Perhaps now the NFL has become an Icarus; it’s flown too close to the sun. The National Football League has been top dog in America by such a wide margin for so long that league hubris has become unbearable. They just went too far: with both the over-expanding and the unapologetic attitude persistently conveyed.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has been vociferously booed every single time he graces the stage at the NFL Draft for years, and it is one million percent deserved.
Thursday Night Football ratings are way way down, as they should be.
When 1974 Homer Simpson traveled to the future and found himself in awe and wonder of the existence of Thursday Night Football…he had no idea of what a crap fest it actually is. TNF, which somehow always feels like it’s the Jacksonville Jaguars versus whatever team is having their Jacksonville level season that year, seems to be be the match-up every week, even though that makes absolutely no sense.
It also makes no sense how every match-up ends up being a blow out.
In short, TNF is not something that needs to exist anymore. That’s pretty obvious.
Then again it’s also obvious that the NFL in London is a thing that really needs to happen, but the league will continue force feeding it to the Brits anyway; and again it seems like every game exported to the United Kingdom is a terrible one.
If you really want to know why NFL ratings have fallen double digits, read the tour de force piece on this issue. It comes from Michael Hurley of CBS Boston. He listed out a list of several major points, and here a couple excerpted below.
Arrogance
In some ways, the NFL can’t be faulted for believing it could schedule literally any of the 32 NFL teams for any prime-time matchup and still draw massive ratings. The people at the NFL believed this because we essentially told them it was true. Even a Jags-Titans game in recent years would draw huge ratings, which probably led to some laziness when figuring out that daunting prime-time schedule. This will likely be adjusted next year following this year’s wake-up call.Deception
While very few people might actually turn off their TVs as a form of protest over DeflateGate or Bountygate or the failures of Roger Goodell and the league office in properly addressing players who commit acts of domestic violence, there is no doubt a mental toll that is taken from so much nonsense constantly surrounding the league. It might only be a small number, but there must be people who (in the middle of a dreadful 49ers-Bills game) start to question why they’re wasting their time watching this league. Team owners can thank Roger Goodell, largely, for the air of deceit that emanates from the league.
Here’s the big one though. It’s truly the killer app. I could not agree more with the words written below:
Denial
Roger Goodell telling the world on Wednesday that the NFL stands firmly against sports gambling really says everything that needs to be said about the way the NFL operates. The league treats its viewers and consumers as if they’re idiots. It’s a continuation of the way the league ignored concussions for years. Now, player safety is a priority, yet known dirty players get away with dirty play, Cam Newton gets his face bashed in on national TV, and players around the league still drop like flies every week, and nobody from the league says boo. They think you’re dumb. You’re finally starting to prove them wrong.
Pretty much! You can only insult the intelligence of your core constituency for so long. You can only obnoxiously ram disgusting deplorable Draft Kings ads down your throat for so long.
An ESPN study found that the protests of San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick to garner attention to racial inequality and police brutality, were one of the reasons why ratings fell about 11 percent as compared to the first six weeks of last season.
That’s only a niche market of racist white people, vastly outdated old-timers and extremely patriotic flag-huggers though who would literally stop watching the NFL just because of Kaepernick and those who followed his lead. The anthem isn’t even shown on TV most of the time.
Other factors that fans cited as a reason why people were watching fewer minutes of football were in the ESPN study: the presidential election (50 percent), oversaturation of games (44 percent), focusing on postseason baseball (39 percent) and head injuries and the decline of play (33 percent).
That’s all very true. There’s somehow too much parity, but yet not enough. It seems like no one team is really good this season, but at the same time, we seem to always end up with the usual suspects in the end anyway. It’s gotten to be a lot like the worst elements of the NBA- way too predictable in the end and officiating has too much power.
The NFL has become less watchable each year as more and more plays get waived for obscure, abstract rulings by the officials. If it’s waived off then it didn’t really happen, and if it didn’t really happen then what the hell are we watching?
Additionally, people now root for fantasy teams and daily fantasy teams in greater numbers each year instead of you know, actual football teams.
The NFL became a product instead of a game many years ago and a brand instead of a league decades ago, but it’s never felt this bad. Apathy in the NFL seems to increase with all the big markets struggling. Chicago, market #3 has one of the two worst teams in the league. Los Angeles, the second biggest market, has always been an issue for the shield, and they finally got a team back after a two decade absence this year. Top market New York has two teams that aren’t going anywhere.
Normally this wouldn’t all be a major issue for the NFL, but given all the confluence of factors currently going against them. It is all a perfect storm or the chickens coming home to roost and other annoying over used metaphorical cliches.
Good, couldn’t have happened to more deserving league.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.