So, you are saying hundreds of millions of Americans who watched sports over the years are at fault?
Directly and indirectly, yes - and I mean no insult to you personally. When football (and other pro sports) stopped being about leadership, co-operation/teamwork, sportsmanship, strategy, tactics, and began to become a cult of personality that worshipped players and money, more money, always more money is when things started going downhill, and that was in the 70s. Fans may have grumbled, but they continued to watch and support their teams - which meant that the teams got ratings, the teams got more money and the teams were encouraged to go down the same path. Fans grumbled more - but then you could get merchandise by phone! Luxury box tickets! Special vacation packages to watch a game in another city! And the fans bought it up, and bought it up and bought it up. Maybe they grumbled a bit more, but they were paying more money.
And all along the fans were teaching the pros that they didn’t have to give a crap about what the fans thought beyond a bit of lip service; the fans would continue to give them money.
By the early 80s, college ball was similarly infected. Jocks by then were the demigods of campus, untouchable, unaccountable, it was aaallll about their pwecious little children’s game - which they played like individual rock stars thrown together, not like a real team, just so they could get picked by the pros - and everyone else was secondary on campus. So the colleges were turning out spoilt brats for the pros, who were already acting like spoiled brats. See the SMU Death Penalty and events leading up to it.
By the early 90s at the latest, high school football (and high schools) were the same way. And yet people kept watching, kept funding, and kept saying they didn’t approve of the thuggery, narcissism and abuse at all levels of sport while signaling they approved of it with their wallets. Had to keep feeding that addiction, just like a meth addict does - even knowing it’s killing them, gotta shovel more money at it.
The only thing the Left did was redirect the inevitable end stage a little. If it wasn’t BLM the spoiled National Felons’ League were supporting, it would be something else.