Where Does the N.F.L. Go After a Season of Division?

The death nell of the NFL is a little premature. Just because viewing is down a little, doesn't mean they're out. It will continue to be America's favorite sport. When I was a child, they played the Natiinal Anthem in theatres, before movies. That chauvinistic jingoist practice took the moribund path. Replaced by good ol' capitalist ads. Once the league figures out this is a revenue potential, it too will replace the anthem.

Thanks for reminding me why I hate Jerry Jones and his billion dollar tax-payer funded stadium.

They should remove the National Anthem from sports completely. They don’t shut down the bars during the anthem - they don’t close the bathrooms - people are still moving around and getting into their seats - all of this “disrespect” is taking place and they choose to make a big deal of a player kneeling in front of our flag. Pure hypocrisy. Just like the NFL charging our Armed Forces for those patriotic displays a few years ago. Trump’s racist dog whistles.

With the NFL Trump has succeeded, like he has with the rest of the country, to divide it against itself.

What turns me off the most is the helmet tackling, the spearing that continues to be allowed, despite the concussions that still causes. The NFL needs to get back to proper tackling, using your arms, not leading with your helmet.

NFL viewership is down because TV viewership is down, it's pretty obvious just looking at viewing trends from Nielsen. TV viewership is down because cable is overpriced and uses an antiquated advertising model. Media outlets like to look for big, interesting and surprising ways to explain stuff, but the truth is the percentage of human beings who actually care about anything at all enough to change their routine is vanishingly small.

The NFL as we know it is done for. Maybe, just maybe, it can figure out a way around the injuries without destroying the game.

There are only 31 magnates who own N.F.L. franchises. The Packers are owned by 361,000+ stockholders.

Mark Leibovich almost succeeds in hiding the essence of professional football: Black athletes are paid large sums of money by billionaire white owners to maim one another in front of screaming white spectators. The black athletes are also paid for their unquestioning obedience. If they disobey, they are punished. If this reminds anyone of either the Roman Colosseum, or the fight-to-the-death arena on a plantation in 19th Century Alabama, the analogy is not quite apt. After all, the gladiators and the slaves didn't get paid. Otherwise.....

Away, I hope.

Finally a year when the social issues were so upsetting to everyone that the NFL had to become involved. The presidential administration in order to take the spotlight off of there Russian involvement and called the players mothers curse words. Roger needs to donate his paycheck to social issues in the same way that Colin, and other players have stood up when the owners counted their money. Players who stood up because they are first human beings. community members, etc and then overachievers in football. Sports can never go back in time and pretend that racism wasnt the foundation of how these owners came to be. These players are not forgetting where they came from and finally want to be part of the social issues that are being addressed by all now.

The NFL should do what the NBA has already done, require ALL players stand for the anthem. Why have NBA players (who are more inner city blacks than the NFL) not had an issue? The NBA lets its players express themselves freely while the NFL prefers fans root for the jersey/team/owner. Finally, NFL players are disposable (even their contracts are written in invisible ink) while the NBA has financial guarantees so players can speak their minds without fear. The NBA carries more risk but has fewer political problems.

What planet is Leibovich living on? The only fault line that should be concerning the NFL is the one which has developed over the kneeling by some players during the playing of the national anthem. The loss of fan base has been striking and threatens the future viability of the league.

Read the book Interference by Dan Moldea,it has all you really need to know about the NFL and it's owners.

Fact check. "most exclusive club of American fat cats, the 32 magnates who own NFL franchises" isn't exactly true. The Green Bay Packers NFL franchise has been a publicly owned, non-profit corporation since August 18, 1923. According to wikipedia, the corporation currently has 360,760 stockholders, who collectively own 5,011,558 shares of stock after the last stock sale of 2011–2012. There have been five stock sales, in 1923, 1935, 1950, 1997, and 2011. So there are actually 5,011,589 owners of NFL franchises; however, only 31 are fat cat magnates.

Apparently that "two year drop in television ratings" didn't stop the FOX Network from paying an outrageous amount of money to televise NFL football on Thursday nights?

Contrary to this article, plenty of fans had noted what Kaepernick and his followers were doing before Trump expressed what patriotic Americans were thinking...he called the disrespectful players, and cowardly Goodell and cowardly owners...out for their actions, which were not diminishing. The focus of the left wing media sites then blamed Trump. Goodell was inadequate in his position as he allowed Kaep to protest, and as the protests grew. They were NOT diminishing. Yes, there is indeed progressive sissyfying of the NFL. Indeed, some mothers are preventing sons from playing contact sports. But the main problem is disrespect for the flag, and for America. If I run a Target store, and the greeter spits in your face, are you going to want to shop there? Blank doesn't have a clue abut these protests. And the fact that declining attendance figures are primarily by far due to disrespect of America. Nor is he able to comprehend what VP Pence did, ignorantly calling it a dumb thing. As for Goodell: Republicans respect the flag. Goodell has no Republican credentials.

What a lovely article that skips right around what is really driving fans away from the NFL. The incomprehensibly complicated and ever changing rules of the game, inconsistently interpreted and enforced by old men who can't get out of the way of the players and who make glaring and obvious mistakes that cost teams wins. No other professional sport allows this level of incompetence and out right fixing of games, with its officials. The endless time outs and commercials and reviews that slow the already over commercialized and slow game to a crawl. The constant hype of what a great sport the NFL is, when the reality is 80% of the games every Sunday are bore-a-thons. Either rotten games between two hapless opponents or blow outs where one of the 7-8 (out of 32) good teams slaughters one of the bums. The constant and out of control injuries. Every week, 6-12 star players injured and gone for the year. By the middle of the 2017 season teams were fielding 3rd and 4th stringers as starters. Everywhere. Which lowers the caliber of play even further. And speaking of injuries, is it going to take a player to be killed, on the field, for the NFL to do something about these injuries? The NFL is in trouble not because of player protests, but because the best (perhaps the only best) thing to happen this year was the job Tony Romo did as an announcer.

Correction: There are 31 magnates who own NFL teams. The other one is owned by me and my closest 360,759 friends.

Athletes using their positions to make political statements is nothing new. Almost 50 years ago, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, after winning the gold and bronze medals in the 200m race at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, used the award ceremony as a global stage to give a black power salute as a demonstration for human rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute#/media/Fi...

If the players keep kneeling and the racists quit attending games, then attending the games will be more pleasant for me. I would pay extra money to attend a racist-free event.

Worth noting - Shahid Khan is not the only non-white NFL owner. Kim Pegula is a South Korean orphan and co-owner of the Buffalo Bills.

The NFL has probably peaked, for a lot of reasons. The only question is how far the league will fall. The agreements between the league and the players to limit long-term health costs is going to crumble, and the hospital bills are going to end up at the league office. Not all that long ago, prime-time network boxing was a sure-fire ratings winner (and not just Ali). MMA and changing tastes have reduced the popularity of boxing to a tiny fraction of what it once was. Just a cautionary tale for the NFL.

I understand that the NFL holds a special place in American culture, but I haven't watched a single game since the 80's. I don't understand how grown adults can cheers for the playthings of old white billionaires. I don't understand how that makes them feel like they're part of something. It strikes me as a strange way to spend your time.

I’m a fan of Mark Leibovich as well as the NFL, so I looked forward to reading this article. Unfortunately, for anyone who has followed the league at all, there was very little new ground broken here, as it dealt almost exclusively with the already well-covered “take a knee” controversy. There was virtually no reference to more critical threats to the league’s long-term future, namely, declining youth football participation, materially lower TV ratings suggesting lower fan engagement overall, and most importantly, the increasing horror felt by many at the crippling effects of CTE on relatively young men who are not long out of the game. The toll on these players is often devastating for them and their families. And this has caused more and more fans to question their love of a game that can cause so much permanent damage. These other issues got short shrift; this piece felt like one small chapter in a much larger NFL story that needs to be told.

In case you were wondering... Patroon: Noun, a person who held an estate in land with certain manorial privileges granted under the old Dutch governments of New York and New Jersey. Apparently not to be confused or conflated with poltroon...

Odd article. Paul Allen, the owner of the Seahawks, could buy or sell Kraft or Jones out of spare change found in his sofa. He's never mentioned. So apparently the owners who are most influential in the NFL are aging adolescents insecure about their manhood