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I love watching football*, despite the moments of joy being few and far between; I'm not only English, I'm a West Bromwich Albion fan too. Part of the reason I love it is that, like maths, it has (simplifying only a little) a few basic rules that generate a lot of complexity: get the ball into the opposing goal without using your arms and without violence, and if you hit the ball off the pitch or break a rule, the other side gets the ball.
Another reason is that football matches are exactly the right length: on average, they generate a number of goals that preserve uncertainty about who's going to win for as long as possible, thus maximizing the excitement.
There were an average of 2.69 goals per game in the last Premier League season. Suppose the average was only one goal per game. Then (with some simplifying assumptions) over a third of games would have been goalless draws, and if one team scored, it would be fairly unlikely the other would equalize, especially as full time approached.
And now suppose the average was twenty goals per game. If the teams were exactly evenly matched, that would be fine, but they rarely are.
In that case, the better team would almost always score more; football would be like basketball. Clearly there is a sweet spot somewhere between one and twenty, and I think football is there or thereabouts. In mathematical terms, football seems to maximize the entropy (uncertainty) of the final outcome averaged over the duration of the game. Which is just perfect, as long as it doesn't end up in a penalty shootout when England is playing.
*If you're reading this in North America: by "football", I mean "football", as I hope the picture makes clear.
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