I am the biggest sports fan you’ve never met. I make time for the NFL, college football, college basketball, NBA and NHL playoffs, baseball, European soccer, major tournaments in golf and tennis, IndyCar racing and more. Chances are good that if there’s a game on TV, I’m either watching it or recording it.
My friends ask me all the time, “How do you watch so much sports?” They are amazed at how much I watch sports since I am married, have a newborn baby, work 3 jobs (1 full-time and 2 part-time) and go to college full-time.
Realizing that fewer people than ever before actually watch sporting events, I figured it was time to share some of my secrets with you. As a sports fan, you need to know how to cram as much sports as possible into your spare time without shirking your responsibilities to work and family.
You need three things to maximize your sports watching into your modern schedule. First is a good TV. It doesn’t have to be an HD TV or a 126-inch TV; it just needs to work.
The second thing you need is a good package of TV channels. You need all the networks, of course, plus all of the ESPN’s. You will want Versus for those NHL playoff games, and all of the NBC’s to catch all of the Olympic coverage. USA, TNT and TBS occasionally cover very important games, and because sports is getting more expensive for networks to buy, they are passing more events off to these cable networks.
The third and final thing you need is a DVR player. This is required. No sports fan should go without DVR.
It will not be hard to show you why DVR’s are essential. Remember the last NFL game you saw that wasn’t the Super Bowl? The amount of commercials during NFL games is outrageous. The same goes for March Madness, the NBA, MLB on Fox…What am I saying? Commercials are in abundance everywhere.
When you watch the NFL, you need to be able to save time by fast forwarding commercials and the halftime show. If you do this, an NFL game should take about 90 minutes to watch.
When you watch baseball, you can fast forward between half-innings and during coaching trips to the mound. A baseball game takes about 2 hours.
When you watch basketball, you can fast forward halftime and free throws. Just hit that 30-second button to skip ahead. You don’t actually need to watch the free throws until the last couple of minutes. A basketball game takes about an hour.
For every sporting event, there are commercials and other non-essential things to fast forward.
This is what I do. For example, the Masters coverage started at 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. I started watching at 4:00. By the end of the broadcast, I was caught up to live viewing and I didn’t lose that 90 minute block of time to unimportant stuff like advertisements.
Remember these things the next time you watch sports. If you are truly a fan of the games, you will love me for how much time in your life I have saved you.
No, no…No thanks needed. Just use that time and spend it with your family or friends.