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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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.
The closest parallel I can think of would be boxing. It was by far the most popular and profitable sport in America in the 19th Century, and really only fell behind baseball following World War II. I feel like it was still a pretty big deal well into the 90s. But there has only been two fights in the past 20 years that have broken through to the mainstream: the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight in 2015 and that novelty fight between Tyson and one of the Paul brothers. The rise of other sports, combined with boxing's violence and reputation for corruption, gradually thinned out the talent, and then MMA put the final nail in the coffin when boxers' lack of grappling skills had them all getting wrecked. They had lost youth sports and most of the normies to football and basketball decades ago, and now the dedicated martial artists had somewhere more "authentic" and "practical" to go.
It's possible the NFL falls much faster and harder than boxing, because you can't rely on a handful of 2-person PPV events to pay the bills. You need 60 guys per team once a week for 16 weeks every year. It requires a much, much wider talent pipeline to remain viable. It's possible they are able to introduce enough new equipment and rule tweaks to solve the CTE issue, but the clock is running out. I don't know a single parent willing to let their son play tackle football. It's only a matter of time before non-southern high schools start shuttering their programs.
I doubt football will die out completely, but a dangerous niche sport the vast majority of the population has no direct experience with is going to have a ceiling to Its popularity. Especially with a sport as complex as football. Boxing is super boring to watch because I don't know enough about the sport to be able to tell who's winning most of the time. A couple generations of only a small minority of super dedicated football families participating in youth football, and there won't be enough of a ln audience to keep the NFL as we know it today solvent. We're already at the point where the majority of guests at any given super bowl party has no interest whatsoever in the game itself.
The rise of sports gambling and daily fantasy may be a lifeline, but I can also see a pretty mighty backlash building, so a lot could easily come crashing down if league stakeholders all over-invested in an industry that ends up getting burnt to the ground by regulators.
I think it’s going to fall, though to be honest I think baseball is falling faster. I live in a baseball town, and yes you’ll see team gear, but nobody really gets into the ins and outs of the game, and don’t follow the game or the players to any real degree. Most of the players are Hispanic imports from abroad, and really, the games up until the all-star break don’t matter much. And unless you’re super into pitching, Theres not nearly enough action to keep people interested in the game, to the point where the league itself feels the need to artificially speed up the game with pinch hitters, pitch clocks, and base runners in extra innings. If you need to speed up the game to make it watchable, it’s not going to last.
I like football, but I think the game has too many stops. It’s hard to keep watching when 1/2 or more of the “play” time is standing around waiting to actually play the one play before standing around waiting for the next play. Add in that with rare exceptions, most plays outside the red zone don’t matter much, and you get a game that is 99% fluff. You end up doing other things while waiting for the good parts of the game. And I don’t see that as being a sustainable model for a popular sport.
Most pro sports also have a big problem in the price of attending an actual game. It costs hundreds to attend a game in the NFL. It’s somewhat better for baseball. And figuring out which of the streaming services actually show your team often means subscriptions to multiple services and dealing with blackout games. It makes introducing the game to kids harder. And if you don’t make it easy for kids to get into the game, then eventually they find other things to watch and do and get into.
Analytics I think has ruined the in-game baseball experience now. The movement to 3-outcome players (walk, strike-out, home run) means that when you watch the game in the stadium you can’t see most of the action.
The pitcher-batter battle I think has greatly improved but you only see that watching on tv.
The costs of attendance seems to be a function of a K-Shaped economy. You can find cheap tickets to watch second tier games.
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Point me to the popular sport where I can't make this complaint. I mean, the answer is hockey, which is the least popular of the major pro sports leagues and faces constant ratings decline. A game that is 99% fluff appears to be the only sustainable model for a sports league.
Baseball games take a long time between pitches and even longer between balls in play. Football games are short bursts of action between huddles and commercial breaks. Soccer is just endless dribbling and back passing and writhing around on the ground. Basketball seems like it features a lot of action and points scoring, but outside of the playoffs they mostly just go through the motions until the 4th quarter, and so many points are scored that every individual scoring play isn't that exciting. NASCAR races are mostly just watching left turns, long periods of time can pass with nothing really happening. Combat sports are probably the most variable of any sport, but you can't watch a full UFC card and not catch some really real lay'n'pray snoozefests.
The reality is simple: "boring" sports are just a matter of personal perception. If you don't understand or don't care about the game, then it's boring to watch; if you understand the game on a deep level and care about it, then it's interesting.
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