Posted on 02/04/2016 8:48:44 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
In a way, that sounds like a strange question, because football has never had a lack of fans. Last year's Super Bowl, for example, was a ratings bonanza for NBC, with some 114.5 million viewers -- climbing to 120.8 million during the final minutes -- making it the most viewed television program in U.S. history.
Next year, network television looks set to grow the NFL juggernaut further, with NBC and CBS brokering a deal earlier this week rumored to be in the $450 million range to split the Thursday night prime-time games package.
So the problem, right now at least, is not audiences or money. Instead, the question is who these huge audiences will be able to watch in the years to come, and whether they will want to keep tuning in.
Setting aside the question of violence that has plagued football on and off the field (and let's be clear: that's a huge thing to be setting aside), the reality is that fewer kids are playing the sport, largely because fewer adults are letting them. In part that is down to a broader apathy among American youth toward sports -- a number of recent studies confirm a steady falloff in youth athletic participation as kids are simply burning out in an increasingly specialized pastime by the time they hit their early teens.
But while baseball, for example, has seen a 4.3% drop in youth participation, and basketball is down 6.8%, football's numbers are plummeting at a far greater rate: tackle football has lost almost 18% of its youth players, while touch football has lost more than 30%.
What is happening to America's football players?
Doctors are able to answer that question. In the wake of studies that better understand the connection between football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE...
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I remember when they had the Super Bowl Winner playing the College All-Stars, before the season began. The last one was in 1976.
Oh but it does have a bearing on their life here....I think it’s a major outlet for the daily grind...and a strong source of bringing this community together....
Where I live is a smaller city , a tad backward in many ways as are many of the people here. I went thru culture shock when first arriving here...it was such a change from the city living I had prior.
It took awhile for me to understand their infatuation with the Steelers until I realized how much the entire community comes together for the games.... they truly do see the “Steelers as “Their Own”........and these games do unite the community remarkably so. Thus all the food and hooplah.....and they do indeed celebrate their wins.
So I couldn’t say it has no bearing on their lives....it truly unites them all regardless of their station or economic status. Fun to watch this gathering “in” when it happens....
I find it mesmerizing, and I've never placed a bet on anything in my life.
3 hours of standing around occasionally interrupted with 8 seconds of sports being played.
Rhetoric! You are comparing the total elapsed time with a single interval of play. In fact the punctuated nature of the play heightens the tension and the drama, in contrast to soccer where they just mill around on the field for several hours, on their way to a nil nil match, most times it seems, which is declared a nail biter in the aftermath.
“The only reason football is so popular can be summed up with one word”
But it’s a rush when you make a perfect tackle.
Mass immigration will make soccer the number 1 sport.
Don't they mean The Big Game
When you make a tackle?
Or when some guy that you don't even know makes a tackle?
To me, it's a bunch of guys standing around for 3 hours.
It will be pantywaist corporations that refuse to advertise during such a "horrendous" display of "violence".
When the corporations decide to be "publicly spirited" and pull their ads, then the NFL is toast.
It will be the likes of Gloria Allred with pathetic lawsuits that trigger the collapse of corporate support for the NFL.
I remember when Green Bay lost to the college all stars in 1963.
I watched the game with my gang of junior high school friends. I think it was a night game at Soldier Field in Chicago, and we had a sleepover at my house.
We were in total shock after that loss because Green Bay played most of its starters for the whole game.
I remember watching what I believe was the last of these exhibition games, when an incredible downpour occurred, washing out the game. The game was summarily called, and that was the end of that.
... I find corroboration on the web that this was in 1975 with the Steelers vs. the College Allstars. I don’t actually see video of the terminal downpour, though. I don’t know why, as it was riveting. The rain actually obscured the lighting, and the commentators in the booth were in fear for their own safety.
And in Jerry Kramer’s book “Instant Replay” he describes how Lombardi was in a rage at the Packer’s players after that embarrassment of the NFL’s championship team, losing to a bunch of rookies who’d never even played together.
I wear my Steelers shirt on business trips and the good will I get from it is priceless.
Take away the flashy graphics, catchy intro music, the wacky commentators during the game, the media hype, everything.
Just watch a football game with none of that.
B O R I N G
It's all a marketing scam.
“The only side effect is you can never return to watching sports live, it moves too slow.”
Here in Seattle we had to watch the last couple of games on DVR after church. Then we watched Denver the next weekend real-time. Makes it even longer when you don’t really care who wins! But - fun times with good friends.
When I watch by myself, I flip forward 30 seconds, past the huddle as well. I only have to watch the action. A game goes really quick that way.
I watch the games on NFL Gamepass after the game is over especially the ones that start at 0230 in Norway. It saves me an hour so I can waste that time on other meaningless stuff.
Surprise, surprise, football is under assault. Interesting. Part of the war on the manly man?
Maybe.
It’s played on a grid, and therefore is visually organized. Feelings play no role. The rules require the collective defense of territory, and allow the military-like seizure of same.
There are lines....straight lines all. Football involves precise measurements, sometimes down to mere inches. Rewards for crossing lines......hmmm.
Football has ground forces, and units dedicated to air power. Strategic and tactical planning is required, X’s and O’s......and arrows. Again, visually organized. Echoes of Gutenberg. The police here wear black and white.
There’s strategic retreat-the punt. There’s a place for the big, and a place for the small. No place for the weak, except the place-kicker, though he must possess a strong leg, and bear the ultimate in mental pressure.
There’s off-the-field leadership and planning, on-the field generalship for execution of the battle plan. There are secrets, coded messages, uniforms, interim plan adjustments, and on-the-battlefield meetings. There are physical sacrifices, and corporal danger.
It’s ritual war.
It’s just no place for women.
Maybe that’s why it’s got to go?
Football celebrates sheer physical power. Perhaps more than any other sport, women cannot contemplate equal participation. Interesting, instructive, and in a former world, fittingly wonderful that when females do participate it involves....lingerie.
Yes, because it is no longer about football. Just money and the haftime depravity.
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