The article mentions not a word about the REAL problem:
Kaepernick and his knee-taking during the National Anthem, and how it’s been allowed to spread to other franchises.
Rein it in, NFL. This is NOT what your core fan base wants, believes in nor sympathizes with.
They can't rein it in. These accidental billionaires are in a very tough spot.
Football is a great game to watch. I go back to NYG home games at Yankee stadium, Kyle Rote and Frank Gifford.
But the game live, like a high school or even most college games, and the game on TV, are different games.
It's TV that made the owners billionaires. But, watching the plays on TV, you can't see the whole field and you can't watch 22 athletes in motion. What you CAN watch are one-on-one high speed collisions, replayed over and over. Live, these collisions don't seem like such a big deal. On TV, they are a much more important part of the game, or, to state it better, of the show.
The owners have tumbled to the fact that at certain positions, thugs excel at generating this kind of excitement. So, slowly over about 40 years, the minor leagues (college football) have been transformed into thug finishing schools to produce the meat the NFL owners need to put on their show. College football is still fun to watch, because the vast majority of the players have zero NFL appeal and many of them, by the way, belong in college.
The UCLA QB Josh Rosen generated some heat recently when he said, "OK, raise the SAT requirement at Alabama and see what kind of team they have".
But of course, he was right.
Now, there's nothing illegal or immoral about the thug development system the NFL owners have created. The NFL owners are billionaires, and I'm not, so they must be doing something right.
But they are now so wealthy, and move in such social circles, that they have adopted the values of the overwhelmingly Leftist entertainment and academic communities to the center of their worlds - at the expense of losing touch with the real world their fan base moves in (the same is true of the NBA, by the way).
As long as they could maintain the illusion that the members of the team would, or even could, reciprocate the admiration and respect the fans showered on them, their business would grow and prosper.
But Kaepernick (thank you, Colin) pulled away the curtain to demonstrate what low-IQ thugs think about America, the core population of America, and their values - and what this season shows clearly is that Kaepernick is by no means alone.
The NFL business model is no longer viable. When you add in the fact that football players in college who actually belong in college are copping on to the fact that getting whacked in the head repeatedly at ages 18-22 may not be such a good idea after all, and with youth football leagues starting to shrink all over - man, if you could sell NFL stock short, it would be a hell of a play, in my opinion.
If, say after one of these protests, masses of fans IN the seats get up and leave, that’ll be the death knell for the NFL.
Gameday attendance has been a problem for many NFL teams for years. Before he retired, John Madden used to talk about how distressing it was for him to announce games where many of the seats were empty. Two things are driving this:
1. NFL tickets have gotten ridiculously expensive, and most of the league's fan base is priced out of these tickets. This trend has been magnified in recent years with the introduction of seat licenses for new stadiums.
2. For all of its reputation as an action-filled game, there are few things in life more dull than watching an NFL game in person these days. You hear constant complaints about the endless commercials and other breaks in the action that have dragged the typical NFL game out to a 3.5-hour affair. Those are bad enough for someone watching a game on TV at home, but just ask yourself what someone can possibly be doing in the stands while all of these time-wasting interruptions are going on. I'll tell you what a lot of these fans have been doing over the years: They've been swearing they'll never sit through that sh!t again.
Larry the Cable Guy said it best when explaining the Dixie Chicks fall from stardom after their liberal rant and insults from oversees about our country and President.
Paraphrased: You have to know your audience. Country music fans are patriotic. Insulting the country is like going to a trailer park and yelling, "Walmart Sucks!"
Purely an anecdotal observation, but for decades the primary commercial sponsors of the NFL were Detroit pick-up truck advertising with rough and tough patriotism. Similarly, beer commercials showed rugged guys (except for Budweiser) enjoying a beer. And yet in the last few years the NFL has donned pink uniforms, embraced homosexuality, and has allowed anti-American protests to continue unimpeded. Coupled with ESPN going full liberal proselytizing, is there any wonder why NFL seats are unfilled?
I think this is just the start of the trend. A lot of fans were under the self impression that they could never do without endless football and now are seeing that the price is too high to continue with the ongoing indoctrination and are doing just fine with a whole lot less football viewing.
Moreover, 3+ hours for one game that consist of 15 minutes of actual game play and about 2 hours and 45 minutes of commercials. In today’s world investing 3+ hours in a single football game is asking a lot. I can’t imagine the amount of time season ticket holders invest preparing and traveling to and from games.