NFL steals baseball's torpor title

Among the reasons I prefer baseball to all other sports is the sheer constancy of the schedule.

The Mariners, for instance, generally play six or seven times a week, so there’s little time for fans to belabor defeats. It’s late Saturday night and you’re down because the last batter in the ninth inning stranded the tying run at second base? Come back tomorrow morning.

Gates open at 11:10. First pitch is at 1:10 p.m.

The Seahawks play once a week, which means fans spend three days looking backward (second-guessing the head coach, berating officials, pondering a position change at quarterback) and another three days looking forward (suggesting strategy for the head coach, breaking down the strengths and weaknesses of the next opponent, pondering a position change at quarterback).

I love the NFL as much as anybody else, but that week-long lull between Sundays turns me restless. The lull before the Super Bowl is even worse: Two weeks of blah-blah-blah conjecture, broken up only by a Pro Bowl “game” that was such an affront to football fundamentals, commissioner Roger Goodell even groused about it.

Avoiding the prolonged break before Super Bowl is problematic. The NFL has staged the game on a normal schedule – seven days after the conference championships – and it has proven to be a headache for both coaches and players. Besieged with ticket requests, they need a week at home just to sort out the ancillary demands of arranging a week on the road for their families.

Still, an enlightening comparison can be made between Major League Baseball’s frenetic postseason and its leisurely NFL counterpart.

Consider this: By the time of Sunday’s 3:20 p.m. (PST) kickoff in Indianapolis, fans will have spent 14 days without anything to watch but that hideous exhibition last week in Hawaii.

During the 14 days preceding the first pitch of the 2011 World Series, 17 playoff games were completed. Four were decided by one run. Two went into extra innings.

During the 14 days preceding the first pitch of the 2011 World Series, five teams were eliminated from the playoffs: The Yankees got bounced on Oct. 6; the Phillies and Diamondbacks went next, on Oct. 7; the Tigers bowed out on Oct. 15, and the Brewers fell on Oct. 16.

Oct. 7, by the way, deserves to be remembered as one of the classic days in baseball-playoff history. But few remember it because Oct. 7 was overshadowed by the crazy conclusion to the regular season and Game 6 of the World Series.

Anyway, on Oct. 7, after Arizona kept its division-series hopes alive by pushing across the tying run the top of the ninth, the Brewers’ Nyjer Morgan drove in the winning run with a single off J.J. Putz in the bottom of the 10th.

That bench-clearing scene of jubilation in Milwaukee was followed, a few hours later, by the eerie sound of near-silence in Philadelphia, where the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter threw a complete game, outdueling Ray Halladay in a 1-0, series-clinching thriller. The Phillies boasted a stellar starting-pitching staff – the best in decades – but as anybody who follows the Mariners knows, scoring no runs in nine innings seriously reduces a team’s chances of winning.

During the 14 days preceding the first pitch of the 2011 World Series, 44 home runs were hit. Some were hit by guys whose names are familiar (Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Robinson Cano). Some were hit by guys whose names aren’t familiar (Carlos Gomez, Aaron Hill, Ryan Roberts). Some were hit by guys whose names weren’t familiar at the time but are familiar now (Cardinals third baseman David Freese, who went on to become MVP of the World Series).

And then there was the Rangers’ Nelson Cruz. During the 14 days preceding the first pitch of the 2011 World Series, he hit six homers. Which is to say, Cruz made a 360-foot trip around the basepaths six times – 720 yards in home-run trots.

I am eager to see an NFL player run for one-tenth of 720 yards. If he does that in one gallop, great. If it requires 25 bursts off tackle, that’s OK, too. I’m eager to see a run, a throw, a block, a tackle.

Then again, I’m eager for, like, a ceremonial coin flip.

I keep hearing how the NFL’s popularity has lapped the field of other spectator sports, and there’s no denying the facts. This is a league able to connect with viewers who had nothing else to do last Sunday but watch a team that didn’t give a rip take on another team that didn’t give a rip. And yet the Pro Bowl, the ultimate TV trash-sport contest, garnered better ratings than baseball’s All-Star Game did last summer.

The Super Bowl figures to be seen Sunday by a television audience that could set a ratings record, despite a dearth of story lines since the conference championship games.

Maybe that’s the secret: Two weeks of nothing fuels an appetite for something, anything.

So bring on the coin flip. I see the Giants winning it by calling tails, but that’s just a hunch. I’ve still got a full two days, and several hours of a third, to change my mind.

john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com