[so_real]

That's funny! I had forgotten all about the baseball strike ages ago. And, come to think of it, I have not watched a baseball game since! How long before I look back at football the same way?

[robroys woman]

What the NFL is forgetting is that fandom is sort of like a “trance”. And if you break the trance, you are done. I mean, DONE.

The trance has been broken for a lot of folks, and every game it is broken for more people. They’ll need to depend on a new generation, but those potential fans will probably go to things like soccer and Grand Theft Auto.

Football will probably not die, but it will probably be just slightly higher in weekly popularity than boxing.

And as fewer and fewer kids start playing the game due to the new awareness of the real risk of permanent damage, that just might snowball.