Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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Notes -
There's a theory bouncing around the internet that the NFL is entering a quiet crisis of talent. That youth talent pipelines are in decline for a variety of reasons, including CTE fears and a general emasculation of American youth along with pay-to-play camps and lower level coaches variously accused of being too obsessed with winning at all costs and ignoring player development, or alternatively too obsessed with player the "right" way and failing to teach proper winning football.
Evidence offered is the decline of great QB play in the modern NFL. You have ancient QBs, some of them mediocre to begin with, being called in and showing a certain intelligence and ability to run an offense that modern quarterbacks lack. Phil Rivers came off the couch and started games, Case Keenum was able to just shred my Philadelphia Eagles. The ability to process and run an offense seems like a lost art.
People argue that the youth participation rate is drying up, that the most talented athletes no longer go into football in the same way they used to, that college players are choosing to stay in college for Van Wilder years and then retire with their money rather than enter the NFL, and that as a result professional football will inevitably decline.
I don't actually know enough about football to make a judgement about the evidence offered, my question is about prior historical examples.
What other sports have followed a similar pattern in this or other countries: popular sport, declines in talent as a result of youth participation drying up with the quality of players and play declining to the point where the old are simply better than the young for too long, and an ultimate slide towards irrelevance? I can imagine examples, but none I know enough about to be sure.
College football is crowding out NFL fandom in every social circle I participate in. MMA and boxing are still reasonably popular among coworkers(with a very sharp income gradient; thé more money you make, thé more you like boxing- and like most trades workplaces, there’s a large pay difference between entry level guys and experienced ones). Hardcore sports fans around me are getting into MLS, keeping college ball, and dropping basketball entirely(this may vary by region). Texas A&M is the new cowboys as the default fandom.
Don’t get me wrong; I see evidence of cowboys fandom everywhere I go, as a generic corporate thing. But more ‘fandom’ tends to be for college sports.
Regionally, I think this can vary with the team's loveability/success. The Eagles are way more culturally important now than they were when I was a kid. If I wear a jersey, or even a hat, to the grocery store I will have at least one complete stranger greet me with a "Go Birds." I don't recall ever hearing the phrase "Go Birds" as a child outside of maybe in the Vet itself.
((Eagles fans are also basking in Schadenfreude as the last resort of failure just at the moment, that the Eagles are having an awful season because their three best players on offense are injured, possibly dying, and retired; while the Cowboys are having the same awful season for no apparent reason))
College football, I was never a fan because I found it so confusing before the playoff system, so this is an outsider view: I don't get what people are fans of anymore in CFB. The transfers are so constant that the game is more mercenary than the worst free-agent stereotypes of American pro sports, probably even worse than Euro football at this point. How do you maintain fandom of a team when the players shuffle constantly, and even coaches ditch playoff teams for new opportunities? I don't think we've ever had an NFL head coach, or MLB head coach, ditch a semifinals team for a rival mid-season.
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