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Prediction: Roger Goodell will be fired as the NFL commissioner and most folks will not follow the NFL anymore.

Nah, Goodell will get his money from the owners. I think he has video evidence on each of them. However, I think the NFL and football in general will become as irrelevant as boxing has become within the next 20 years.

My reasoning is that more and more parents are forbidding their sons to play any kind of organized football at the elementary school level. Because of this, many of these boys will become more interested in soccer, basketball, baseball and any number of other "less violent" sports offered by the schools.

Eventually, the lack of kids playing in elementary and middle schools will result in a dearth of boys to play at the high school level and high school football will become sparse and regional. That will propagate to the college level, and so on up to the point that there isn't enough new "talent" to replace those leaving the game due to age or infirmities.

When this happens, the NFL (and CFL, when you get down to it) will have three options. Either severely cut the number of players per team, cut the number of teams in the league, or just fold up the tents and call it a day.

I have been predicting for 5 years that Lacrosse will overtake football in middle class America. The reason is that boys crave contact, but there are relatively few concussions. Combine that with the middle to upper class mothers’ growing aversion to football, and it is a matter of time.

I think it is playing out. I live in atlanta and most athletic middle school kids I know have gravitated to basketball and Lacrosse. Soccer is tough because there is too much competition.

“My reasoning is that more and more parents are forbidding their sons to play any kind of organized football at the elementary school level.”

Got that right - dain bramage for my kid is not exactly what I’d like as a parent. My son is built PERFECTLY to be a center, or a lineman - but he will play football only over my dead body. NO sport is worth that, especially when there are other ways to get in good shape and learn what being part of a team is about.

I’m sure that there were parents that wanted their kids to be gladiators 1,800 or so years ago, as it was a way out of poverty and to become popular...but the fact is that the world keeps on spinning without gladiators. The same will be said of the NFL and football before long - the cost for the fame and money just isn’t worth it.