The future of the NFL, is there one?

[lucabrasi]

Yeah, probably a bit of everything said above including general interest in team sports waning.
I heard places in Texas where there were 20 youth teams 7-10 years ago are down to half a dozen or so and the population dynamics of the areas haven't changed that much.
I have been losing interest every year for 10 or so it seems. Even when the Niners were really good a few years ago the passion just wasn't there like it was all those years ago, even the ho hum teams of years gone by.
Overhyping? espn effect/talk radio effect? A week between games. Endless air time to fill?  Blah, blah, blah, blah. Bash, bash, bash, This, this, this. That, that, that. He said, they said. It was fun for awhile then it got old. About 10 years ago, about the time I started losing interest in NFL it seemed I started getting into college football. Then that just seemed to get the same point as the nfl with saturation and I lost interest in that too as well tho there was never any real passion there. I don't know. Too much time in between games combined with the internet and smart phones and all else I think has kind of ruined it. Somehow all that ties in together I think.
No good rivalries but lots of stuff to hate? Jerry Jones, Patriots (tho the patriots haters has kind of baffled me I like to play along to my friends who are patriots fans),
Probably the dumbest thing Kapernick did was.....after all that hulabaloo is he went and said he didn't vote. ? (I always kind of think Alex got the shaft on that whole thing anyways.)
Niners kind of screwed that stadium up I have heard but that just may be more crap to fill air time with as will.
Raiders in Vegas? Oh my, I on their bandwagon this year.......Lets see Oakland kick some ass. Glad to see they maybe got the baseball stadium thing figured out.

With all that said, baseball has really come back to me and I think I can thank technology for some of that. Every day is game day. No extra time to fill with hype and all that happy horse shit. Still plenty of it but it's a different kind I think.
As I sit and type all this, no cable or satellite, no way to stream tonight, following the Niners on the radio...(boy was I pissed when I found out I couldn't find a way to watch tonight...... perhaps another reason)....getting a little excited as they get something going.........
   just a thought. The NFL website and their apps and choices for fans blows. The MLB site and their apps are really good. One is losing attendance at games, the other is gaining.

[NEplay]

Taking a knee is going about freedom and if there a backlash it is because of the defensive, fragility of the unconscious white fan ended up turning off lots of other enthusiasts.

 

[pdxmike]

Does anyone under 30 or 40 even care about the NFL anymore?  Not based on what I see here, but Portland is hardly representative of the whole country.  On the other hand, people here are often ahead of trends.  If Portland is ahead on this, the NFL is doomed.  Soccer is big here, among all ages.  Plus, who under 30 could even afford to go to an NFL game? 


Being from Seattle, I'll read about the Seahawks if they're in the Super Bowl.  Otherwise, I couldn't even name Portland's NFL team.

[pdxmike]

A friend of mine years ago had a theory (not unique to him) about spectator sports and society.  In the 60s, the NFL (and AFL) became popular and glamorized.  The 60s were also the decade of the big corporation.  Football was like IBM or General Motors--huge teams, lots of specialization, everyone a cog in the machine whose job was to do what their cog was supposed to do and nothing else, many layers of management with orders coming down from the top and going through layers of management down to the personnel in the field, lots of research done by research teams, all very structured...Football was the corporate sport in the corporate decade.


Then things started changing in the 70s, and by the 80s the NBA overtook the NFL, maybe not in total fans or money, but in being the sport that mirrored society.  Big corporations were no longer glamorous, and were being overtaken by entrepreneurs--small organizations, nimble, thinking on their feet...Instead of football's huge, cumbersome teams of specialists, you had five guys on the court who all had to think for themselves, and improvise by the second.  Players had far more autonomy to make decisions than football players.  Basketball was the entrepreneurial sport in the entrepreneurial decade.


Not sure where baseball, hockey, and soccer fit into all this.  But football certainly is NOT the sport of the decade in terms of any fit with it.  It's cumbersome, hierarchical, and regimented, doesn't reward individualism or free thinking, and doesn't jibe at all with the interests or motivations of young people.  Soccer may be the best fit with this decade among major spectator sports, or not.  But football definitely is not.


So young people aren't going to be watching it or playing it.  So where are the next generation of players going to come from?   Baseball participation waned here, especially among African-American city kids, but baseball was able to pull in players from the Dominican Republic, Japan, etc.  If U.S. kids stop playing basketball, the NBA can pull in players from all over the world.  Who even plays American football outside the U.S.?  That doesn't bode well for the NFL over the next several years.

[surf4food]

  Plus, who under 30 could even afford to go to an NFL game? 

These days there aren't many people at any age who can afford an NFL game.  Or at least if you take into account the price of the ticket, 12 dollar coors lites, 8 dollar hot dogs, etc.  Then consider taking a whole family to a game.   

[stoneaxe]

The whole protest thing is a non-issue for me. If I was black and had that stage I'd speak out too....I don't think it would be kneeling for the anthem but I'd make sure my voice was heard. But I can't blame anyone for protesting injustice though and how much attention would have been paid to a Colin K. press conference protesting the issue? While I don't like the idea of disrespect to the flag and anthem what could have been done that would have attracted as much attention? Unprovocative protests don't get much news time these days. However....all the distraction has taken away from a game that was already struggling....just another nail.

I love watching the game played well.....and hard....and it's not the game it used to be....and probably shouldn't be considering the issues with CTE we are seeing.

I've never understood why these guys are so looked up to though. I've never considered any athlete a hero even when I was a kid (unless they've done something heroic and there is nothing heroic in playing a game for big $$$$$$$'s) and the whole cult of personality and playing to the cameras with dances in the end zone and all the rest of it has turned me off. Despite having lots of opportunities to do so the only athlete I've ever asked for an autograph from is Mia Hamm and that was for my daughter. I think history will be kind to Colin K....what he did is more "heroic" than anything Tom Brady or most other athlete's have ever done.

I've never been into any sport enough to care about watching the sports shows that talk about it....what a waste of time....the few times I have I couldn't understand how it's popular. Watching the actual game is just barely entertaining enough.....watching someone else talk about the game??

Watch baseball? I'd rather cut my lawn.

Pop-Warner football is almost dead around me. Soccer and Lacrosse fields are full.

[Weasels wake]

From last night's game, taken during the game, tickets for as low as $14, but I understand it was a very high scoring game, both defenses must have sucked.

[Tom]

I'm even more glad that San Diego didn't commit to build a new stadium for Spanos.

[pdxmike]

I think nostalgia has a lot to do with why people still go to NFL and other pro sports events.  If you're in your 50s (or maybe 40s) or more, you're old enough to have gone to games as a kid, back when it was affordable, teams stayed in their cities, players stayed in one place, etc.  Players weren't saints but their transgressions weren't as visible as now.  In Seattle, we didn't have pro football, but we had the Sonics, and my friends and I would get $2 tickets, then work our way down to better seats until we were sitting behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at courtside, and the ushers never even noticed why 4 13-year-olds were in those seats (yeah right). 


So those people kept on going to games as they became adults and then started bringing their own kids, until gradually they got priced out or otherwise start questioning why they're spending so much for an experience that's getting increasingly further away from the one they loved when they were kids, and that maybe their kids can't really relate to anyway.  So now there aren't many kids who are growing up going to games with their parents, so when they grow up in a few years, they won't have any feelings of nostalgia feeding a desire to bring their own kids to games, which will further cut into attendance.  At least that seems true for the NFL, not (at least here) for soccer.

[surf4food]

We could always replace American football with this:

[PonoBill]

On the plus side, they punch like girls used to--before girls learned to fight.

Bread and circuses, and the circuses get boring. the first thing that happens to any entertainment is that it gets radicalized, because an unsophisticated audience reacts to that. Ratings go up, the "reality" shows get nuttier, and then everyone has seen nutty, and its boring and predictable. So the noise level increases, and bubba starts fucking goats, but then goat fucking gets boring so the entire category falls in the shitcan--good riddance.

Civility and subtlety have value. They don't get boring. Everyone loved Mr. Rodgers when they finally figured out what he was doing. How long do you want to watch psychos scream at each other. I cross the street to avoid people like that. I certainly don't want to watch an hour of their antics. Sports are just like that. Once the subtlety and civility are gone, the sport starts to die. Might take decades, but death is inevitable, because the people making the decisions just keep raising the volume. Noise and violence appeals to the lowest common denominator for a while, but then it gets boring even for the knuckleheads. Saying the NFL has a long way to go is wrongheaded. Disinterest accelerates. Its a one-nation sport. It could die in a decade. Candlepin bowling. Or any kind of bowling for that matter.

Over-hyping is a proper term, though it's just an accelerator. Every so often I turn on some sports show with five guys all trying to talk over the top of each other, all saying nothing intelligible, and certainly nothing intelligent. It doesn't matter what the sport is, I don't care about any of them, but it's an interesting social experience--for about two minutes.

[PonoBill]

Oops, I forgot Canadian football. I guess Canada counts, but not enough to call football international.

[robon]

Oops, I forgot Canadian football. I guess Canada counts, but not enough to call football international.

It will be interesting to see what happens within the CFL if the NFL continues to decline. It could definitely prop up the CFL. The CFL is a farm league of sorts to the NFL, offering players out of college who don't make the NFL another option to play and still make a modest living, with the hopes of developing and making it to the big stage. Some vets from the NFL wind up in the CFL, and vice versa.

I don't watch football, but have taken in a few live CFL games and it has always been a pretty good time.

http://www.thesportster.com/football/top-15-nflers-you-didnt-realize-played-in-the-cfl/

[stoneaxe]

And yesterday pushed it further into the grave. Do yourself a favor and don't look at the comments section of any story dealing with yesterdays NFL players protest. Sad to see the slow death of a sport I enjoy but even worse to see the stupidity of a large swath of our population on display.

[SUP Leave]

The NFL has made a major mistake IMO by allowing the culture wars to infiltrate it's product. Maybe it had no choice, but the main draw for sports is the pretend tribalism. We get to sports hate some other town for a few hours on a Sunday. Remembering at the end of the game, we are just enjoying another national past time - its for fun and entertainment. Now we have entire segments of the country turning it off due to cultural differences with the actual individuals on the field, not because they don't enjoy the product.

It is the same reason that Hollywood is losing so much money. They aren't providing an escape from reality like they used to. Almost every movie and Actor has to make a cultural or societal statement, thereby alienating a huge swath of paying customers. The entertainment industry (including NFL) should realize that there are a lot of people who have no ability to let two things be true at the same time. I.e. "I hate this actors/players politics, so I hate their product" instead of "I hate this actors/players politics, but they are awesome at their job." Many folks are so polarized by politics these days (mostly due to social media) that they can't separate themselves from it.

I feel like the NFL is circling the drain, which is a shame because I enjoy it. I enjoy it for the same reasons I play golf - drinking and gambling. There is still a lot of fun talent to watch on the field, and a lot of interesting people in the game.