NFL should copy soccer, go to continuous clock

	NFL fans know that you should add several minutes to the time on the clock to figure out when a half or game would end. John Iacono/SI

You know what I like about these World Cup games? You look at the clock and see there's 11:00 to play, and you know the game will be over in 11 minutes, plus whatever stop time that's left over.

It's kind of neat. And totally different from what we are used to in the U.S., where we see 11:00 on the clock and calculate we have 45 minutes to an hour left, depending on how many timeouts, penalties and commercial interruptions we have to endure.

I have to hand it to FIFA: they get you in and out in of there. The way the games whip by is a real selling point. Soccer is a taste I am in the process of acquiring. But that taste goes down much easier when the games are only two hours long and the broadcasters don't cut to commercial every time a player fakes an injury.

The NFL has a lesson to learn from the way futbol is broadcast.

You know how it works on Sunday afternoons. A team scores just as the first quarter ends. Then we go to commercials. Come back. Team kicks off. More commercials. Then the other team takes the field. And maybe eight minutes after the last real play, you get another one.

Honestly, as great as the NFL is, sitting through such stop-and-start episodes make you feel like your affections are being taken for granted.

The networks need those commercials, of course, to offset the billions they pay to the NFL for broadcast rights. And as long as the broadcast fees keep creeping up, the commercials aren't going anywhere.

But incessant interruptions already test the patience of casual fans. Or, worse yet from a network perspective, they are pushing fans into buying digital receivers that allow them to bypass the commercials. And when the NFL can't deliver viewers to advertisers, its product will take a hit?