Opinion: Super Bowl XLV -- Cramming 16 Minutes of Action Into 9 Hours of Television

Last night, Fox's Super Bowl coverage started at 2 p.m. with a pregame show and ended at 11 p.m. after its postgame coverage.

Nine hours of airtime. Well, it is the Super Bowl. The be-all and end-all of American sports. The most hyped, most watched event on television.

But it did get me wondering how much game time actually occurred during all that coverage. I know, football fans will say that's easy enough. There's a total of one hour on the clock.

But like the players, the game itself has a ton of padding. Never mind the timeouts, the halftime and all the other points in the game where the clock isn't ticking. The clock is often running during the game while players stand around, regroup, huddle and get ready to snap the ball.

So what happens if you strip all that out? How much time is the football actually in play -- from the moment it was snapped until the play is over?

We decided to find out. Instead of watching the Super Bowl, we recorded it. Then skipped everything but play action, timer in hand.

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The result? By my calculations, there were just under 16 minutes -- 15.53 minutes, actually -- during Super Bowl XLV when the ball was in play.

Others have done similar exercises, it turns out. Last year, The Wall Street Journal studied four football game broadcasts and came up with only 11 minutes of play time.

What does it say about our country that the most popular and most hyped sport involves so little actual action?

I don't have that answer. But at least I have an extra eight hours and 44 minutes to think about it.