Peak Football
It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and hours from now the curtain will fall on a tumultuous — at least off the field — season for the NFL. No matter one’s inclination, they could find something to bother them — the continued passive (at best) approach to head injuries, the player protests or how the league responded to them. Ratings have dropped, the bad press (from some corner) has felt endless, and this has naturally prompted a rash of articles with the theme “is football dying?”
It’s an odd thing to think about a sport dying when it still dominates television ratings and just commanded a $660 million annual deal for 11 Thursday night games (an increase of almost 50%, after a year in which ratings dropped). Yet, there are storm clouds circling around the sport. I’m inclined to think the “football is dying” argument is overblown, but will look at it from both sides.
Football is Dying
It starts with participation. High school participation dropped by more than 25,000 last year, and Pop Warner has decreased by 10% in recent years. Perhaps numbers will stabilize or rebound. If they don’t, that means fewer and fewer kids associate with the game, and a smaller pool of potential college and pro athletes to draw from, affecting the quality of the game.
It’s still just a (North) American sport. Despite the London games, this remains a sport largely embraced by Americans, and to a lesser extent Canadians. It’s yet to see the infusion of players from other countries that the other professional leagues in the U.S. have. It’s not clear growth elsewhere will offset a decrease in participation and viewing domestically.
How we watch the game has changed. A decade ago, we shared and cheered big hits, often ones where the defender led with or targeted the helmet area. Now, we cringe when we see a big hit like that. Or videos like this one compiling every reported concussion from this season. Targeting penalties (like they have in college) and other measures can only affect piecemeal change to a game that is intrinsically violent.
It’s not just how many are tuning out, but who. Football is being second guessed by (upper) middle class families, who are often at the forefront of trends (remember, football emerged in the 19th century as a sport at elite colleges). If football loses favour amongst higher earning audiences who advertisers favour, and the demographic who may be most likely to be making decisions about sponsorship, advertising, or what sports schools should fund, it will spell trouble.
Football is Just Fine
It still dominates television (and culture). Even in a down year, 37 of the 50 most watched broadcasts in 2017 were NFL games (a 38th was the college football title game). No other sport can compete. Only 2 World Series games made the list (12th and 33rd), and 3 NBA Finals games (23rd, 45th, 49th). NFL games made up 9 of the top 12.
There are too many vested interests. In an increasingly fractured media and cultural landscape, few things draw like pro sports — especially football. TV networks that have seen advertising dollars dry up for everything but live sporting events, industries like gambling and gaming that rely on sports, municipalities that continue to invest billions in public funding for stadiums — they all have a stake in ensuring football continues to sell, and there is no sport poised to take its place if it doesn’t.
(As an aside about how popular it is as far as television goes. NBC’s hit show This is Us — which I highly recommend! — gets the prime post-Super Bowl slot this year, with an episode that culminates a long story arc about a character’s death. It was the 6th most watched primetime TV show last year. A generation ago, this would have been a huge cultural event. Today, it barely registers beyond fans of the show and avid pop culture observers. The 9.6 rating it pulled to finish 6th last year would have been 3.5 points away from cracking the top 30 of a generation ago. Suffice to say, there aren’t many universal events left. A lot of people are invested in football being one of them).
It’s still the most popular sport in the U.S. by far. Look at this Gallup poll. By any measure, and in every demographic group, it’s still the runaway favourite.
Every league has ups and downs. Arguably, the NFL is going through a down period in it’s on-field product. It lost one of its most visible players two years ago in Peyton Manning, and another (Aaron Rodgers) missed much of the season due to injury. Other young QBs haven’t been stepping up, whether they get sidelined by injury themselves (Andrew Luck, Derek Carr) or seem to plateau (Cam Newton, Matt Ryan). Every league goes through this. The NBA had a talent lull in the early-mid ’00s; today it has the Splash Brothers and the unicorns. If Philadelphia’s breakout star and (at the time presumptive MVP) QB Carson Wentz had stayed healthy, the narrative around the Super Bowl would be the league’s past (Tom Brady) vs its future (Wentz) and a potential passing of the torch. An infusion of new talent, some rule or scheme changes, and all this will pass.
The dangers don’t truly resonate. Do those videos of concussions really make us tune out? Do we just care if it’s our kids playing, not other people’s kids? The effects of head injuries will change the behaviour of some, not all. Look at other social ills. After 50 years of studies, warnings, and restrictions, the smoking rate in the U.S. fell from 42% to 16%. That’s still 1 in 6 people. Are that many people really going to give up football even when the health risks don’t affect them personally? Add in a growing (and concerning) trend for people to dismiss scientific findings and the word of mainstream media and institutions and it’s fair to wonder how much the issue of head injuries will really change things.
Peak Football
My inclination is that the positioning within the sports landscape won’t change much over the next generation. Baseball and hockey might fall back some, basketball and soccer show growth potential, lacrosse and rugby are the next sports to push towards the mainstream.
What we’ve most likely seen the past decade or two is peak football. It may never be this popular again. If it’s in decline, it’s a long, slow decline, and we’re still potentially decades away from basketball, soccer, or something else supplanting it. The Super Bowl is well-entrenched as a cultural event, and that will carry on for a long time with the existing fan base, even if fewer and fewer younger fans embrace it.
What would it take for that trajectory to change? In the positive, rule changes could materially affect the game, reducing incidences of CTE and other significant head injuries but still resembling football and appealing to fans. This makes much of the bad PR and concerns of the past few years moot.
In the negative, actions from legislators, insurers, or an exodus of sponsors might trigger a downward spiral. It could see events similar to what changed the perception of boxing — a major death in the ring, the disavowal of the sport from one of it’s most prominent voices, the very public decline in health of the sport’s face. (One other factor in boxing’s decline — moving all its major events to pay-per-view — a move I can see a league replicating with, say, Amazon or Apple or its own distribution network instead of PPV — which generates a lot of money but cuts out a lot of casual and younger viewers). Public opinion could change in a hurry if a player never gets up after a concussion, or a Peyton Manning or Brett Favre goes through a long, public decline owing to CTE.
My own trajectory with football may be one that more and more fans take. I’ve been less and less invested for the past several years. It started with quitting fantasy football, then watching fewer games and reading less news. I watched one full game this year, and mostly watch the Super Bowl to see my friends at the annual party we go to. Part of it has been finding the product less compelling (I like the college game more), but the head injuries, along with the way the league has handled domestic violence cases and the player protests has been off-putting too. If the NFL went away, I wouldn’t be terribly bothered, truth be told.
That’s the real danger to the NFL. If and when it loses its place of prominence, it will be through a series of decisions or events, or the ennui of too many fans, rather than a cataclysmic incident.
Yet, football is king for now, and the smart money is on it staying that way for a long time.
