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?
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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.
My theory - disclaimer being I watch almost precisely zero NFL outside of the Super Bowl, and just my own college team - is more that the QB 'funnel' specifically happens too early. Kids are selected for their arm talent before their run-an-offense instinctual and/or intellectual talent becomes clear enough, so the kids who would have become great QBs either play other positions, swap to other sports, or drop out. Heck, maybe height too (again, you can be excluded from the funnel if your height peaks at the wrong time). It's my understanding that it's much more rare than it used to be to swap into the QB position, which is worth emphasizing too. To be clear, I'm talking late middle school to high school timing, not really applicable to already-in-college players.
It's also a unique position that doesn't really have a very clear equivalent in other sports so it's hard to draw lessons from other sports there too. IMO, a quarterback talent crisis and a general football talent crisis are distinct potential issues, and the first feels like it has a bit more evidence than the second, though neither I'm super certain of.
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