A slight tangent - I played small college football as a lineman and every once in a while we'd be in a televised game. Those games were almost a different sport

A slight tangent - I played small college football as a lineman and every once in a while we'd be in a televised game. Those games were almost a different sport because they'd stop play during commercial breaks, so it was as if 10+ random time-outs were sprinkled through the game. While not an exact comparison, playing line during a possession is like having a series of 5 to 10-second intervals where you're either sumo wrestling or sprinting, with 10-40 seconds to recover between each. So during the off-season, linemen are trying to reach a balance of strength, speed, and cardio to meet their team's play style. Because most of our games were non-televised (and therefore we didn't get the additional breaks) our linemen conditioned more heavily for cardio/recovery. So when we'd play a televised game we'd basically feel like our cardio was "underutilized". I'd love to see an analysis of whether our team ran more line-intensive plays during these games because we had the additional recovery time. It's weird for me to see these huge guys in D1 college and the NFL playing line, because I'm pretty sure they'd cramp up/get gassed during a drive in a non-televised game.