I'm still baffled at how a professional sports team can maintain any loyalty among fans when the roster becomes an endless revolving door of players.
DING! DING! DING!
We have a WINNER!
NFL teams may have career players like in the 70’s and 80’s, but most of them will be playing on depleted, loser teams in their twilight years - and that sucks for THEM and the fans.
That was when I started losing interest; add in the flag football rules for the QBs, which seem to be ever increasing, and they really lost me. How can you compare Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisburger and Drew Brees to Tarkenton, Staubach, Bradsaw - all of whom were driven into the ground on almost EVERY DAMN PLAY, and they still got up and continued to perform?!?
Then you add in the penalties, which are now completely arbitrary on the part of the referees, and it really isn’t two powerful teams duking it out, fighting for a championship - it’s which ever team is lucky enough to not get flagged during a crucial drive.
Of course all of sports has ALWAYS been a revolving door, most careers are short. NHL has an advantage of being a helmeted league, outside the star players giving lots of interviews most fans have no idea what most of their players look like. It’s an anonymous sport. And in general people root for the name on the front, not the back, every Yankees owner has known that.
Of all the things wrong with NFL the cap is the last to worry about. Its exactly why I don’t watch college football as much. Tired of the rich schools buying the good coaches away from the smaller schools.
That is one of the reasons the Patriot’s consistency over the last 15 years is so incredible. The only player throughout that time period has been Brady. It also helps to have the Hooded One for coach.
OK, Pats haters bring it on!
That is a problem....the alternative is to have the teams with the most money dominate the league every year....like the Yankees used to do in baseball.
That is a good point. Even when I was more of a sports fan (I hardly watch any sport these days) I realized that it was silly to think that a professional sports team from my hometown represented me in any way, shape or form. When the NFL season ends, all 53 players fly home to 53 different cities or towns across North America. There's a decent chance that zero of them actually have their primary home in the city that they purportedly play for. By the next season, about half of them will be playing for another team or not even on a roster.