College football, baseball, and basketball have had to deal with cord cutting but their sports aren't dying like the NFL is.
The fact that the NFL completely punted the last Sunday Night game speaks volumes. Yeah it was NYE and notoriously soft on ratings and yeah they had a dog of a game scheduled, but to completely punt it...tells me that they may finally realize the damage done to the brand.
yes ... to receive a rating of effectively ZERO would be bad, eh? I mean ... NYE hasn't been rescheduled. Weak contests during the year aren't rescheduled. Naw ... they saw the handwriting on the wall. To roll-up with an egg would be something no one could spin. Who wouldn't want to watch an NFL game at the NYE party ... then make the switch for the last 10 minutes to the NY???
To be fair, most of the week 17 games are meaningless. But still one would expect even a meaningless NFL game to do decent in the ratings against the various variety shows.
The bowl picks have a record setting number of participants. This was my first time to do this. So ... it's not that there's a waning interest in the game ... but making a political fulcrum of the event isn't being well tolerated. A word to the wise should be sufficient.
All the major networks (except Fox) experienced sharp ratings declines for their college football coverage heading into the bowls. Fox had the benefit of adding B1G confernce coverage.
and for those desperate to blow smoke over the reason ... rationalization. Evidently there are plenty of people who are fed-up with the politics in sports ... but that'd require a little awareness to acknowledge, eh?
If you read the article it also says that interest in college football isn't waning. You can't say the same thing about the NFL. The NFL was our top sport just a couple of years back but it is now our 3rd.
@Seattle Husker is simply desperate to refute reality. It's OK. If I could wish upon a star, it'd be that he would recognize because he seems like an otherwise sincere fellow, if not often misguided in his politics. But my goodness ... his screen name tells all, right? Then there's @OUBubba ... If there's a state more conservative than Texas, it's Oklahoma (but that only because of Texas' immigration problem ... ah Kaly immigration) ... but evidently they have their own vein of nonthinkers. I guess Uncle Sam's big pocket draws those even from Ok. And it's occurred to me again ... HornFans draws quite a cross section of folks, not just politically, but in fandome. Hat Tip! HOOK 'EM!
Well, the energizing thing is to be able to discuss/debate things with people who see things differently but who don’t get too upset by that. I took that from the “hat tip.” On the other hand, it’s a common easy cliche to categorize people who disagree with you as “stupid” when it’s really a different value system. For example, George W was “stupid—an imbecile”; although he did have degrees from Yale and Harvard if I recall. B Obama was an “idiot” even though he had been the president of the Harvard Law Review and a fast-track state senator and US Senator. D Trump is a bumbling moron who has dementia and just plays golf and tweets—but if you actually read a bio on him, his life output is 10x almost anyone you know. I imagine the exchanges with intelligent and disagreeable Hornfans posters on here to be a rare chance to interact with the Barack Obamas and Donald Trumps of the world. Happy New Year!
I suspect this is directly related to the relatively new playoff system making the bowl games less meaningful. The ratings for the regular season games and the playoff bowls would be more instructive.
There are simply too many bowl games which ALSO means many of them simply are not compelling at a national level. The only reason I care about the Outback Bowl is I want my free Bloomin' Onion. I HATE coconut shrimp...which sadly means that I need to see the SEC win a game.
Agreed for all but DJT. He is an idiot in all but real estate investing and PT Barnum style showmanship. Have a wonderful New Year.
My mistake. I thought you were referring to only the bowl games but the article is discussing regular season games. As the article states, college football is a completely different animal than the NFL. Many more variables to consider. A single year comparison is not necessarily a trend. As a huge college football fan, I love the number of options that I have now - networks, ESPN, Fox Sports, LHN, Big 10, SEC, etc. I am watching more college games now than ever before. That likely means that the average ratings for the individual games is being diluted. The article even mentions that this year was a record in terms of actual minutes watched which is what I would expect. I would have been interested in seeing the actual data in terms of minutes watched and total cumulative viewers. Average ratings given the number of increasing options is less useful. That said, I do think that 2017 was probably a bit of a down year with the SEC being weaker but the future is still pretty bright for college football.
I'm sure the chord cutting and alternate viewing platforms is having an impact on overall viewership ratings, at least how they are traditionally measured. I haven't been able to locate data to support a theory that I've anecdotally witnessed that football as a sport is waning. As a father with 2 sons who play HS football, I've seen huge participation declines in youth and HS football. That may not show in interest in CFB and NFL immediately but bodes ill for the future of the sport.
That's only a matter of time. Here is an article from November of the first diagnosis of a living person with CTE.
CTE is definitely a huge threat to the sport. I am not surprised to see waning participation numbers in youth football.
Baseball was America's past-time when our parents were kids then it waned as participation withered. Now it's something that only old people and kids that play it year-round care about. At least baseball has it International presence to rely on for talent. Football is headed that same direction albeit without the international players. You and I will watch it as we get older but kids today won't grow up obsessing about it like we did. If football were a stock, I'd start shorting it.
Pure anecdote, but my younger kids don’t care about football. I’ll have tickets but they would rather watch YouTube.
To be fair, those games were abysmal. http://www.patriots.com/news/2017/1...-rated-nfl-game-2017-earns-cbs-highest-rating The game a few weeks ago was the highest rated game since 2015.
They were also all small-market teams without national followings. The Chiefs were the only team that have any semblance of a national following in that group and they are no Steelers or Raiders.
I'm sure that's it, SH/oUbub ... just lack luster matchups ... didn't they cancel one of those last week?
I saw a guy on Fox Business who believes that the protests are responsible for the problems with the NFL. However, he believes that the people shutting off the NFL will tire of their own protests and will return next season.
