I remember reading an account of the effort that went into the Apollo 11 moon landing.\u00a0 This counted all the effort into the space program including the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions up to that time including all the work done by both government workers and contractors during this series of projects.\u00a0 The estimate was 1.5 million man-years.\u00a0 Breaking this into man-hours (~ 2,000 hours per year) gives us a figure of 3 billion man-hours for this colossal and remarkable achievement.<\/p>\n
How many hours a week are expended watching football?\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s say twenty million fans watch one game every Sunday and Monday.\u00a0 And let\u2019s say they devote 4 hours to each game.\u00a0 That\u2019s 160 million man-hours per week.\u00a0 And let\u2019s say that there are twenty weeks of football a year.\u00a0 That comes to 3.2 billion man-hours each year.\u00a0 Hmmm.<\/p>\n
Now of course, I\u2019m comparing apples and oranges. \u00a0There\u2019s a big difference between a military project motivated by a space race with an existential foe on the one hand and on the other hand twenty million guys trying to forget the grind of the rat race for a few hours every week.<\/p>\n
But considering that if you\u2019re not watching the NFL because they\u2019re unpatriotic, that sort of makes it a patriotic act.\u00a0 Damn, I\u2019m an American Hero!\u00a0 I always thought I\u2019d make it.<\/p>\n
But seriously, it seems there\u2019s a lot of time being freed up by an NFL boycott.\u00a0 Now granted, not all of these viewers are steely-eyed missile men so we\u2019re not talking about moon landing or Manhattan Project results.\u00a0 But if these hours were devoted to nothing more constructive than helping their kids with their homework we\u2019d be looking at a significant improvement to America\u2019s trajectory.<\/p>\n
And even if they just used the time to do something else recreational like reading a book or surfing the net, that would be a good chunk of change taken out of the pockets of ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and especially ESPN.\u00a0 These people are the ones who have created this social justice monster and they are the ones who should reap the results.<\/p>\n
What would be fun to do would be to consciously gather up those hours for yourself and use them for some specific purpose or project.\u00a0 Even better, people could band together and reclaim that time (or the equivalent) to accomplish something useful and hopefully rewarding.\u00a0 Imagine if you had a group of buddies who typically watched the Sunday and Monday night games and instead started a bowling team.\u00a0 They could even have the wives come along and play.\u00a0 Or if it\u2019s just the guys put together a poker night.\u00a0 Is there any way to call that less useful than staring at the tube?<\/p>\n
So, is this a permanent change or just a blip?\u00a0 Well, the NFL boycott is looking more and more like a popular idea.\u00a0 The drop in viewing is so significant that the media has stopped pretending it\u2019s just due to baseball or weather or whatever.\u00a0 Now they\u2019re just hoping that the owners can paper over all the anger and everyone will forget and go back to loving football.\u00a0 Well, I think that ship has sailed.\u00a0 I think a lot of guys have discovered just how much time they get back for other good stuff if they turn off the NFL.\u00a0 I think, short of a groveling apology by the Kneelers, that a lot of the fans won\u2019t be coming back.\u00a0 Hell, for some of them, even that won\u2019t do.\u00a0 We know how they really feel.\u00a0 They hate this country and by extension they hate us.\u00a0 Good.\u00a0 Right back at them.\u00a0 Think what you can do with an extra four or five hours on your weekend and a good night\u2019s sleep on Monday night.\u00a0 Multiply that by a few million men and to paraphrase Apollo 13, \u201cGoodell we have a problem.\u201d\u00a0 Call that a mission that won\u2019t be controlled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I remember reading an account of the effort that went into the Apollo 11 moon landing.\u00a0 This counted all the effort into the space program<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[478,477,476,472],"class_list":["post-1680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-apollo-11-moon-landing","tag-goodell","tag-kneelers","tag-nfl-boycott"],"yoast_head":"\n