to watch.

The problem with today’s National Football League is how choppy and interrupted the game has become.

Between regular timeouts, injury timeouts, quarter and halftime breaks, review timeouts, TV timeouts and the plague of penalties, this game has become a mess.

I think an interesting experiment would be to channel surf to a game at random intervals to see how often you ‘land’ on a game where actual play is taking place. By this I mean the following:

Turn your television to a ‘neutral channel’ (where no game is taking place) and then at various times over the next three hours (roughly the duration of the game) turn your TV to the channel of your selected game. Make the number, oh, say 20 times. Then conduct this experiment over 100 games. Over that sample set, what do you believe the % of time will be where you land on the game when there is action occurring?

My guess is that it will be right around 25%.

And that ain’t cuttin’ it, in my book.

The amount of standing around is stunning. No wonder 350 pound men can play. Hell, the amount of time they have to be moving is minimal.

Compare this to a hockey game. Or to a soccer game. These people have to actually be in shape. They run, or skate, or otherwise have to be in motion.

Pro football… Six or seven seconds of action, then play stops. And often, for a considerable amount of time.

Has anyone else out there noticed this? Why is this ok? I don’t think it is.

But, I think that league officials will be unmoved at how I feel about this. That is just a hunch.

So, dear readers, can we join together to do something about this scourge? Can we effect change in the NFL to bring it back (if it ever was acceptably fast-paced) to a place where action occurs without so many breaks?

Send me your revolutionary ideas to fix the game. I will assemble them and arrange a meeting with Roger Goodell (I think he is the commissioner) to move this issue along.

The football-watching world is waiting for us to act. Let’s get started today.

You will have plenty of time during the next timeout.