Saturday, November 8, 2014

Football Is Going to Zero?

I shouldn't get my hopes up, but this would be great:

"Millions of parents have already decided that youth football brings serious health risks to the brain, and science may ultimately prove those worries correct. If it does, lawsuits will follow on behalf of former players, much as the N.F.L. has agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to injured ex-players. 'When universities and school boards have to start paying out substantial settlements, the debate will change'"
Remember, boxing and bowling used to be more popular than football and basketball.

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Personal anecdote: my grandfather played pro football for three years in the 1950s, prior to the NFL-AFL merger. He had a bunch of health problems as a result, including getting replacements for both his knees later in life.

I don't follow football closely, college or pro, but I'm always amazed at the attention it gets. A while ago I read that T Boone Pickens donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Oklahoma State football... think of the innumerable ways that money could have been better spent.

MrGotham said...

Short CBS. The last remaining category of content that can capture the sustained attention of a live mass audience (ie not time shifted and ad-skipped) is likely starting a painful decline. The same crowd that hates guns, cigarettes, fossil fuels and Big Gulp sodas will be all over this.

ChrisD said...

What is the correlation with boxing?

eah said...

If all the commercials during a TV broadcast -- which make a game absolutely unwatchable, IMO -- have not killed off the business, then I'm not sure anything will.

ChrisD said...

Bowling, not boxing.

CP said...

The "correlation" with bowling and boxing is that both sports used to be very popular, more popular than football is today.

These are just fads. Excited billionaires pay ludicrous multiples of projected fad earnings.

Easy come, easy go.

ChrisD said...

Sure. Just wondering if there was as much of a reason for the decline in bowling as there is in boxing