The ratings for NFL football are down this season. I think last year was similar. Pro football used to be more popular.
Donald Trump would like everyone to believe that the decline in popularity is because of the players disrespecting the National Anthem before the games. That would fit his populist agenda. I think that might be a contributing factor, but ratings were heading south before the anthem protests began a couple of years ago.
I used to be a big pro football fan. Not only did I watch the games on Sunday, but I was also in a Fantasy Football league, so I was quite absorbed with individual team and player performance, stats, injuries, and off-field issues. I followed ESPN, the NFL channel, read the sports pages in the newspaper, and could have acquitted myself with style in an NFL trivia contest.
But, I haven’t watched a complete NFL game in several years now, I quit my Fantasy league a couple of years ago, and I don’t spend much time with the various sports channels that broadcast NFL information. I’ve just lost interest. Why is that?
For one thing, there is too much product on the airways. It seemed, in the old days, that the televised games on Sunday were important, that actual “stars” were involved, and the “color” analysts on TV focused on the X’s and O’s a lot more. Nowadays, it is possible to watch professional football either live or taped on any day of the week. That means all of the games, even the duds, are taking up airtime. Not only do we have four to five live games on Sunday, there are also the Monday night and Thursday night live games. Plus, there are rebroadcast games during the week on the NFL channel. In addition, there are many weekly shows on ESPN, Fox, and the NFL channel which preview upcoming games or dissect completed games.
So, there is a flood of NFL game product; it’s not that special anymore.
Secondly, a lot of the banter on TV and radio by the so-called “experts” deals with players’ off-field peccadillos, contract issues, trade speculation, and pie-in-the-sky mindreading about the next NFL Draft. There are many TV and radio shows which specialize in this aspect of the sport, and they have to fill airtime, so more and more inane information is blathered about, more and more gossip about players’ private lives fills the airways, and baseless opinions are debated for hours at a time. To make matters worse, some of the channels loop these shows, so the same material gets repeated endlessly all day long.
TMI…too much information!
Another thing that has turned me off to NFL football is the trash-talking culture. It used to be that gridiron monsters like Dick Butkus would give an opponent the stink eye (letting him know he was coming for him), wreak mayhem on the opposing linemen, unload pent-up aggression (and, hatred?) upon Mr. Fancypants running back, and simply head back to the huddle, with drool dripping out of his mouth, mission accomplished. Nowadays, it seems that every player on the roster has, as his first priority, the goal of bringing attention to himself before, during, and after the game. Celebrations, which have obviously been orchestrated in advance, follow virtually every play on defense…to bring the spotlight on a player…who might have just been doing his job. It used to be that spectacular plays warranted exuberance, but it is hard now to find a play when some defensive player hasn’t taken the opportunity to brag about a routine tackle that he just made. I think this look-at-me culture has cheapened the sport, and it is most prevalent in the NFL.
What happened to..TEAM?
The only NFL franchise that interests me anymore is the New England Patriots. I do follow their exploits, from afar, and…why is that? Maybe it is because they are the consummate team, year after year. They don’t have the greatest talent, but they have excellent ownership and, perhaps, the greatest football coach of all time in Bill Belichick. It is interesting to me to observe how this wizard puts disparate pieces of the puzzle together (oftentimes guy who’ve washed out in various stops across the NFL), gives each guy a role to play, and then tells each guy to “do your job”. Another thing that I like about the Patriots is that showboating, celebrations, and “me first” attitudes are not tolerated within the organization. If you are a player, and you demand that the spotlight be focused on you, you’re not Patriot material.
So, in a nutshell, I don’t watch games anymore, don’t follow the cable “talking heads” shows focusing on the NFL, and, really, am only able to muster any interest when I check to see how Bill Belichick has, once again, made wine out of water.
I wonder how many other ex-NFL junkies have similarly lost interest? To a certain extent, with the information overload, it almost like the age-old proposition of “What is sexier? A naked woman or a scantily clad woman?” Sometimes less is more; the imagination is a powerful device. Too many games, too many crummy games, too many “experts” shooting their mouths off, and a game which has changed from gladiatorial combat to blinged-out entertainment theater…I liked it better back in the day.
And, let’s face it: there are more entertainment options than there used to be. Guys who used to sit in their easy chair on Sundays, guzzling beer and noshing on chicken wings, while watching the Game of the Week…now have 500 channels of entertainment to choose from on their TV, have video games that they can play, and can stream NFL output to their phones, tablets and such. The audience that used to watch such fare only on TV (which got 100 percent of the viewership) is now divided like a pie…with the natural result that TV ratings will be lower than they were previously.
I doubt that a small number of predominantly black NFL players kneeling during the National Anthem has had much of an impact on NFL popularity. The very parts of America that are football crazy (i.e. the South, the Bible Belt), just so happen to be the regions where offense might be strongly taken.
But, those rednecks aren’t going to give up their football. No frickin’ way.