Death of NFL “inevitable” as middle class abandons the game | Hacker News Reader

Death of NFL “inevitable” as middle class abandons the game

chicagotribune.com

29 pointsjseliger28 comments

1. chicago tribune's website is horrible. not sure what it is but it keeps freezing.

2. oh man, people didn't believe him about football dying, and even called him a liberal!

3. the article is titled to talk about how the middle class is abandoning the game and within the first couple paragraphs talks about how stars have been pampered for most of their lives... i guess you can make an argument that you're pretty pampered if you're middle class?

edit: football's decline is

1. roger goodell essentially having the powers of judge dredd

2. ignoring the concussion issue for so long

3. badly handling any kind of domestic violence issue

4. essentially blackballing a competent quarterback for expressing his opinions.

As a lifelong football fan I can state that non of those issues have any impact as to why I do not enjoy watching the sport.

For me it boils down to how over hyped it has become. I don't want to spend my $$ on that product because of the behavior of the participants. They seem overly entitled.

> They seem overly entitled.

This is why I've always enjoyed college ball. Student atheletes often have more of an affinity/comraderie to their team, and coaches don't tolerate them bad-mouthing their own teammates on TV. In pro, the inverse is true.

But in the end, I've grown tired of watching all broadcast sports except international championships (track & field, fútbol, etc)

The obvious logic here is that people need to have played a sport as a child to want to watch it as an adult. I'd be curious to know if there is data to back this up.

Anecdotally, my dad played football growing up, while my three brothers and I played soccer. My dad and 2 of my brothers are extremely dedicated soccer fans now, while I and my other brother love football despite having never played.

The popularity of football among women (I don't know the stats but at games they're a significant portion of the audience) would seem to disprove this logic. For many people sports are one of the few times the entire family sits down together and roots for a single purpose. I would bet that experiencing this atmosphere as a child is nearly as effective in promoting the sport as playing the game itself.

Also: I played football for 10 years and dislike watching all sports.

Well, except women's volleyball of course.

In my lifetime I've seen football go from a minor sport to the top one. I agree with the writer that the NFL is in decline but it is far from dead. For example college football is as popular as ever. My alma mater even after a three win season isn't having any problems selling out the stadium this fall.

football has always seemed like an outlier to me, in the sense that the overwhelming majority of adults I know watch and enjoy it but I know almost no one who played an organized version of it. Anecdotally, this doesn't seem to work the same way as other sports. It really is a sport made for television and gambling, which will probably continue to drive it for a very long time.

As an anecdote, the only sport made for gambling is horse racing.

Ever seen greyhound racing?

  * sigh... *

Millennials killed football.

The NFL's decline is completely on them.

Football will be fine. They just need to stop leaning left, it's against their core consumer group.

Money ruins things, sometimes.

This seems to imply that NFL players come from the middle class, and without them there will be a lack of players. But is that actually true ? The sport could just end up being watched by middle class and played by the poor, who might be more willing to risk their brains to overcome economic hardship

Football already is a sport watched by (and commercially payed for by) the middle class that's largely played by the poor, since at least the mid-90's, and probably the 80's as well. Take a look at who plays competitive NCAA football, and who from there goes into the NFL draft -- or watch a bunch of "30 for 30" about football (because anecdata is generally more entertaining) and the trends are clear. There are a few key position outliers, by now whittled down to "quarterbacks, who have a host of special rules and how they can't be hit".

I think it's much harder to be invested in a sport you haven't played. People may still watch the Superbowl in the same way people watch the Olympics, but it won't be the same.

"And you don't need to watch multi-millionaire football stars, pampered for most of their lives, ostentatiously disrespecting the American national anthem, kneeling, their raised fists in the air."

author's an a-hole

Please refrain from these snide, low effort comments. Ad hominem attacks do nothing to encourage discussion. The author either has a point or he doesn't. Whether or not he's an "a-hole" is entirely irrelevant.

Why? He is right. What that dude did was disrespectful to the American national anthem.

So? The US isn't a fascist dictatorship. There's nothing wrong with disrespecting the national anthem, it's just propaganda. Free speech is a more important American value than blind patriotism.

> The US isn't a fascist dictatorship.

Which is why he didn't go to jail.

> There's nothing wrong with dis respecting the national anthem

Sure, it isn't illegal, but that doesn't mean individuals can't be offended by it. To many, the national anthem carries significant meaning.

> Sure, it isn't illegal, but that doesn't mean individuals can't be offended by it. To many, the national anthem carries significant meaning.

There is lies the whole point of doing it. If it was meaningless to people it would have no impact as protest.

he disrespected the national anthem?

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