Football is dying...again

Dr Zaius

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Bloomberg said:
Television ratings are up and merchandise sales are booming, but longer-term trends don’t look as rosy for football. According to a new Bloomberg Politics poll, 50 percent of Americans say they wouldn't want their son to play the sport and only 17 percent believe it’ll grow in popularity in the next 20 years.

These are grim numbers for a sport that’s seeing an onslaught of negative attention, including a parade of National Football League players accused of abusing their wives or children; a team name so offensive that some news organizations refuse to print it; and, perhaps most troubling to parents, the growing body of evidence that repeated blows to the head can cause long-lasting brain damage. The sport’s troubles have caught the attention of Congress, whose members hauled a league official to Washington for a Senate hearing earlier this month. Individual lawmakers have proposed ending the league’s tax-exempt status and putting its coveted anti-trust exception up for a five year review.

The finding suggest that, over the course of time, football could go the way of boxing, a marquee American sport in the early part of the 20th century that declined amid a similar set of dynamics: changing perceptions of its brutality and star athletes making headlines for violent crimes.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-10/bloomberg-politics-poll-half-of-americans-dont-want-their-sons-playing-football
Football is bad for you. Like guns, too much religion, and buttered popcorn.
 

ChrisM

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Meanwhile ratings aren't just "up" through the roof by any metric and the networks are falling over each other to give more money the league.

As long as the money is there - schools will have football teams and parents will let the kids play.

The NFL isn't going anywhere and will stay Number one for the foreseeable future (Despite my Jets).

Journalistic hubris.
 

Marty Ward

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So 50% of Americans wouldn't let their kid play football. Big deal.

90% of them would have given the same answer 25 years ago. It's not like every American parent ever wanted their kid to play football. As long as you can make millions and be famous there will be people who want to play it.
 

Dr Zaius

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I still watch it sometimes, but I absolutely agree that it's really starting to suck. All the changes to the game in the name of making the games "more exciting" by ensuring high scoring shootouts have completely gutted defensive play. The days of the Steel Curtain as a viable way to win games are long gone. Now it's all west coast offense and penalty flags on every other play. It used to be if you made a big hit the crowd roared, now you're fined and drummed out of the league.

The NFL is rapidly becoming a victim of its own greed and the rampant political correctness which destroys everything it touches. Pretty soon we'll just play the games on Xbox and that will be end of it.

http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2015/01/20/to-love-the-nfl-is-to-hate-it-in-its-present-state/

Dino Costa said:
Why am I so down on the NFL? Interest in professional football seems to be at an all-time high. The league clearly makes more money now than it has at any point in its 95-year history. The NFL boasts its highest TV ratings ever, right? The Super Bowl remains the biggest American sports spectacular.

Why then are more and more fans becoming disenchanted with the NFL product?

Despite all of its positives and all of its money, if you look more closely, the NFL is starting to ebb weaker. The NFL product fast becomes something that doesn’t satisfy the way it once did because of the very real War on Football and the unpopular changes recently made to the game.

The NFL plays as a mere shell of what it used to be. Ever since Roger Goodell assumed power, the NFL has changed in many ways–none of them any good. Goodell has presided over an NFL that has lost its way, that has forgotten what made it great, and Goodell has led the NFL down paths of constant apologies.

Football has been likened to Big Tobacco. Most fans I talk with think that the league has torn itself apart by capitulating to threats, lawsuits, and various forms of the insidious methods of political correctness over the last several seasons. The result is a game played on the field, and an institution that presides over it, that many no longer recognize.

Has the NFL ever been harder to sit through on a week-by-week basis?

Look it I’m not talking about the various peripheral issues that the league contends with in the way of hot-button items such as domestic violence, drug use, and ridiculous fabricated flash points like the name of the Washington Redskins. For sure all of those issues have enough juice to keep the phone lines buzzing on call-in talk shows. It’s the way the league has changed on the field that has so many people turned off.

Flags anyone?

What’s the under/over for flags thrown in the upcoming Super Bowl between Seattle and New England?

While the league has eviscerated any kind of consistent and fundamental defensive play, it has turned the game for the most part into an arena-league game played on an outdoor, 100-yard field. The league seems to want points and more points, and then some more.

The NFL no longer prides itself on football the way it ought it be played. Instead, it’s now a league set up primarily for those who favor the ridiculousness of “Fantasy Football.”

Play defense anyone? Forget that, if a defensive player so much brushes against a receiver, he’s flagged for any one of a number of violations. This makes playing the game on the defensive side of the football a near impossibility. It slows down the game.
 

Dave68124

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Meh, I usually scoff when people talk in business that something is dead. It might be in decline, but it is never dead. Football is a business and they will run it as such. If what they are doing today starts to lead to a decline, they will try something else.
 

Dr Zaius

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I don't think the NFL is in decline as a business. My guess is that it's making a ton of money.

But I do think it's in decline as a sport.
 

Dave68124

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I don't think the NFL is in decline as a business. My guess is that it's making a ton of money.

But I do think it's in decline as a sport.
That will eventually show up on the Income Statement and they will adjust for the market. That is what makes capitalism great. As long as there are millions of dollars sloshing around, it will never be hard to find 22 guys to suit up on Friday nights, Saturday afternoons, Sunday or Monday night to play a game.
 

Redwolf

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You should try being a recent immigrant and only being exposed to hangegg in its current state. It's a bit of a mess, and there is way too little coverage of the cheerleaders on the main TV coverage, and secondary TV coverage is of course not allowed to due all that rights nonsense.

And soccer, for all its faults, is at least getting better, not worse.
 

soggycrow

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Couple points.

Football is at its most dangerous at the pro level. Pros have their full adult male strength. They just hit harder. And they are better athletes than before, thanks to better nutrition and training methods. They are just more dangerous. Improvements in padding and helmets are eclipsed by these factors. College players still aren't full grown yet. Serious injuries to middle and high school players are more in the nature of accidents. At the pro level serious injuries are inevitable.

Football is increasingly racist. A decisive majority of the players are now AA. This is becoming more and more obvious.

What makes anybody think that soccer is getting better? Same game as it it always was. To me it is flat boring. Of course I like baseball, which I know many people find boring. But I was raised on baseball. The first time I touched a soccer ball I was in college.

Hail to the Redskins.
 

Hovned31

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Football is for losers. All those pads and breaks between plays. Real men play Rugby. :D
 
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