Reply #22: You're correct that offense and defense are never exactly [View All]

simultaneous (except in roller derby, perhaps?), but what I meant was what you said - the flow of play can change direction instantaneously. Another way to look at it is that, in hockey or soccer, for example, both teams are on the playing surface at the same time with the same goal - to put the puck/ball in the net. The difference between being on offence or defence is less distinct. You do make a point that I've never thought of wrt to hiding deficiencies: in baseball, every player has to stand up there all alone and face the pitching, which I'd agree lends a balance that can be lacking elsewhere. (Basketball is just getting ridiculous... Being tall and not a jumper I've always had basketball pretty low on my sports hierarchy, but even I can see that it's pretty much a flashy scoring-skills competition. Women's college ball I think has avoided this trap, but I'll pass on the rest.)

Football is hard to explain - there is probably less actual game play in 3 hours of a football game than in the same period of baseball, but for some reason the gaps are less bothersome. Going out on a limb, perhaps it's due to the more 'primitive' nature of football; the spaces between plays are imbued with the sort of excitement that permeates a plaground as all the children gather around two kids who are about to fight?

As for LSU, I started there in 97, so I missed the Will Clark era. I did get to enjoy the 2000 6-5 victory over Stanford (albeit not in person), which was doubly sweet considering my undergrad school was Cal!