The NFL's ratings crisis

As someone who likes --- well, liked--- the college game before the latest debacle in The Swamp, I have to say tackling is just godawful. In the NFL, ballcarrier with a single defender in front of him usually goes down. In college, defender goes for the fake, then lunges at air.

 

It's a vastly more entertaining game because of the margin for error.

NFL players are too good, too big and too fast. And every team plays the exact same way. Kind of like what baseball is going through now and what has happened to men's tennis.

 

Would much rather attend a college game in person than an NFL game. I've tended to watch more NFL on TV, however, this year than college, for whatever reason.

The NFL experience is not good in the stadium.

 

1. Oakland sucked for 15 years and took all the steam out of that "rivalry." Sorry, the Pats have no rival. Steelers-Ravens is so 2005. Steelers-Bengals? Maybe when Boomer Esiason was under center.
2. Here's the difference: College plays games on Thursday nights. The NFL, in its endless greed and insecurity, puts the Draft's first round on a Thursday.
3. Remind me when Alabama, USC or Penn State puts on a "Color Rush" uniform.
4. Remind me when a college team moves.
5. Remind me when Ohio State replaces its band with Jock Jams.
6. Many college stadiums pay tribute to fallen soldiers or classy coaches. NFL stadiums -- stacks of luxury boxes, corporate naming rights from coast to coast -- are tributes to greed.
7. It did, actually, back in the '20s.

 

There are few things I want to watch less than I want to watch college football.

 

For me it just got to be too much. Oversaturation. Finding out those pink gloves and pink spikes for breast cancer awareness was a sham. Having ex-49ers coach Mike Nolan to essentially get on his knees and beg to wear a suit on the sidelines to honor his late father, Dick. On the rare occasion I would tune into WEEI in, say, May to hear if they're talking about the Bruins advancing into the playoffs or the Red Sox playing well, I'd hear Deflategate. Or some other NFL story that really had no bearing on anything, but because it's the NFL, it's a story. ESPN shoving it down our throats. The lack of respect shown to the players from 20-plus years ago and more who either cannot walk or do not even know what their wife's name is. Enough is enough.

Buck's post fit it perfectly for me. Couldn't care less about the league now. Haven't watched a second of it this season and am better off because of it. I find it hard to believe anything will bring me back to it. And this is from someone who, 10 years ago, would clear out everything on a Sunday to watch it from noon to midnight, and looked forward to working the desk because I knew I'd get paid to watch it and study the box scores I'd put on the agate page.

 

I was going to write a post about how much the viewing experience of the NFL blows these days. Then Buck did it for me.

Also, don't rule out the queasy feeling the CTE impact is giving people.

 

The phrase "12th man" in reference to football fans is older and was used by writers in the 1900s - long before Gill climbed out of the stands at the Dixie Classic.

 

But did single team appropriate it? Texas A&M did it first...Then the Seahawks.

 

College Football Playoff/National Title Game: A rocking atmosphere, a stadium filled with fans and team colors.
Super Bowl: A dull atmosphere, a stadium filled with NFL business partners and corporate hangers-on.

 

This is a good observation. Better play does not necessarily equal better viewing. As you noted, baseball and tennis are conspicuous examples--both sports are less entertaining to watch today (with fewer exciting rallies, balls put in play, basepath action, etc.) precisely because of improvement in how hard players now hit/throw the ball (and even balls in play are less interesting when you know there's a 99% chance the fielder will routinely make the play).

To an extent, that also applies to football. Truth is a huge percentage of the most entertaining runs in football result directly from missed tackles. And plays with missed tackles tend to be the game's more memorable ones.

 

As I wrote earlier, they popularized it. But aTm didn't invent it.