The NFL is king and has been king for probably a solid
decade if not two. Like every king
before and every king to come, their reign will come to an end. The key factors in bringing down the NFL’s dominance
are: concussions, domestic abuse, drug abuse and hypocrisy.
I’ll start with concussions because they are they are the
longest lasting and will have the longest effect on the league. From the current and former players the
effects are devastating. The long term
health effects from dementia to crippling nervous system aliments are only
starting to pile up. Think back to your
childhood and the size and speed of the game and the players. Lawrence Taylor looked big but not big enough
to look like his uniform was going to burst at the seams. You look at the line men and line backers
today and they all look massive. The
game has also gotten faster and with offenses taking a page out of Chip Kelly
and the Packers’ playbooks and trying to run more plays and running them
faster. Coupling these two things you
get a perfect storm of more opportunities of contact and that contact is being
perpetrated by larger and faster men.
Newton’s Second Law of Physics tells us that mass times acceleration
equals force. This increased force will
only pile on even more injuries and likely head injuries.
The domestic abuses cases
and violence towards children have been all over the news this week and
very justifiably so. Football is a
violent sport. Like anything that you do
over and over and over again, your body and mind get used to it. It becomes second nature to and almost
instinctual to behave that way. I’m not
a reporter and I don’t have any sources but from what I’ve seen and read, it
seems to make sense that players are using performance-enhancing drugs. It seems obvious when you look at the
recovery times from the injuries and how in other sports it’s months and in the
NFL it’s weeks. My point here is that these
drugs have to have some effect on your emotions and your reactions. Connecting the dots, hitting people over and
over again professionally, taking HGH which effects your neurological state,
will lead to hitting people off the field.
I’m going to lump the drug abuse with the hypocrisy together
because I will never understand how you can get a suspension for the entire
season for marijuana when it’s legal in various forms throughout the country,
while punching your fiancé will get you two games. HGH which caused baseball’s black eye a
decade ago, has just been added to NFL’s drug policy. Just now.
Let me repeat, JUST NOW! How does
this happen? Actually it’s easy how it
happens. The league is more concerned
about making money than it’s players. Bigger, stronger, faster players make the
games more interesting and sell more jerseys, sell more advertising and keeps
the owners happy. Concussions have to be
been under reported because of the pride of putting yourself second to the good
of the team. Players have repeatedly played through concussions and had been
encouraged to do so. I’m all about
giving maximum effort, the importance of team and something bigger than
yourself, that’s what sports are all about, but at the same time you have to
protect yourself for the rest of your life.
The average career length of an NFL player is 3 years. I think about how debilitating it must be to
only get three years professionally.
You’ve worked your entire life to get only 3 years of earning power and
then to have health problems for the rest of your life.
You can see that the NFL has problems. The biggest one is the future. I wouldn’t let my imaginary kids play
football at this point. Maybe pee wee
leagues but that’s mainly because the contact is minimal and more adorable than
violent. If parents agree with me and
don’t let their kids play it’s going to be a thinner talent pool to draw
from. Thinner pools mean lower quality
in the product. Thinking further ahead if kids aren’t playing the sport and the
sport a lower quality, it means that the popularity should diminish. As much as people like to saying they are
doing nothing, there’s no such thing.
Time is a zero sum game. If you
aren’t watching football you’ll be doing something else, if you are a sports
fan than more likely than not you’ll watch another sport, which leads me to the
NBA.
The biggest story of
the NBA off season was LeBron James returning to the Cavaliers. Arguably the league’s biggest villain redeems
himself in a magnanimous fashion, flipping the story and reclaiming public
opinion (on a side note that adds to LeBron’s popularity and good will is going
back to the 23 and not making people buy new jerseys). He’s back to being the
most liked athlete and playing his best basketball, which is important because
there’s something to being the best that resonates with America. As much as we root for an underdog, we like
being the favorite. We like rooting for
the big names, the marketable faces.
Think about those names. The guys
you instantly recognize by only their first or their last name. LeBron, KD, Kobe, Melo, Blake, Curry, Kyrie,
Rose, Dwight, the list goes on. I can’t
think of that many players in any other sport.
Speaking of faces, not having to wear helmets make the NBA and MLB
players more recognizable.
Thinking about long term health, you see players in the NBA
playing into their late 30’s. Outside of
baseball I think basketball has the longest
average career length. On top of
long careers, the quality of life after playing is more normal.
Technology has permeated into every aspect of our lives and
we are able to share whatever is interesting or important to us instantaneously
with that highlights are key to the future.
Getting vineable, youtubeable highlights will lock in fans. It’s all about immediate gratification and
getting likes for sharing. With so much
scoring in the NBA versus the other sports the likelihood of highlights
increase. We are offensively focused
when it comes to highlights.
The NFL has come under fire this week for how badly they
handled the controversies of the past few months. On the flip side the NBA was lauded for the
lifetime ban of Donald Sterling after horribly racist comments came to
light. Similarly some questionable
comments that have come out of the Atlanta Hawks front office this week and the
culture of league is to report any missteps and deal with them. The NFL policy seems to be cover things up
and hope no one finds out.
I have barely touched on baseball as the contender to the
NFL’s crown and the reason for that is we have evolved or devolved to a state
of shorter attention spans. Baseball is
too long, too stodgy, too boring to regain it’s position as America’s pastime.
You can see that the NFL has short term and long term
problems. The NBA with it’s stars, fast
pace, highlights and friendliness towards technology is in prime position to
succeed the NFL as the most popular league in the US.
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