I was OK with my son playing football, 12 years ago. But he quit after a week of practice (in the afternoon, in August, in Texas). Later he did play rugby in college, and doctors discouraged him from continuing after he suffered a concussion.

The thing is though that boxing was marginalized because of corruption, lack of credible structure and titles, and the fact that major championship fights (especially at the heavyweight level) were both too infrequent and never shown on anything except pay-per-view. If boxing had been marginalized because people found it too unsafe and violent, it wouldn't have been replaced by MMA which seems to me to be even more violent and unsafe.

Nope. Yes, corruption in boxing had a lot to do with it. The move to pay-per-view wasn't a driver of boxing's decline in popularity it was a response to its decline. The boxing audience quickly became a specialized audience once Ali left the scene. Well, outside of the heavyweights it had been a niche market for a very long time, probably starting after WW2 when lots of stuff became pretty marginalized. When you have a small but dedicated audience, you take them for everything you can. Basically, if you can draw enough eyeballs to generate enough ad revenue, you're on regular TV; if you can't, the fans have to pay for it.

Sure, some violent stuff draws "millions" of viewers. Well, in a country of 330 million people, just 1% is 3.3 million yet 1% is fully marginalized. WS game 1 drew only 13 M viewers -- do you think gladiatorial battles to the death would do better than that? Do you think MMA can come close enough to that to ever make it on network TV? Ah, who knows, produce it cheaply enough and you can get anything on network TV.

It's a big country and almost everybody has at least one taste that's well outside the mainstream whether it's boxing or MMA or death metal or avant-garde jazz or competitive knitting or defecating on their sexual partners. Doesn't mean any of those are popular and they don't tell you anything about cultural trends except that, unlike the 50s, I can mention people defecating on their sexual partners and not be shunned for even knowing such a thing existed.

For the record, I prefer to defecate in full privacy.

The tremendous loss of time which overattention to football occasions is its worst feature, though the brutality and maiming are serious evils, too.

– New York Times editorial, 23 November 1897

Always correct; sometimes early.

You missed the point. Let me put it more bluntly:

If you only came to realize how debilitating football is due to the recently discovered issues of concussion-related death then you have had your head in the sand for your entire football-watching life. Did you read the bit on Jim Otto? Did you seriously think I was promoting that as a good outcome?

And did you bother to read the bit I was commenting on? Here it is again: the collective shock of our discovery that the endpoint of this gladiatorial combat is actual death. Yep, as long as it was just disability, lifelong pain, crippling arthritis at 40, amputation we were fine with the "endpoint of this gladiatorial combat." The author of the piece apparently never gave a thought to what happens to these guys after they limp off the field for the last time until now.

It's been a barbarous sport for my entire lifetime. Some of us didn't require actual deaths to recognize that.

Well, I guess you're a better person or something. The point of my post was that I do make a distinction between those physical impairments, up to and including the exceptional amputation, and developing dementia in middle age, partiularly given the rate.

I think football players and fans weigh it up and are OK with pretty much all players aching more than non-athletes for their whole lives, a decent number stuck with a wonky knee or arm they can't raise above their shoulder, and a small number (but way more than you'd expect from the general population) dealing with a life-changing/threatening issue. Former players with brains like alzheimers patients is at the extreme end of that scale (if it's even on the same scale) in and of itself; but what should really prompt the collective shock is the discovery of CTE wherever they look for it. People are willing to write off the occasional Jim Otto or Terry Long; anyone could die in an elevator leaving the office. If serious mental problems are a likely consequence of playing in the NFL (or even just certain positions), I'd hope they're not OK with that.

Sure, some violent stuff draws "millions" of viewers. Well, in a country of 330 million people, just 1% is 3.3 million yet 1% is fully marginalized. WS game 1 drew only 13 M viewers -- do you think gladiatorial battles to the death would do better than that? Do you think MMA can come close enough to that to ever make it on network TV? Ah, who knows, produce it cheaply enough and you can get anything on network TV.

CTE & Pro wrestling:

Last year, Wrestlemania XXVIII drew 80k in Miami and over 1.25M PPV buys at 60$ a shot. This year, WrestleMania is expected to top those numbers and it will be headlined by Hollywood's top action star, The Rock.

It's also important to note that Chris Benoit's brain was in awful condition when he committed those heinous acts, and since that point, WWE has materially changed the in-ring nature of their product by vastly limiting the number of maneuvers that involve the head and neck, no matter how safe they may appear. The Saturday morning kids show outright bans any attack above the shoulders. Obviously, matches are predetermined and somewhat choreographed, but I think this is indicative of the direction we're probably headed.

[55] Is there an idea of how much of a difference that is making? I have no doubt its a lot (nobody should ever do a swandive headbutt), but I wonder how much of the continuous low-grade hits to the head (like football line play) remain.

The Saturday morning kids show outright bans any attack above the shoulders. Obviously, matches are predetermined and somewhat choreographed, but I think this is indicative of the direction we're probably headed.

A quick review of the last 4th down play in the NFC Championship would indicate that the NFL is equally predetermined and choreographed.

a friend of mine is very active in youth football. i couldn't find anything online to validate what he told me which was that new participation has plunged the last few years. he said leagues were consolidating teams because young kids are being directed to other sports.

that's the canary in the coal mine if true.

you just won't see the impact for another 20 years

A quick review of the last 4th down play in the NFC Championship would indicate that the NFL is equally predetermined and choreographed.

Did the league also choreograph the Falcons not scoring any points in the 2nd half?

[58] I'm curious who'll get all of that talent. Baseball? Basketball? Soccer? Tennis? Ultimate Frisbee?

Why would the NFL choreograph the Falcons not winning? Atlanta is a huge, football-crazed market. If they were controlling who wins, they'd be on the preferred side.

Why would the NFL choreograph the Falcons not winning? Atlanta is a huge, football-crazed market. If they were controlling who wins, they'd be on the preferred side.

Yeah, right, I'm sure the NFL would prefer to feature a team from the underarm of America over San Francisco. Dream on.

Not that Sam's trolling should ever be taken seriously, but who outside of Atlanta doesn't prefer today's matchup over the alternative? Who wants to watch a team that blew 20 point and 17 point leads AT HOME in back-to-back weeks?

Why would the NFL choreograph the Falcons not winning? Atlanta is a huge, football-crazed market. If they were controlling who wins, they'd be on the preferred side.

College football. Falcons, not so much.

Why? Because, the hilarious conspiracy theory goes, they wanted the Harbaughs to face each other. Which begs the question, why didn't they do that last year?

Who wants to watch a team that blew 20 point and 17 point leads AT HOME in back-to-back weeks?

Sounds like a recipe for a Super Bowl with a thrilling comeback!

I'm curious who'll get all of that talent. Baseball? Basketball? Soccer? Tennis? Ultimate Frisbee?

Funny -- I wish it were tennis (a great sport with long-declining popularity and no one promising in the American ranks), but figure skating is about as likely as tennis.

Seriously, up here in the Northeast schools (high school and college), lacrosse is a big winner when a kid decides not to play football. It's another sport that values size and speed, with lots of contact, but isn't as dangerous as football if you look at the rates of head injuries.

Yeah, right, I'm sure the NFL would prefer to feature a team from the underarm of America over San Francisco. Dream on.

The 49ers didn't play the Lions.

10: Hell no.

Regarding 'actual death' to spur change, we regularly (if infrequently) see guys get paralyzed on the football field. If that's not 'bad enough' I don't know that a freak death would do it. But I totally buy Harveys' [58] and fully believe we'll start to see a marked dropoff in participation beginning soon (or now) and rolling up level by level. As for how the NFL will cope, and/or where those athletes will go if not football... interesting questions. Soccer maybe a bit, could be lacrosse or even rugby as previously mentioned will become the next big thing. Or Olympic-style team handball. That'd be cool.

Edit: Coke to [65] on lacrosse mention

If you can invent a soft but slick helmet, you'll find a market.

i would think a breakaway helmet would be an ideal solution. you get the slickness of the outer shell, but because the helmet isn't entirely rigid, you'd also limit its use as a projectile weapon.

and with the advancements in technology, you could fine-tune the point at which the helmet breaks away so that you'd know to take that player off the field and evaluate him for concussive injury. if you make a star player sit out 10 plays or 10 minutes or a quarter or a half because his helmet broke, i think you'd start to see such players make a much stronger attempt to avoid using his head as a battering ram.

Did the league also choreograph the Falcons not scoring any points in the 2nd half?

Twice, in fact.

Lacrosse isn't going to suddenly pick up a ton of players. There's no money in it. Participation might increase a little but the top athletes are going to migrate sports that have an immediate professional future. And I've only seen lacrosse played spring, so it wasn't an alternative to football, it was in addition too. Plus, it's a contact sport, parents aren't going to be so keen on not having their kids play one contact sport so that they can instead play a different one.

i won't live to see it but would not be surprised to see college football primarily a regional sport concentrated in the midwest and the south by 2050

Lacrosse is a sport targeted to rich, northeastern white kids. There's a reason football draws its athletes from predominantly lower class, black families. It's the same reason the front lines of the military is populated by poor kids.

Lacrosse is a sport targeted to rich, northeastern white kids. There's a reason football draws its athletes from predominantly lower class, black families. It's the same reason the front lines of the military is populated by poor kids.

Not that I've given it a great deal of thought, but I've always found this interesting. Football seems like one of the more expensive sports - there's quite a lot of equipment that goes with it. Of course, lacrosse has a lot of specialized equipment as well so I don't mean to draw the comparison between those two.

The obvious parallel is soccer, which seems like the perfect sport for the lower classes. It sure seems to be the go-to sport in a lot of developing nations. Yet in America it seems to be a thoroughly wealthy white kid thing to do.

I suppose it just goes to show there's a lot more to sport selection than cost.

i won't live to see it but would not be surprised to see college football primarily a regional sport concentrated in the midwest and the south by 2050

Isn't this virtually true already? I could see the present imbalance accelerating quickly

I only have daughters but wouldn't let my hypothetical son play in the current situation. Someone in the NFL office should have a big poster made of the Dempsey-Tunney fight with 100,000 people at Soldier Field and put it up in every exec's office as a warning that popularity doesn't have to be steady.

Football is expensive to build an infrastructure for, but for the players it's not that much. I'm not sure if you have to "rent" your own pads, but I doubt as much. The appeal of football for the lower classes is that all it really requires is an extreme dedication to destroying your body for a lottery ticket to getting yourself and your family out of the existential situation they're in.

i won't live to see it but would not be surprised to see college football primarily a regional sport concentrated in the midwest and the south by 2050

Isn't this virtually true already? I could see the present imbalance accelerating quickly

I could see this happening quickly, as northeastern and PacWest states begin to remove state funding from football programs (which means, you know, not subsidizing the physical destruction of "student athletes" at state funded schools.)

state budgets being what they are this process may be accelerated

Helmets are good for preventing skull fractures, but they can do nothing to prevent concussions.

As an aside, I watched the doc "Head Games" the other night and recommend it.

Not that I've given it a great deal of thought, but I've always found this interesting. Football seems like one of the more expensive sports - there's quite a lot of equipment that goes with it. Of course, lacrosse has a lot of specialized equipment as well so I don't mean to draw the comparison between those two.

When I played lacrosse in high school it was all club teams, there were no high school teams. So we had to pay for everything. Equipment, the field, a coach, transportation, etc. By the time my brother played our high school and a handful of others picked it up, so players were bused, jerseys were provided, a coach was paid for, things the football team already had. But it was still very much a niche sport. And that was in the northeast, and lacrosse is still of course very much a regional sport.

Not that I've given it a great deal of thought, but I've always found this interesting. Football seems like one of the more expensive sports - there's quite a lot of equipment that goes with it. Of course, lacrosse has a lot of specialized equipment as well so I don't mean to draw the comparison between those two.

The cost, to the individual participant, these days is in travel. Travel football is really not much of an option, so it remains far more accessible to lower-income kids than baseball, soccer, volleyball (basketball is kind of an exception in that travel is a big part of it, though I suspect cost allowances are already being made for the very talented young kids from lower-income homes).


And as for 10. My boy hasn't and won't play throughout elementary and middle school. I would strongly advise against him playing in HS, though if he really wanted to play, I probably wouldn't stop him. But I'll do everything I can to steer him away.

(basketball is kind of an exception in that travel is a big part of it, though I suspect cost allowances are already being made for the very talented young kids from lower-income homes).

Nike and McDonald's pretty much entirely cover these expenses. They're farming American lower-income areas much, much more efficiently than MLB is doing the same in Latin America.

I thought the data showed by virtue of being an athlete, that football players live *longer* because of their sport....now of course they can achieve the same thing by being runners..but still.

Nike and McDonald's pretty much entirely cover these expenses. They're farming American lower-income areas much, much more efficiently than MLB is doing the same in Latin America.

That's kind of what I figured. My kid played for his local youth league's all-star team last year, which got destroyed against some travel teams in a couple of weekend tournaments. Considering how expensive just the one overnight trip was, I assumed there had to be some subsidizing going on.

10. No, not a chance.

Others may have, like, actual data :) but it's always been my impression that football players, especially those who play four years in college and/or play some pro ball, are by-and-large middle-to-uppermiddle-class, whatever their ethnicity. This may just be inflected by my living in Texas, where any kid who can plays football, but it aligns with the need to play several years in college (and stay nominally eligible at least) if you want a shot at the pros – unlike baseball or basketball. I could be quite wrong, or there could be regional differences; but I don't think that football is disproportionately the province of the working class or the outright poor.

10. No way. And a distant first cousin of mine by marriage was a Pro Football Hall of Famer.

10. Yes, and I'm not even a football fan since I am reading this site during the game and haven't watched a down. I played HS football and had a great time. Wouldn't let him play Pop Warner though.

Just anecdotally it seems lacrosse is where soccer was when I was a kid (late-70s/early-80s). It's got a fairly passionate if small group of fans but hasn't been able to benefit since those fans are 11-12 year old kids. I wouldn't be shocked if in 20-30 years the MLL was something meaningful. Not NFL or MLB but like MLS or NHL, a meaningful niche sport.

88. The difference is that in the 70s and 80s even though soccer wasn't much in the USA it was HUGE around the world. We won't be getting millions of immigrants pouring into the USA in the next few decades bringing with them a passion for lacrosse.

Regarding 'actual death' to spur change, we regularly (if infrequently) see guys get paralyzed on the football field. If that's not 'bad enough' I don't know that a freak death would do it.

If they test (I don't know if they can/will) Jovan Belcher's brain and it comes back with CTE, that really should be the end. The NFL will never be able to argue that Kasi Perkins "knew the risks associated with the sport".

I wish it were tennis (a great sport with long-declining popularity and no one promising in the American ranks)

America does such a terrible job of developing tennis stars, it's unbelievable. We have 12 ATP Tour events here, and only one on clay. "The game is more about agility and speed than ever before, the skills most useful on clay. Let's address this by doing nothing at all."

The difference is that in the 70s and 80s even though soccer wasn't much in the USA it was HUGE around the world. We won't be getting millions of immigrants pouring into the USA in the next few decades bringing with them a passion for lacrosse.

Also, who's the Pele of lacrosse, exactly? The NASL was built on its ability to attract international stars. That was the catalyst for everything.

This blackout is emblematic of the state of the NFL the last 12 months or so.

I'm not watching. How many more commercials did they manage to shove in during this 'blackout'?

I'm absolutely certain no one from the Saints or the NFL will attempt to leverage this blackout into a new taxpayer funded stadium in New Orleans.

Articles like this one are the kind of thing that I think will really hurt the NFL, and even more so when similar articles can be written about the guys who are playing today, the guys that fans know so much more as actual faces and people from today's 24/7 sports media coverage and social media.

Articles like this one are the kind of thing that I think will really hurt the NFL, and even more so when similar articles can be written about the guys who are playing today, the guys that fans know so much more as actual faces and people from today's 24/7 sports media coverage and social media.

I'd be much more inclined to believe that if dozens of similar articles hadn't been written about other players for about the past 15 or 20 years. There's also a split between outsiders who want the entire nature of the game to be changed, and the players who just want to make sure that their retirement plan covers all future injury-related medical expenses. If the players were as indignant about the brutal style of play as the outside critics are, they wouldn't have come out against those Bountygate penalties the way they did.

If football has recruitment issues, it will not die. It will just go to more foreign players like all of the other major sports. Presence of foreign players has not hurt those sports.

Football has an advantage in that it is more based on raw athletic talent than the other sports. I don't think you need to play football at a young age to make the NFL, it is all about being able to do certain things with your body. The coaches and scouts can work in foreign countries to identify the likely outstanding athletes that can play the sport without developing this nationwide feeder system, when they can more readily weed out the less talented players through skills measurement anyway.

I'm not watching. How many more commercials did they manage to shove in during this 'blackout'?

The only commercials that aired during the blackout were for CBS shows. This makes sense when you think about it. Unless CBS air sellers were calling up Budweiser offering them another spot for 2M or so there's no way for it to work. Every commercial break in a Super Bowl is planned out and sold. Having unexpected time to fill doesn't mean a goldmine for the network.

10] Leaning no, but it's far from decided. If you were to look at my boy, you'd say he looked like a fullback--massive thighs, big torso...and he's faster than any kid he's played against in flag football, soccer, or baseball so far. He loves playing football, and he's racked up >50 touchdowns in ~25 games. He lives for getting a pick-6. Obviously, physiques and physical ability change, but assuming things hold...if boys like my son don't play high school football, I don't know how schools will even field teams.

like MLS or NHL, a meaningful niche sport.

As a hockey fan, *ouch*

My son was always an excellent athlete, but we steered him to soccer, baseball and basketball. Soccer was the first to go, when he was 12; as you get into the older, competitive levels, the play gets much more violent and the refs are generally of low quality so they fail to adequately police the games.

Basketball went next, when he was 16. Most definitely a contact sport, like soccer, where players have little protection. He didn't enjoy the increasing physicality, and he suffered a couple injuries. Well, basketball without contact is like poker without betting; it can be a fun parlor game but doesn't make it as a competitive sport.

Baseball was always #1 with him. As a high school senior he was the #2 starting pitcher for a team that made the state quarterfinals (the #1 starter is playing Division 1 ball in college). By that time his main focus had shifted to other possibilities for his life than sports. The university he chose doesn't even play varsity baseball.