American football is in real trouble at all levels -
by NDHouston (2020-06-28 05:39:19)
Edited on 2020-06-29 14:31:18

In reply to: IU projects 12 million shortfall in athletic budget  posted by thethinman


high school, college, and professional. In the high school ranks, fewer and fewer kids are playing youth football because of parental concerns about CTE. Think of the impact that Howard Cosell's repudiation of boxing had on the popularity of boxing as a sport. Football is going through the same reckoning.

Furthermore, couple that health risk with the fact that baseball and basketball are far more lucrative careers at the professional level, and I expect most of the best athletes to focus on those other sports. For example, if Randy Moss were picking a sport to play in college today, I would expect him to play basketball instead of football, similar to his high school teammate Jason Williams. The NFL will miss out on many of the best athletes going forward due to this.

In the professional ranks the superficial issue is attendance. It's way down, and I would expect that it will drop further. But that's not the biggest problem they will face. The biggest problem they will face is the fact that their minor league, college football, suddenly looks like an exploitative anachronism in the sporting world.

College football is well and truly screwed. On the one hand, there continues to be a massive attendance problem for all but the best games; on the other hand, the sport will change wildly in the next few years, similar to how colleges themselves will change. White millionaire coaches encouraging unpaid black athletes to risk their bodies for an indeterminate reward is simply socially and financially unsustainable in this environment.

The strength of college football is its regional nature. However, due to the fact that the South is finally losing the Civil War history along with the actual war, much of the popular imagery in college football’s Confederate hotbed is in for a spectacularly rude adjustment. Some examples: LSU's Tigers are a reference to a Confederate regiment; North Carolina's Tar Heels are the same; ETA Clemson orients its football field east/west so that no one has to "defend the North"; "Gator Bait" (and presumably "Tigah Bait") have some awful connotations; the "Rebels" of Ole Miss are now as offensive as the Mississippi state flag; the "Eyes of Texas" mistrel heritage has been exposed; Oklahoma’s “Sooners” might need some adjustment; and Texas A&M's starting quarterback is agitating for the removal of Sul Ross's statue, which to many long-time A&M watchers (including myself) is a stunning development.

Financially, while the high school level is somewhat exposed, and the NFL as a business has more flexibility, the college ranks are a huge bubble of flexibly interpreted rules, unpaid players, and operating budget opacity. This may finally drive the creation of the “super league” of the 40 or so schools that will continue to care about the sport, but due to the conflicting academic and athletic missions of many schools, it may just undo the sport altogether. Hold on.

Thank God ND has a large endowment to recover from the Crossroads debacle. I don’t know if Rockne’s old stadium is still underneath, but depending on how this goes, it might make sense to turn Crossroads over to the Archaeology Department to dig away the detritus of overdevelopment and re-establish the House that Rock Built. It’s the only one we ever needed anyway.



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