Posted on 08/30/2017 8:10:55 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The Squeezing of the NFL
All of this puts the NFL between a rock and a hard place. Even before the 2017 pre-season is over, a Seventh-Day Adventist church in Alabama accused the NFL of racism and announced a pro football "blackout." Two sports bars in Chicago are also boycotting NFL games until Kaepernick gets a job, and the NAACP has threatened a similar boycott.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the TV set, fans are up in arms. In the wake of Cleveland's show of disrespect on August 21, social media lit up. A local VFW post in Strongsville, Ohio (Post #3345) announced that it would no longer show Cleveland Browns games, and Ohio Supreme Court justice Bill O'Neill announced a boycott of the Browns, calling the player protest an attack on the military.
At the end of the day, black players want social change, and fans want football without the anti-America politics. The NFL just wants the problem to go away. It remains to be seen how many teams will join the "disrespect America" protests in 2017, and how many fans will respond with their clickers instead of watching their favorite sport become a political football in America's new culture wars. It also remains to be seen how the NFL will stop hemorrhaging both viewers and advertising revenue.
There's a lot at stake, and it's not just money. One more season of this, and we'll have a better idea of whether professional football in America has crossed the Rubicon. And a better idea of where America's culture wars are heading.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Oh and there are other Harvey/Houston threads around here, so go to those. This is another discussion.
Could solve it with one statement: To the NFL, the Anthem means support and honor to the troops, present and past. Period.
To elaborate: for the NFL, it’s not specifically support for cops, Trump, the wars themselves, slavery, racists, etc - but the men and women who were/are soldiers/sailors/airmen. They allow the NFL to exist.
So, stand during it, or you’re fired.
Yep the NFL has a very short time to get this America bashing under control; maybe they can use the stadiums for kumbayah rallies....
My feeling is that the NFL is on a slow downward trend die to a number of factors of which the proverbial last straw has been the Colin Kaepernick saga and the National Anthem imbrologio.
I am 62, and thus I enjoyed what I think was the true golden years of Pro Football when I was kid growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The games did not drag out and for such a long time they were on only on Sunday afternoons, rarely was there ever a night game, until Monday Night Football.
Today the NFL has milked the product just about dry. Too many games broadcast, games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday. They have just unsaturated the market.
Throw in the concussion and injury problems and are the Millennial's really interested in the game and you have to think that the NFL may be on it's way to a slow decline over time. We will have to wait to see what the ratings are for this year, but I suspect they will be down to some degree.
I have been to a number of Husky football games over the year and when I look around, 99.99% of the fans are white. EXTREMELY few black people attend pro level sports games.
The NBA is worst. Whites court side and Blacks up in the rafters. Near total segregation.
“The ratings will be fine”?
I’ll take that bet.
If the NFL allows disrespect of our flag, national anthem, and country, then it is time to revoke their exemption from Federal anti-trust laws.
From NBA rules
http://www.nba.com/media/dleague/1314-nba-rule-book.pdf
II. Basic Principles
H. Player/Team Conduct And Dress
(2) Players, coaches and trainers are to stand and line up in a dignified posture along
the sidelines or on the foul line during the playing of the National Anthem.
disclaimer....Roccus is NOT a basketball fan at any level of play.
I’d like to see the stats that show how many teens are engaged in the sport compared to previous generations.
I suspect that they might be down. I too wold like to see that figure.
If the owners would agree to kick out all the protesters they might get us back; but they won’t and they won’t. NFL is dead to me.
If the owners would agree to kick out all the protesters they might get us back; but they won’t and they won’t. NFL is dead to me.
Previous comments:
One of these days I expect to see an Antifa-type brawl in the stands.
Have you seen the cost of an NFL ticket? No way the Antifa-types are going to pony up the cash.
Answer - they won’t buy the tickets. The people paying them $25/hr to protest will. They’re going to get in. They’re going to disrupt. Will start with a high-profile game like an evening game with high viewership.
So how will this play out?
From Nissam Taleb ‘The Most Intolerant Wins”...
“It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.”
Horse is out of the barn.
I am with you. And the coaches and management supporting these idiots are destroying their own livelihood. This reminds me a lot of the baseball strike, some years ago. These guys go on strike, they are making much more money playing a kids game than most of the fans in the stands; but, somehow, they felt they were not being compensated properly.
It is beyond aggravating to watch multi-millionaires complain about how oppressed they are and then watch them insult the country that gave them this opportunity.
The NFL produced some very good football and brought some very good individuals to the fore through their talent, discipline and conviction. It’s is now committing suicide through politics and racism intruding where it has no place. Kaepernick will claim lasting fame for his role in this fatal situation.
I’ll miss some of the games but I enjoy soccer even with its faults.
I quit being interested in any games but college now. Mizzou is also dead to me.
What seems to confuse a lot of people is mistakenly thinking the sporting aspects which were emphasized during the 'golden years' (60s-90s) were some kind of morally superior metric. They weren't - rather, football athleticism is what sold to the viewing masses during that era. The problem, however, with all mature businesses which reach a certain market saturation, is they can't achieve any further growth locked into their traditional base(s).
So, what do they do? Why, they look outside their traditional core of course. That means, for the NFL, women & families. But, to appear to females & families, the NFL needed to expand their selling points aka appeal to other aspects other that just a sports entertainment vehicle delivering athleticism & competition.
The end result is what we see today; in pursuing new markets, the NFL is quickly losing the support of its core base fans. Same is true for NASCAR, etc, etc, etc. My guess right now is that there are plenty of discussions occurring right now debating the direction the league wants to take. Perhaps a few understand the need to get back to basics, but are facing resistance from others that are still able to increase franchise value from a mixed appeal.
Ultimately, and this happens every time in every market, a fire alarm goes off and there's a mad rush to preserve the business before it goes into some kind of death spiral. NASCAR already seems ot be there - I wonder how long the NFL will take.
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