Uh Oh - "Apres nous le deluge"

[Can_of_corn]

I never was much of a football fan, but injuries were never a factor. Football is just an incredibly boring sport to watch unless you're in the stands, half smashed and it's a serious college rivalry. Even moving to SEC world hasn't done anything to move the needle for me. I think I'd rather watch curling on TV.

I don't know if you are joking or not but some of us really enjoy watching Curling.

It's entrancing.

[24fps]

I don't know if you are joking or not but some of us really enjoy watching Curling.

It's entrancing.

I was joking but not trying to slam anyone who might enjoy Curling or any other sport mainstream America might find obscure. Personally, I'm not much of a sports fan if it's not baseball, but I do occasionally enjoy watching sports that looks like they were invented by drunken Englishmen in a pub 15 minutes before closing time. Cricket, Shinty, Bog Snorkelling are just a few that come immediately to mind.

[scOtt]

I sit by the window waiting for Spring.

Watching Youboob videos.

[CP0861]

I've barely watched any football this year.....I've slowly regressed and have watched less and less each year for the past few years now.

For me, I think part of it is a result of playing fantasy football. When Sunday rolls around....I check NFL mobile throughout the day and just refresh my fantasy scores. People aren't sitting back watching their team's game like they used to. They're scanning all the games via apps and the Redzone channel.

I'm keeping up with everything without watching anything.

[sportsfan8703]

I guess that is a theory too. Is he expert on media trends?

I listened to his show the other day and he said ratings took a hit because of the 2000 and 2008 elections. 2012 to a lesser extent.

On a football note, they should benefit from the big market NFC East teams doing well so far. (schedule conspiracy theory). Also Brady is back for NE. They add an LA team and they play such a bland style of football. Plus the NFL is a stars driven league. Manning retiring, Brady being suspended and Cam slumming, doesn't help.

[AdamK]

When it's 10% lower next year, they'll really be up a creek.

[AdamK]

I have a hard time embracing football anymore, and part of that is the head/brain stuff.

Part of it is the violence. Part of it is the obvious over-engineering of humans, like hormoned-up livestock. Part of it is the military tie-ins. Part of it is the tv experience (commercials, inappropriate network tv clips).

Most of it is what it's like to watch with kids in the room and having a very hard time interpreting all the graphic stuff for them, whether it's the on the field stuff or the during the commercials stuff. Having cut the cord long ago, I'm not all that into the idea of watching with my family and exposing the young ones to the very garbage cord cutting enables you to remove from your specific media experience.

[SeaBird]

I guess that is a theory too. Is he expert on media trends?

No. Cowherd probably got his media trends "expertise" from an article in "The Atlantic" monthly magazine which, in an article by Derek Johnson on October 11th, said a very real possibility for lower NFL TV ratings is the TV coverage of the political debates and other election related programming.

The article said the 2 presidential debates claimed audiences of tens of millions of viewers each which hurt Monday Night Football and Sunday Night Football on ESPN and NBC respectively. And in a memo to teams in 2000 during the presidential campaign the NFL said all 4 game carriers suffered declines in their ratings. FOX was down 4%; CBS was down 10 %; ABC was down 7 & and ESPN was down 11 %. But in the next 15 years NFL viewership rose 27 % even as prime time viewership for other shows and programming fell by more than 30 %. So that may be what is happening again in 2016.

Other possibilities include cord cutters, other viewing platforms and the lack of a real NFL hero and villain for fans to identify with.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/10/nfl-ratings-just-fell-off-a-cliff-why/503666/

[weams]

I've barely watched any football this year.....I've slowly regressed and have watched less and less each year for the past few years now.

For me, I think part of it is a result of playing fantasy football. When Sunday rolls around....I check NFL mobile throughout the day and just refresh my fantasy scores. People aren't sitting back watching their team's game like they used to. They're scanning all the games via apps and the Redzone channel.

I'm keeping up with everything without watching anything.

Most folks I know don't. I did when I was young, and we got together to drink beer and holler.

[Bradysburns]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/nfl-ratings-plunge-could-spell-doom-for-traditional-tv/2016/10/14/a7a23dc2-915f-11e6-9c85-ac42097b8cc0_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_nfl-720pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Network executives have long used the National Football League's live games as a last line of defense against the rapid growth of "cord-cutting" and on-demand viewing upending the industry.

But now, the NFL is seeing its ratings tumble in the same way that the Olympics, awards shows and other live events have, falling more than 10 percent for the first five weeks of the season compared with the first five weeks of last season. A continued slide, executives say, could pose an even bigger danger: If football can't survive the new age of TV, what can?

Football's traditional TV audience "is never going to be what it was again," said Brian Hughes, a senior vice president at Magna Global, which tracks audience and advertising trends.

The explosion of modern entertainment options, offered on more devices and at any time, has splintered American audiences and sped TV's decline, Hughes said. "Sports seemed to be immune from it - it was live, the last bastion of broadcast television. But [the world] has caught up to it now."

Two things explain this: unplugging, which we did years ago, and election coverage.

The first one is what they should "worry" about. Or the NFL could just make a deal with its media partners to sell their games/coverage via NFL.com (and their own sites), so that people can just stream the games.

That's going to happen, so they might as well embrace it and get out in front and focus on monetizing, etc.

I haven't watched a game on cable for a long time - same with Orioles games.

[Bradysburns]

I have a hard time embracing football anymore, and part of that is the head/brain stuff.

Part of it is the violence. Part of it is the obvious over-engineering of humans, like hormoned-up livestock. Part of it is the military tie-ins. Part of it is the tv experience (commercials, inappropriate network tv clips).

Most of it is what it's like to watch with kids in the room and having a very hard time interpreting all the graphic stuff for them, whether it's the on the field stuff or the during the commercials stuff. Having cut the cord long ago, I'm not all that into the idea of watching with my family and exposing the young ones to the very garbage cord cutting enables you to remove from your specific media experience.

Agreed - but then again, our whole family loved to watch football back when I was growing up in the 70s/80s. They didn't have nearly the amount of commercials (commercial time outs should be outlawed). They didn't hype them nearly as much. The audience got to get excited without encouragement from the corporate "big brother".

I honestly think the NFL has overmarketed itself. People are turned off after awhile. And the athletes themselves are getting more annoying than interesting. My idol was Dave Butz. He carried his kid off the field on his shoulder after every game. Today's idols are people like Richard Sherman, who acts and talks like an idiot, IMO.

The NFL has lost its purity - and become a "product." That is the real problem, longer term.

[weams]

Agreed - but then again, our whole family loved to watch football back when I was growing up in the 70s/80s. They didn't have nearly the amount of commercials (commercial time outs should be outlawed). They didn't hype them nearly as much. The audience got to get excited without encouragement from the corporate "big brother".

I honestly think the NFL has overmarketed itself. People are turned off after awhile. And the athletes themselves are getting more annoying than interesting. My idol was Dave Butz. He carried his kid off the field on his shoulder after every game. Today's idols are people like Richard Sherman, who acts and talks like an idiot, IMO.

The NFL has lost its purity - and become a "product." That is the real problem, longer term.

I loved NFL when I was very young. And a young adult.

[btownoriole]

The whole CTE thing has really dampened my enthusiasm for football. Being aware of what the sport is doing to the players long-term has made it hard for me to watch the sport with a clear conscience. I still check on the Ravens but I don't plan my life around the Ravens and Sunday Ticket anymore.

As for the state of TV, I really think at some point in the next 20-30 years that there will be very few, if any, TV channels the way we know them now. I watch shows, sports, and news pretty much whenever I want to, not necessarily when they are broadcast. In fact, I honestly have no idea what time or what days the shows I like to watch are actually broadcast. It's very different from the late 90's when I would plan my schedule around when my favorite shows were on. Even with the O's I usually follow the games on At Bat while I'm doing other things and tune in as action develops and my schedule permits.

[TheDeau52]

I know I'm in the minority, but I still enjoy watching football and it's my favorite sport. This year has defininitely not been as exciting as years past though, that's for sure.

[DrungoHazewood]

For me it's my third sport, after baseball and college basketball. I used to care a lot, but lost interest about 20 years ago, not because the sport got worse, but I got busy on Sunday afternoons with little league baseball and some other reasons. I still watch parts of games during the season and most of the late round playoffs. But I certainly don't plan my weekends around it, it's just a way to pass time if nothing else is going on.

When I was a kid it was Orioles then Redskins then... nothing. Well, I'd watch college basketball in the dead of winter. Now? Orioles, then several soccer teams, Virginia Tech football but not nearly like 15 years ago. Mixed in there are my kids' sports, which actually go above the O's. Then if it's Sunday and I have nothing better to do and the Redskins are on I'll watch some of the game.

Of those who have cooled on football, have health risks been a factor?

I think the NFL's hypocrisy plays a role, including injuries. The whole bit about how they deeply care about the players but have hundreds or thousands of retired players who can't walk or think straight barely (or not at all) able to pay their bills. NFL films selling DVDs of the NFL's Greatest Hits, with the 15-yard penalties and ejections airbrushed out. 70-year-old guys demanding that 23-year-olds unemotionally hand the football to the ref after a huge play that just won the old guy's weekly fantasy league game. 15-yard penalties for pretending to shoot a bow and arrow.

Also, for me, a lot of it is Dan Snyder. Who makes Peter Angelos look like Branch Rickey or Connie Mack or something.