NFL's Declining Viewership: One Slice at a Time

54thMA

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It’s clearly a combination of factors. Holding your breath after every big play to confirm there was no flag.
This is my biggest issue with today's NFL; how many third down stops get wiped out with ticky tack BS hands to the face/phantom illegal contact downfield, or how many third down conversions or touchdowns get wiped out by holding/offensive pass interference?

As you said, I'm at the point where after every big play, I wait for the penalty to be called. Understood when there is a blatant penalty it has to be called, but they are killing the game with the over officiating.............
 

jon abbey

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Also it's maybe a little silly on my part, but after 40 years of watching football, I have decided that how often kickers decide the game makes no sense to me. I spend 3 hours watching a game, and then a guy barely connected to the action comes on and whether or not he kicks the ball through the goalposts decides the game. This was made worse by lengthening the extra points (not that they miss much) and I don't know how to change it, but it just leaves me feeling like I have wasted my time too often. Not looking for feedback on this, just my two cents.
 

patoaflac

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Also it's maybe a little silly on my part, but after 40 years of watching football, I have decided that how often kickers decide the game makes no sense to me. I spend 3 hours watching a game, and then a guy barely connected to the action comes on and whether or not he kicks the ball through the goalposts decides the game. This was made worse by lengthening the extra points (not that they miss much) and I don't know how to change it, but it just leaves me feeling like I have wasted my time too often. Not looking for feedback on this, just my two cents.
Well, maybe that´s why it´s called football.
 

WheresDewey

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I don't think CTE is having a large direct influence on viewership. But it's definitely having a strong indirect influence by having more and more kids playing sports other than football due to it. In the long run, this will have the biggest impact, as people who play football are some of its most avid viewers and evangelists.
 

joe dokes

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A mod can move this if its over the line, but the Schillings (not *those* Schillings AFAIK) of Johnstown, PA are very clear why they stopped watching their beloved Cowboys:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/donald-trump-johnstown-pennsylvania-supporters-215800

More than anything, what seemed to upset the people I spoke with was the National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Frear told me, “if I was the boss of these teams, I would tell ’em, ‘You get your asses out there and you play, or you’re not here anymore.’ They’re paying their salaries, for God’s sake.”
“Shame on them,” Del Signore said over his alfredo. “These clowns are out there, making millions of dollars a year, and they’re using some stupid excuse that they want equality—so I’ll kneel against the flag and the national anthem?”
“You’re not a fan of equality?” I asked.
“For people who deserve it and earn it,” he said. “All my ancestors, Italian, 100 percent Italian, the Irish, Germans, Polish, whatever—they all came over here, settled in places like this, they worked hard and they earned the respect. They earned the success that they got. Some people don’t want to do that. They just want it handed to them.”
“Like NFL players?” I said.
“Well,” Del Signore responded, “I hate to say what the majority of them are …” He stopped himself short of what I thought he was about to say.
Schilling and her husband, however, did not restrain themselves.
“The thing that irritates me to no end is this NFL shit,” Schilling told me in her living room. “I’m about ready to go over the top with this shit. We do not watch no NFL now.” They’re Dallas Cowboys fans. “We banned ’em. We don’t watch it.”
Schilling looked at her husband, Dave McCabe, who’s 67 and a retired high school basketball coach. She nodded at me. “Tell him,” she said to McCabe, “what you said the NFL is …”
McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.
Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.
She looked at me.
The NFL?
“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.
“For life,” McCabe added.
 

johnmd20

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I don't think CTE is having a large direct influence on viewership. But it's definitely having a strong indirect influence by having more and more kids playing sports other than football due to it. In the long run, this will have the biggest impact, as people who play football are some of its most avid viewers and evangelists.
There is no way you can claim the fact that the players on the field are killing themselves are not having an impact on viewers.
 

NortheasternPJ

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Also it's maybe a little silly on my part, but after 40 years of watching football, I have decided that how often kickers decide the game makes no sense to me. I spend 3 hours watching a game, and then a guy barely connected to the action comes on and whether or not he kicks the ball through the goalposts decides the game. This was made worse by lengthening the extra points (not that they miss much) and I don't know how to change it, but it just leaves me feeling like I have wasted my time too often. Not looking for feedback on this, just my two cents.
Don’t get this at all. It’s always been this way with the exception of the XP. A team driving down the field down by 1-3 points with under 2 minutes left and trying to win or tie is awesome. Can they get into field goal range? Will he make it? Will they try a kick from 60 yards? Will the D block it? That’s great drama.

Wide right! Is a defining moment in NFL history, the Snow Bowl kick, Cundiff missing, the guy from SD this year who blew two games in a row? I find this as a great part of football.
 

LMontro

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Don’t get this at all. It’s always been this way with the exception of the XP. A team driving down the field down by 1-3 points with under 2 minutes left and trying to win or tie is awesome. Can they get into field goal range? Will he make it? Will they try a kick from 60 yards? Will the D block it? That’s great drama.

Wide right! Is a defining moment in NFL history, the Snow Bowl kick, Cundiff missing, the guy from SD this year who blew two games in a row? I find this as a great part of football.
Not only that but if there is one thing watching the Patriots during this run has taught me is how valuable special teams are. Kickers can impact the game in more ways than just FG and XP.
 

InstaFace

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Also it's maybe a little silly on my part, but after 40 years of watching football, I have decided that how often kickers decide the game makes no sense to me. I spend 3 hours watching a game, and then a guy barely connected to the action comes on and whether or not he kicks the ball through the goalposts decides the game. This was made worse by lengthening the extra points (not that they miss much) and I don't know how to change it, but it just leaves me feeling like I have wasted my time too often. Not looking for feedback on this, just my two cents.
Think of it as a tiebreaker. Leaving aside safeties and rare events for a second, if you were to replace the NFL's scoring system with one that was "greatest number of touchdowns wins; if equal, then greatest number of FGs wins", the results (winners) would match the results of the actual scoring system probably 98% of the time if not more. If the name of the game is "drive the ball over your opponent's goal line", then FGs reward getting "close". Your likelihood of making a kick, of course, increases the closer you got to your goal. So to me, FGs make sense as a tiebreaker.

(now, missed PATs throw a bit of a wrench in this process, but I think the correlation between even the 2017 system and 'most TDs, then most FGs' is still tremendously strong)
 

jon abbey

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Honestly I don't need any aspect of it explained to me, and I maybe could have been clearer that this is just one more aspect of the game that I have issues with. Again, usually when I complain about something, I have a specific suggestion of how to improve it, but I don't in this case.

But yeah, I've had issues with the NFL for a long long time, maybe starting with Lyle Alzado's Sports Illustrated article in SI in 1991 (https://www.si.com/vault/1991/07/08/124507/im-sick-and-im-scared-the-author-a-former-nfl-star-has-a-dread-disease-that-he-blames-on-his-use-of-performance-enhancing-drugs%5D). Sometime around then, SI wrote another article where they compared the routine daily contact one gets in the NFL to running into your garage door headfirst with no helmet, 20 or 30 times every day from different angles and at different speeds. That is a comparison I have never been able to fully shake, and I've never felt entirely good about watching football ever since.

On the flip side, I fucking hate targetting penalties in college, where guys get kicked out for that game and the next even though half the time the collision is because the receiver lowered their own head before impact.

Again, I don't know the answers, I don't think there really are answers, but I watch and care about football less and less every year which is what this thread is about, so I tried to explain (not very well) my own personal perspective on that.
 

InstaFace

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it's OK if you just needed to vent. I only offered my perspective because I shared that impression of silliness - intuitively, field goals seemed very odd to me too, until they were explained to me kinda like a tiebreaker. In soccer if you end up with the same number of goals in a knockout tournament game, you take penalty kicks. Tiebreakers games in tennis. Made it a little easier to get comfortable with.

It didn't really make sense to me, though, until I learned the basics of rugby. There, the player who scored the touchdown is the one who has to take the kick, and he has to take it somewhere on a line going back from the end zone, perpendicular to where he scored, which adds a lot of drama and tactics to the play (and keeps it connected to the players doing most of the playing). Likewise, FGs that aren't after a touchdown can only be taken under certain circumstances, like a penalty, so the tactical focus remains on getting that ball into the endzone. I'm not sure why Walter Camp et al decided to let anyone take the PAT, or make FGs a more frequent aspect of gridiron football, but it does add a bit of a feeling of contrivance.

As to everything else you mention, I won't offer a counterpoint - I think most football fans know that at this point, following the sport comes hand in hand with cognitive dissonance and general unease. The only question is how strong that unease is for them.
 

Reverend

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There’s also the issue of an unprecedented amount of alternative entertainment available on demand.

It’s sorta amazing to me that isn’t a more prominent part of the discussion.
 

E5 Yaz

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There’s also the issue of an unprecedented amount of alternative entertainment available on demand.

It’s sorta amazing to me that isn’t a more prominent part of the discussion.
It's the myoptics
 

rbeaud

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It didn't really make sense to me, though, until I learned the basics of rugby. There, the player who scored the touchdown is the one who has to take the kick, and he has to take it somewhere on a line going back from the end zone, perpendicular to where he scored, which adds a lot of drama and tactics to the play (and keeps it connected to the players doing most of the playing).
Are you speaking to the appearance of specialists in gridiron football? I do agree it is one of the XV already on the pitch with some teams designating a long and short kicker. My South African friends would wax poetic about the prowess of Naas Botha from the 70’s, so this is decades at the least. Recently in 7’s the try scorer kicks the point after to speed up the game. Makes sense not to waste time waiting for the kicker to trot up the field with 7 minute halves and no stoppage.
 

joe dokes

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There’s also the issue of an unprecedented amount of alternative entertainment available on demand.
It’s sorta amazing to me that isn’t a more prominent part of the discussion.

It wasn't on demand, but i'm gong to a pig roast at a nearby brewery this afternoon. That's my excuse for no daytime football.
 

Super Nomario

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There’s also the issue of an unprecedented amount of alternative entertainment available on demand.

It’s sorta amazing to me that isn’t a more prominent part of the discussion.
I think this is part of it, but this has been in the backdrop for the rise in NFL numbers, too. It's not like Netflix didn't exist in 2014.
 

Reverend

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I think this is part of it, but this has been in the backdrop for the rise in NFL numbers, too. It's not like Netflix didn't exist in 2014.
True.

But Netflix is also like 10 times better today then it was in 2014.

Is the NFL?

I also think mobile streaming of all outlets makes a difference, and that has improved as well. Like, people watch other shit more while also watching football... and some drift. I don’t know how anyone can watch a game like that, but I see it more and more. The stoppages in game play contribute to that drift to—the way the game works almost inexorably leads to it. I think a lot of people just are drifting away.
 

The Needler

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True.

But Netflix is also like 10 times better today then it was in 2014.

Is the NFL?
Nah, 2014 was pretty much Netflix's prime. They've added some good original programming, but overall it's worse in terms of what's available. This is from last year, and the catalogue available now is even smaller.

The statistics are simple and remarkable: in January of 2014, Netflix offered its US-based users a selection of 6,494 movies and 1,609 TV shows, for a total of 8,103 titles. As of March 23, 2016, they offer just 4,335 movies and 1,197 TV shows – 5,532 titles in total. That’s 2,571 fewer titles. In other words, Netflix’s catalog has shrunk 31.7% in less than two and a half years!
 

Reverend

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Nah, 2014 was pretty much Netflix's prime. They've added some good original programming, but overall it's worse in terms of what's available. This is from last year, and the catalogue available now is even smaller.
I was referring to quality, not quantity. Like how they’ve taken the mantle from HBO for comedy specials.

I find the quality of what I can find to watch—across platforms as Netflix is only one anyway so kinda irrelevant as it was just one example—much higher today than then.
 

The Needler

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I was referring to quality, not quantity. Like how they’ve taken the mantle from HBO for comedy specials.

I find the quality of what I can find to watch—across platforms as Netflix is only one anyway so kinda irrelevant as it was just one example—much higher today than then.
You're right that it really is kind of irrelevant to the overall point, but I strongly disagree about quality. I'm not one for comedy specials, so I don't doubt you're right about that. But the quality of the movie library is a joke compared to what it was several years ago, having ended the deals with Stars, Epix, etc. It's really pretty much worthless for movie buffs now. And the old TV show library has disappeared, too.

Some discussion here, if anyone's interested:
https://cordcutting.com/netflixs-catalog-isnt-just-getting-smaller-its-getting-worse/
http://bgr.com/2016/10/21/netflix-movies-library-us-uk-horrible/
http://www.slashfilm.com/netflix-movie-catalog-shrinking/
 

SumnerH

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You're right that it really is kind of irrelevant to the overall point, but I strongly disagree about quality. I'm not one for comedy specials, so I don't doubt you're right about that. But the quality of the movie library is a joke compared to what it was several years ago, having ended the deals with Stars, Epix, etc. It's really pretty much worthless for movie buffs now. And the old TV show library has disappeared, too.

Some discussion here, if anyone's interested:
https://cordcutting.com/netflixs-catalog-isnt-just-getting-smaller-its-getting-worse/
http://bgr.com/2016/10/21/netflix-movies-library-us-uk-horrible/
http://www.slashfilm.com/netflix-movie-catalog-shrinking/
The core problem is vertical monopolies. At one point courts were willing to step in and say that the distribution outlets needed to differ from the production outlets; see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc. for the most prominent case.

In the short term it seems like letting Netflix both create shows and have a monopoly on their distribution increases choice, but the long term effect is really to make there be a zillion studio specific monopoly priced sources for content (you can only get House of Cards from a Netflix subscription or the Avengers from a Disney sub) instead of divorcing production from distribution and having a bunch of true competitors pricing things out in the market.
 

m0ckduck

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Also it's maybe a little silly on my part, but after 40 years of watching football, I have decided that how often kickers decide the game makes no sense to me. I spend 3 hours watching a game, and then a guy barely connected to the action comes on and whether or not he kicks the ball through the goalposts decides the game. This was made worse by lengthening the extra points (not that they miss much) and I don't know how to change it, but it just leaves me feeling like I have wasted my time too often. Not looking for feedback on this, just my two cents.
I watch bits of games with my wife who grew up in the Eastern Bloc, never saw a shred of football until her mid-20s and thus needs the rules explained (and re-explained) pretty often. Whenever I hear myself explaining anything about field goals and extra points, it sounds totally bizarre and obscure to my own ears— like this strange procedure that's been tacked on to the rest of the game, involving a skill-set that's unconnected to what we see in every other play.

I get all the rational counter-arguments for how it serves as a tiebreaker and puts the 'foot' in football— just saying I can relate to the feeling of gut-level disconnect.
 

JoePoulson

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I get it as well. I've always found it funny that these gigantic men literally kill themselves on the field for 60 minutes, only to have these small, "my first uniform" kickers come out to decide games. Of course it's part of the game, etc., but I can't imagine how awful it must feel to battle all game, be exhausted and broken, only to see this little dude come out in his clean uniform to miss the kick.
 

gryoung

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I get it as well. I've always found it funny that these gigantic men literally kill themselves on the field for 60 minutes, only to have these small, "my first uniform" kickers come out to decide games. Of course it's part of the game, etc., but I can't imagine how awful it must feel to battle all game, be exhausted and broken, only to see this little dude come out in his clean uniform to miss the kick.
Lots of those “little dudes” are multi-sport athletes. Sure, there are some that may fit your perception, but many played other sports to a high level prior to the NFL.
 

JoePoulson

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Of course most are amazing athletes and would destroy most of the planet athletically. But in the context of the NFL the contrast is hilarious.
 

BigJimEd

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Reminds me of the Parcells quote when the trainer tells him he didn't think the kicker can play.

"I don't need him to play. I just need him to kick."
 

m0ckduck

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Sometime around then, SI wrote another article where they compared the routine daily contact one gets in the NFL to running into your garage door headfirst with no helmet, 20 or 30 times every day from different angles and at different speeds. That is a comparison I have never been able to fully shake, and I've never felt entirely good about watching football ever since..
I remember reading this too, and being haunted by the analogy. Even worse: to be specific, I believe it was actually "riding a bicycle into your garage door with no helmet 20-30 times a day", not running.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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Sometime around then, SI wrote another article where they compared the routine daily contact one gets in the NFL to running into your garage door headfirst with no helmet, 20 or 30 times every day from different angles and at different speeds. That is a comparison I have never been able to fully shake, and I've never felt entirely good about watching football ever since.
Couldn't find the SI article but did find this Globe article from 2005 that has that description: http://archive.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2005/09/25/time_running_out_on_dillon/.
 

shaggydog2000

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Lots of those “little dudes” are multi-sport athletes. Sure, there are some that may fit your perception, but many played other sports to a high level prior to the NFL.
And sure, back in the 60's the trend to find soccer players to be your kicker started, and we got legitimately small foreign guys who had never played American Football coming in with their odd facial hair and embarrassing attempts to make normal football plays, like this:


But since then the kickers have all played as kickers in college, and often high school as well, and are pretty normal sized for pro athletes. Gostkowski and Vinatieri are both about 6'1" and 210, good sized guys. They only look small because they are often next to 6'7" 330 lb tackles in a huddle. The little soccer player kicker is pretty much non-existent in today's NFL. These guys can even make normal football plays, like tackling somebody, or throwing a football. Not as well as NFL players who specialize in doing those things, but in a convincingly athletic way. It's not like the 50's where your middle linebacker would take place kicks, but enhanced specialization has hit every aspect of sports, especially the NFL.
 

singaporesoxfan

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Papa John’s walking back their earlier statements

“We believe in the right to protest inequality and support the players’ movement to create a new platform for change. We also believe together, as Americans, we should honor our anthem. There is a way to do both. (2/3)”
 

crystalline

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The core problem is vertical monopolies. At one point courts were willing to step in and say that the distribution outlets needed to differ from the production outlets; see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc. for the most prominent case.

In the short term it seems like letting Netflix both create shows and have a monopoly on their distribution increases choice, but the long term effect is really to make there be a zillion studio specific monopoly priced sources for content (you can only get House of Cards from a Netflix subscription or the Avengers from a Disney sub) instead of divorcing production from distribution and having a bunch of true competitors pricing things out in the market.
Yup. Such monopoly / monopsody concentration might be the defining economic issue of our time. It's part of the Piketty story. Frank Foer's recent book is good too.
 

wiffleballhero

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In the simulacrum
Reminds me of the Parcells quote when the trainer tells him he didn't think the kicker can play.

"I don't need him to play. I just need him to kick."
This is such a tired trope in football, but if kicking was that easy there would be a story like Hauschka's every week -- cut from DIII soccer team, ends up in NFL. It is amazing how good some of these guys actually are at this, especially since a ball over long distances has so much space to tail off line.
 

Van Everyman

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This was teed up in the ESPN Van Natta/Wickersham piece as part of the "action plan" Goodell wasn't initially sold on when it was presented to him but went to bat for when the big player/owners summit happened:
League executives tried to show they understood the players' concerns. Several league staff members presented a three-pronged action plan: expand the My Cause, My Cleats initiative; help convene more meetings with lawmakers to ramp up lobbying for players' causes on Capitol Hill and, through the clubs, in statehouses across the country; and use the NFL's platform to promote it all. The league had scrapped a staff idea to extend an olive branch to Kaepernick -- who in October filed a collusion claim against the owners -- by inviting him to visit the league headquarters.

The action plan had met harsh criticism when it was first introduced inside the league office the Thursday before the owners' meetings. Anna Isaacson, the NFL's vice president of social responsibility, chief marketing officer Dawn Hudson and others had presented the plan to Goodell and top executives, including public relations chief Joe Lockhart, chief operating officer Tod Leiweke, chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp and general counsel Jeff Pash. Isaacson characterized the plan as a chance to seize the social moment and make an impact beyond football. There was also a request for a huge marketing budget. The league's business executives ripped it, accusing Isaacson -- who had joined the NFL after working in merchandising and community relations for baseball's Brooklyn Cyclones -- and Hudson of losing sight of the goal, which was to persuade all the players to stand for the anthem. The plan was "too political," they said, and would likely invite further attacks by Trump. "How could you possibly present this to owners?" one executive asked. As the proposal was discussed, Goodell remained mostly quiet but seethed because he felt the plan was uninspired.

Neither Goodell nor the business executives liked the action plan at that moment, but what worried the business executives was that Goodell was not focused on what they deemed the priority: the very real financial problems facing the NFL. Fact was, they were right. Goodell believed that all players should stand, but he and Vincent had been working with them for more than a year on their concerns, calling them individually and holding meetings, and the commissioner deeply cared about their cause.

Now, in the meeting with players, Goodell, despite his initial reservations about Isaacson's plan, supported it "full bore," an owner says. Not only that, the commissioner moved around the room to guide the conversation about its pluses. Many times he told the owners they weren't hearing the players' core arguments. "We're all in this together," Goodell told them. The players and the union executives, who have been at odds with Goodell for years, were impressed. "It was the proudest I've ever been in the NFL," one owner said later. This was Goodell leading in a manner they'd rarely seen: He was not playing a zero-sum game, he was not risk-averse and his compassion clearly lay with the players in the face of severe pressure from hard-line owners and business executives. "He did a great job because he didn't say much," Blank says. "I don't mean that in a negative way."
I wouldn't be surprised if McNair's "inmates" comments ended up giving players and the league office the upper hand in this.

Also, for anyone who thinks Joe Lockhart isn't getting shit done in this job isn't paying attention. The league has been amping up its "My Cause My Cleats" initiative a bunch the last month to start giving "outspoken players" a league-sanctioned channel to express themselves -- the Black Unicorn is one of the latest to be participating and it's pretty damned good:

 

johnmd20

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I'll say this about the NFL viewership and interest. The SoSH thread last night had 11 posts in it. Dallas versus Washington and it was generally ignored. That is incredible. I will admit I watched 0 seconds of the game, myself.
 

tims4wins

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I'll say this about the NFL viewership and interest. The SoSH thread last night had 11 posts in it. Dallas versus Washington and it was generally ignored. That is incredible. I will admit I watched 0 seconds of the game, myself.
I had it on for like 10 minutes but I asked myself why, then changed the channel
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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I have t watched a single minute of a Thursday night game outside the Pats. Perhaps if I added up all the minutes of any non-Pats game I’ve watched, I might be able to accumulate enough to get to one full game, but it’d be close. That’s really got nothing to do with CTE, players kneeling or any other conscientious decision to avoid it, but simply that if I have three hours to burn, there’s so much more content I can watch instead; my fiancée doesn’t like football and we only have one cable box; and frankly there havent been many compelling matchups - I likely would have watched Pitt/GB if Rodgers wasn’t hurt; for example. I also don’t go out for games anymore - whereas I used to go watch the Pats with buddies and either get there early or stay late and watch another slate of games, I’m much more content now sitting at home where there’s no bathroom line, food and drinks are free and I can pay attention and not miss large swaths of action or pause it when I need to do something. I am most definitely not in the ‘as soon as Brady/BB retire, I’m gone’ camp, but I definitely don’t consume like I used to and there’s no one thing to point to. But I could apply that to most sports on tv. Life is too busy.
 

Bowhemian

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I'll say this about the NFL viewership and interest. The SoSH thread last night had 11 posts in it. Dallas versus Washington and it was generally ignored. That is incredible. I will admit I watched 0 seconds of the game, myself.
I watched part of the 1st Q, really just for background noise. And that 1st Q was pretty bad.
 

Strike4

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One factor that hasn't been mentioned is the rise of outdoor activity as an alternative to staying inside on a Sunday and watching TV. People don't want to be tied to live TV.
 

Kliq

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Mar 31, 2013
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If it’s nice outside on a Sunday afternoon I’m out doing something with the kids or doing yard work instead of watching football.
What do you mean by the rise of outdoor activity though? Did you recently just discover the outdoors? People have been doing stuff outside for a lot longer than there has been football on television.
 

Reverend

for king and country
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Jan 20, 2007
64,048
I think he’s saying he had kids and that led to the discovery of a world outside of televised sports, but I could be mistaken.
 

bigq

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
11,088
I’m not sure there is really a rise and I did not pick up on that part of the comment the first time around. For me there are an increasing number of better alternatives to spending three hours (or six or nine) in front of the television on Sundays.