In sports, as in life, time is everything. Sometimes it’s your greatest ally. Sometimes it’s your worst enemy. Sometimes it’s an irrelevant bystander. And other times, it’s the silent force that shapes every move without determining the final outcome. The way different sports treat time reveals not just strategic insights, but deep truths about how we live, how we plan, and how we face the unknown.
Let’s begin with the most familiar model: games where the clock can run out.
The Tyranny of the Final Buzzer
In football and basketball, the ticking clock dictates the entire structure of the game. A basketball game lasts 48 minutes (or 40 minutes in college), but often, it’s the final 24 seconds—or even the final 2—that matter most. In football, you can control the ball, the field, even the opponent—but if the clock hits 0:00 and you’re not ahead, it’s all over.
These are games of urgency. The quarterback must manage the game clock down to the second. Coaches save timeouts like gold. A player steps out of bounds not just to avoid a hit, but to stop the clock. Here, time is finite and known. The challenge is to do everything you can within it.
The spiritual lesson is straightforward: our time is limited, and we know it. Every day has 24 hours. Every year, 12 months. We live with calendars and deadlines, whether we’re preparing for Rosh Hashanah or finishing a work project. The challenge is not just what we do, but how we manage the time to do it. As Psalm 90 reminds us: “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
But not all sports work this way.
Beating the Clock: Races and Speed Sports
In track and field, swimming, speed skating, or the luge, the goal is not to outlast the clock, but to beat it. Here, time isn’t something that ends your game—it’s the very thing you’re trying to master.
Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 10.49 seconds. Usain Bolt’s 9.58. Katie Ledecky’s record-smashing distances. In these events, the race is over in the blink of an eye, but years of training go into shaving off tenths or hundredths of a second. The focus is precision, performance, and self-mastery. You aren’t racing others—you’re racing time itself.
This too is a model for life. There are moments—whether it’s the race to complete a deadline, a diagnosis that changes your timeline, or the precious time you spend with family—that make us ask: how can I make the most of this moment? How can I optimize the limited time I have?
No Clock, No Problem: Timeless Sports
Then there are sports where the clock plays no role at all. Think of baseball, where there’s no game clock. A game can last 9 innings or 19. Theoretically, if both teams keep scoring in equal measure, it could go on forever.
Or golf. There’s no time limit to finish the 18th hole. You just keep playing until the hole is complete.
In these sports, the pressure comes not from time, but from execution. Your focus is on the next swing, the next pitch, the next shot. Time doesn’t run out—you do. You lose because of errors, not because the clock beats you.
This model mirrors certain stretches of our own lives—those days or seasons when there’s no deadline, no sense of rush. Sometimes it’s early retirement, sometimes it’s early childhood. The challenge here isn’t about urgency, but consistency. Will you stay focused without the ticking clock to motivate you?
The Hybrid: Timed Moments Within Untimed Games
And then there are sports that blend the urgency of time with the freedom of timeless play. Baseball, again, offers a fascinating example. The game has no clock—but now, each pitch does. Introduced in 2023, the pitch clock requires the pitcher to throw within 15 seconds (with bases empty) or 20 seconds (with runners on). Similarly, in tennis, there’s a serve clock—25 seconds between points, or a penalty is assessed.
These rules exist to protect the flow of the game, to prevent endless delays. They don’t determine the outcome directly, but they shape the experience. Without them, the game becomes unwatchable, even unfair.
This might be the most accurate metaphor for real life. No, we don’t know exactly how long our lives will be. We can’t see the final clock. But we do know that wasting time—stalling, delaying, procrastinating—carries consequences. We can’t live like we have unlimited time for every decision, every opportunity. The pitch clock of life may not end the game, but it changes how the game feels.
What Sports Teach Us About Time
Each model gives us something to think about:
- Clock-based games (like basketball) teach us urgency and strategic time management.
- Speed-based races (like swimming) teach us about preparation and performance.
- Timeless sports (like baseball or golf) teach us about focus and endurance.
- Hybrid sports remind us that even when we don’t see the clock, it’s still there, shaping behavior.
So what does this mean for how we live?
Judaism has always wrestled with the tension between finite time and infinite purpose. The Torah begins with a God who creates the world in six days—and rests on the seventh. That rhythm of sacred time becomes central to Jewish life: Shabbat, the holidays, the sabbatical year, the Jubilee. We don’t just count time—we sanctify it.
And yet, we also say each morning in the Modeh Ani prayer: “Great is Your faithfulness”—an acknowledgment that we’ve been given another day, without guarantee. The clock may run out at any moment. Like a player staring at the scoreboard in the final seconds, we know it’s not just what we’ve done—but what we do next—that matters.
The Talmud in Avot teaches: “Do not say, ‘When I have free time, I will study,’ for you may never have free time.” In other words: the game might not be timed, but you are. Don’t stall. Don’t wait. Take the shot.
A Final Whistle We Never Hear
There’s a sobering truth in all of this: in sports, we almost always know when the game will end. In life, we don’t.
Some games end in triumph, some in defeat. Some go into overtime. Some are stopped by rain. And sometimes—like the legendary 33-inning minor league baseball game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings in 1981—it just seems to go on forever… until it doesn’t.
The late Kobe Bryant once said, “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.” He lived with urgency. He practiced like every second mattered. And his sudden death was a tragic reminder that we never know when our own clock will stop.
This is not meant to be morbid. It’s meant to be clarifying.
If the game is ending, how do you want to play the final minutes?
If you’re running a race, how can you shave a second off—not by going faster, but by going truer?
If you’re playing a timeless game, how do you stay sharp even without the pressure?
And if the rules suddenly shift and you realize that time has been quietly shaping your choices all along—what might you do differently?
Time to Play
There’s a reason we keep score in sports, but not always in life. Life isn’t about wins and losses. It’s about presence, purpose, and persistence. The sports we play and watch reflect different models of time—but all of them point to the same truth: your time matters. Use it wisely.
After all, no matter what game you’re playing, the clock is always ticking.