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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

It's possible it's completely unrelated - but I wonder if the constant threats to move teams to different cities if people aren't* willing to fund billion dollar stadiums is related? I know for a lot of casual fans, that's a massive turnoff. You see teams making a ransom in profit year after year, but then they expect the public to fund them above and beyond. The whole thing just feels like it's gotten out of control.

That's completely ignoring what I can only assume will eventually be massive lawsuits around concussions for the NFL.

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It's completely anecdotal, but so many of my friends are put off by blacked out games which make random games unavailable to watch. So not only do you spend a ridiculous amount of money for a sports subscription, but you don't even know if you'll even be able to watch your team! And when you do, it's a little bit of sports sprinkled in between tons of in-your-face advertising, with ads in between plays, ads on coach's heads, ads scrolling across the bottom of the screen, ads interrupting normal play, etc. It's ridiculous. And it's even more ridiculous that media companies are surprised.

Out of curiosity (having never watched sports), what causes these blackouts? Is it contacts with the service providers?

2015 and 2015 they suspended having blackouts. The NFL will re-evaluate the rule after going through the season. The blackout policy was instituted in the early 1970s when NFL teams relied primarily on ticket sales to generate revenue. The rule stated that if a game wasn't sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff, they would be blacked out in the local TV markets. It sucked. If your favorite team was bad that year, you ended up being blacked out as no one attended the game. Sure I was a fan of the Dolphins, but I am not going to spend $100+ to watch a 1-16 or 6-10 team some years. I would watch at home in the background.

>but so many of my friends are put off by blacked out games which make random games unavailable to watch.

It isn't random; it's an outdated approach to getting butts in seats. Generally, it will be the local team that is "blacked out" in its home market. The blame goes to the team ownership, not the networks. But I agree, it's stupid.

I definitely think we are at peak NFL. The head trauma is a big issue, but not because of lawsuits. The NFL has plenty of money and can pay whatever. The real problem is 10-20 years from now when parents have kept their kids out of football because of the head issue, and now you have the best athletes in other sports instead.

The NFL has also oversaturated the brand. It used to be Sunday games and then MNF. Each week was an event. TNF ruined the event aspect, and has put on really terrible games showing how thin the league has become. Then there are the games in other countries. For a sport like baseball or basketball 1 game in another country is not a big deal, but the NFL season is only 16 games and losing a home game is a huge deal for the fans, players, and competition aspect.

So yeah, I think all those things (and the stadium issue you mention) have added to up to pushing fans away.

The head trauma is what made me stop watching football. I used to watch 8 hours of football every Sunday (on Red Zone). At some point this off season, I began to think about what I was really watching. I also got the sense that the NFL was taking the fans for granted. The major rule changes every year really bugged me, especially when nothing was done (except trying to reduce the amount of returned kickoffs) to alleviate the concussion issue.

At some point I just felt like I didn't want to watch old dudes "own" young men while they tried to kill each other for America's entertainment. It started to feel like real life mandingo fighting (from Django Unchained) and I decided that I didn't want to be a part of enriching that.

Same with me. I'm disgusted that they did not do much about had trauma. I'm also disgusted that it is so difficult for me to watch games I want without paying a lot of money, even when they are in the past. A third think I'm disgusted with is that some of my favorite players will have a few bad games and then get cut from the team.

What could they do to alleviate head trauma without essentially neutering the game?

Get rid of most of the padding and headgear so the players don't feel like they have the ability to take such hard hits--because as far as their brains go, they don't have that ability.

I wonder what the game would look like if these changes were made. Would it become more like rugby, but with forward passing?

Head trauma is also becoming a big deal in rugby union now. It won't be long, in my opinion, before wearing of the padded scull cap headgear becomes mandatory.

I played the game in a serious social manner (every weekend during the season at a reasonably good amateur level) for 15-20 years (had a few seasons off to do other things) since I was 15. I've had an ACL reconstruction and one shoulder is a painful mess. Fortunately no obvious head issues so far.

I love the game and watch a lot of it, but when the time comes I'm not really sure I want my boy playing.

wearing of the padded scull cap headgear becomes mandatory.

Thanks for the personal perspective. Do you think this would lead to the same situation the NFL finds itself in now? People hitting harder in part because of the protection provided by the pads?

I don't follow NFL, but from what I do know the games are quite different which may result in different injury ratios.

In rugby, only the ball carrier may be tackled and there are rules against deliberate head high hits. Yet, with the speed, size and athleticism of moden players, the amount of head injuries are on the rise.

I think wearing the padded scull caps would make a big difference to accidental head trauma in rugby. Many of the top players already do.

Just convert over to sevens. It's more interesting per play, and if the matchup is a dud, golly you've just lost maybe 20 minutes.

3-4 hours for NFL? Ick. Only the best, most interesting games maybe approach that sort of time and commercial (aggravation) commitment. And that's setting aside head injuries.

IDK, can someone comment on how helmets have evolved recently?

I used to compete in and still watch a lot of downhill skiing. The technological advancements in helmets over the past ten years has been incredible, now we have MIPS foam and kevlar and carbon and in general stuff that's been engineered and crash tested to perfection. Not to mention helmets are now discarded after a single impact. How is it with NFL helmets?

It isn't the helmet that's the problem. As their ability to absorb shock has increased, the players hitting harder has gone up with it. And although a helmet can absorb a lot of shock, the twisting/turning of the head on impact is not something they can dampen, and those are the motions that cause brain trauma.

Keep in mind that the interior base of the braincase is a catastrophe of sharp bone, and that you're scraping something with the durability of jello across it every time there's an impact that has any lateral component, which is all of them.

Arm the quarterbacks with a 2 shot .22 derringer.

You get the strategy of knowing how many shots the QB has taken in the game, all sorts of new statistics can be compiled for the fans who like that, and you're more or less guaranteed to have one to four serious injuries per game.

The QB now has to figure out defensive and offensive aiming as well as ball management. Tackles and backers need to factor in taking a shot versus possible possession.

Not to mention that QBs get arrested during most games. There's going to be a lot more substitution.

Really, if you're going to talk about "neutering" the game by making it less dangerous to the players, then obviously it makes the game much more manly if you up the stakes this way.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=1488

We are definitely peak NFL for several reasons: 1. Head trauma. People watching now actively know about it and it turns some people off. Those who don't care about players getting injured, then gripe the game is being changed. So the NFL is caught in the middle of losing fans for putting out a rather barbaric sport of causing head trauma against those who think they are making the game worse. 2. Stadiums. Owners simply were greedy and pushed to far. This turned off various fans and groups. 3. Kids. A lot of parents don't want their kids playing. So that will have an impact not on the player pool, but those who will watch and live the sport later. 4. Time. Games are way to long. It's 3+ hours for 10 minutes of action. Seriously, Comcast edits all games and you can watch them a few days later. They take 8 to 10 minutes to watch all plays. You lose the anticipation, but still too many timeouts and stoppages. 5. Watching patterns. Many people, escpecially those under 30, don't watch tv for 3 hours in a row. They are doing multiple things. They want bite size content. NFL simply does not fit into that currently, unless you have the red zone package. That is the only way I can watch football now, unless my home team is playing (Dolphins). Even for the I watch flip back and forth and do other things. 6. Costs. It is ridiculously priced to go to a real game. Parking is $25 to $40. Tickets are $100 each for decent seats. Food is 4x what is actually costs. Just crazy. Plus I don't have a full day to kill, to drive, park, wait, and watch the game. Easier to turn on at home. Unless it's a big game or playoffs, live NFL is not worth it at all.

Also with fewer and fewer children getting hooked the NFL week continue to delayed.

Their marketing campaign was to go after children like the tobacco industry.[1] With head trauma coming to the forefront the NFL is going to the back of priorities.

[1] http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/nfl-football-...

Huff is not really a credible source

Sacramento just got a $$$ stadium. City used it as an excuse to significantly jack up the parking prices, $28 for an evening to pay for the stadium. Of course now the restaurants are seeing a drop in business because not many want to pay $28 to park.

Spending so much on stadiums seems insane. In Pittsburgh the Steelers and Pirates lobbied for and got seperate stadiums, despite minimal overlap in seasons.

IIRC, Pittsburgh voted down the stadium several times, but then they pulled some political shenanigans to shove it through.

The problem isn't that the Steelers and Pirates should have separate stadiums. That's fine. The problem is that the stadiums should pay for themselves.

If a stadium isn't a good enough business proposition to get funded privately, it shouldn't get funded, period.

> If a stadium isn't a good enough business proposition to get funded privately, it shouldn't get funded, period.

Yeah. In Munich, for example, the Allianz Arena stadium was built for 340M €, which were brought up by FC Bayern and TSV 1860, in cooperation with Allianz insurance which sponsored the name. FC Bayern paid off the entire debt two years ago (after 9.5 years, it was projected to take 25 years to pay off the debt).

But I'm not totally against public partial funding/investment - especially in the lower leagues the pitch usually is open to all kinds of sport clubs as well as nearby schools, so it makes sense to fund at least part of the costs via public channels as long as the public gets some value back beyond interest payments. (Anecdata: I'm living across the pitch my former school still uses. It's weird to see lots of the teachers random on the street...)

Sacramento has a ton of city owned parking garages near the new arena which are typically empty in the evening. The city contributed $212 million to the arena based on future increased parking revenue generated from events at the arena.

I've been to several events this year at the Golden1 Center and have spent no more than $10 on parking for the evening. The city did use this as an excuse to increase meter rates and extend hours, but it's only $0.50/hr more.

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