The Influence of the Construction of Time on the Major North American Sports: Will Soccer Infiltrate the American Sports Space?

The role of time is crucial in virtually all sports. As part of a larger presentation on the concept of time in sports, including topics such as schedules, durations and endings, this paper examines the relationship between the official time allotted to the playing of a game from the very beginning to the very end (“wall-time”), and the amount of time spent in actual play (“play-time”). After analyzing this relationship in the big four American team sports of baseball, football, basketball and ice hockey (hockey), the paper focuses on these two temporal phenomena in Association Football (soccer). It concludes that the auspiciousness of this temporal relationship in soccer bodes well for the game’s increased presence in the American sports space.