Is College Football Going To Get Banned?

[jficke13]

This was a profound tragedy. I also think that the rush to turn this tragedy into some kind of pedestal for a cause (e.g. guns/football violence, etc) is pretty disrespectful to the victims of the tragedy.

[Hards Alumni]

This was a profound tragedy. I also think that the rush to turn this tragedy into some kind of pedestal for a cause (e.g. guns/football violence, etc) is pretty disrespectful to the victims of the tragedy.

I don't follow.  The best time to try to fix the problem isn't years after it happens, its directly after the problem occurs.

[Henry Sugar]

I don't have as much conviction that Football is going to decline in popularity, but I do tend to agree that it will happen.

Regardless of the particulars of how and why boxing is no longer as popular as it once was, it still remains true that a sport that previously dominated the landscape is now on the fringe. The point is that there is precedence for a highly popular sport to significantly decline, and football has nothing to make it immune from ever declining.

The most likely path for football's decline is brain trauma and litigation starting at the high school level. Given the increased exposure brain trauma is receiving will only accelerate that potential.

Of course, I may be biased because college football is f*cking everything up.

[jficke13]

I don't follow.  The best time to try to fix the problem isn't years after it happens, its directly after the problem occurs.

What I mean is, people are exploiting a tragedy (people always do... never let a crisis go to waste and all that) in order to advance their agendas. I think that can be disrespectful.

[tower912]

I am glad to hear that the fire stations did not close. Though tragic a suicide does not come close to outweighing community safety. Would the Marine Corps shut down over a suicide?

We agree.   Suicide sucks.   There is something therapeutic in joining with your co-workers, your defacto support group, and going through the rituals to do what you normally do.    In other words, it was better for those guys to play football than it would have been for them to sit home, not play football, and brood. 

[BallBoy]

The most likely path for football's decline is brain trauma and litigation starting at the high school level. Given the increased exposure brain trauma is receiving will only accelerate that potential.

Of course, I may be biased because college football is f*cking everything up.

Football will lose popularity at some point but it will mostly be to diluting the product ,be it too many teams, rule changes, or restricting access, but not injuries.

Brain trauma won't be the down fall because it takes years if not decades for those to appear.  Football has seen far worse immediate injuries with paralysis, etc and it did not impact people's perception of the game. I can think of cases of paralysis at both the NFL ( Detroit and Buffalo) and college (rutgers) with during the time that football grew in popularity.

I don't think litigation will be the end either as football is a voluntary activity with known risks and there is an assumed accepting of that risk by participating. If the schools/teams lied about the risk then there would be litigation.  The whole brain trauma concern is a cya so the player or the coach does not force a player to play with that brain issue.  It takes them both out of the decision to play.

I think the conference realignments will have a greater impact than injuries.  How many of us are aggravated that MU is getting jerked around? 

[honkytonk]

Geez. Monday Night Football actually happened tonight. Based upon everything I read on this forum, I though for sure the game wouldnt happen. Silly me.

I wonder if this argument gets played out on boards of OSU....or Bama....or Michigan....or Stanford....or Penn State....?

Nah....this argument is only alive and well on a message boards in which fans of a non-football playing school are trying to find an identity in a football driven re-alignment world. Book it.

[Tugg Speedman]

Geez. Monday Night Football actually happened tonight. Based upon everything I read on this forum, I though for sure the game wouldnt happen. Silly me.

I wonder if this argument gets played out on boards of OSU....or Bama....or Michigan....or Stanford....or Penn State....?

Nah....this argument is only alive and well on a message boards in which fans of a non-football playing school are trying to find an identity in a football driven re-alignment world. Book it.

Stupid post which reflects poorly on you.

If you actually read this thread, instead of having an emotional reaction to the title, you would see that Buzz Bisinger, the author of Friday night lights, penned an article calling for college football to be banned.  Virtually everyone here agreed this would not happen.  

Then we discussed the possibility that football was peaking in popularity now, often comparing it boxing.

So, given all this, what is the point of your posts and criticism?

And yes I'll bet that the large football school message board did discuss Bisinger's article calling for college football to be banned.  And I'll bet they agreed with us that it would not happen.

[honkytonk]

Stupid post which reflects poorly on you.

If you actually read this thread, instead of having an emotional reaction to the title, you would see that Buzz Bisinger, the author of Friday night lights, penned an article calling for college football to be banned.  Virtually everyone here agreed this would not happen. 

Then we discussed the possibility that football was peaking in popularity now, often comparing it boxing.

So, given all this, what is the point of your posts and criticism?

Well, this sounds like a super important topic that should get hammered out on an internet message board. Why not this one? Im enjoying Monday Night Football. You? Geez, I really wish intelligent conversations amongst anonymous posters on an internet message board could solve all the world's problems. Im simply looking forward to a solution to....hell, I dont even know what the problem is with today's version of football. I like it just the way it is.

[GGGG]

Then we discussed the possibility that football was peaking in popularity now, often comparing it boxing.

Well not quite...  "We" were not "often comparing it to boxing."  You were.  And it's still a poor comparison.

[jficke13]

Boxing died in large part because every marquee fight was moved to pay per view. The minute I hear a plan floated that moves every major college football and NFL game to pay per view, then I will entertain the boxing comparison.

[reinko]

Well, this sounds like a super important topic that should get hammered out on an internet message board. Why not this one? Im enjoying Monday Night Football. You? Geez, I really wish intelligent conversations amongst anonymous posters on an internet message board could solve all the world's problems. Im simply looking forward to a solution to....hell, I dont even know what the problem is with today's version of football. I like it just the way it is.

Are you ripping 84 for offering his opinion, then offered your own?

[Benny B]

Im simply looking forward to a solution to....hell, I dont even know what the problem is with today's version of football. I like it just the way it is.

Well, one must give you credit for not tossing out a "back in my day..."

[Tugg Speedman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/opinion/bruni-pro-footballs-violent-toll.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

December 3, 2012
Pro Football’s Violent Toll
By FRANK BRUNI

Pro football left me with a neck injury. Watching pro football, I mean. At least three of the games that started at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday went thrillingly down to the wire, two of them bleeding into overtime, and as I sat in a sports bar jerking my gaze from the television showing the Colts to the one with the Seahawks to the one with the Rams, I suffered mild whiplash. I ache as I write.

The whole 2012 season has been like that: seesaw contests, last-minute heroics. The spectacle presented by the National Football League has perhaps never been better.

Or uglier. And on Sunday, there was also a reminder of that, the overtime games overshadowed by the anguished examination of a murder-suicide, just a day earlier, involving the Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher. Belcher, 25, shot and killed his 22-year-old girlfriend, then himself. They left behind a baby girl, Zoey. Chiefs players are already talking about a fund for her. That’s apt, but they should be talking about a whole lot else as well.

There’s something rotten in the N.F.L., an obviously dysfunctional culture that either brings out sad, destructive behavior in its fearsome gladiators or fails to protect them and those around them from it. And while it’s too soon to say whether Belcher himself was a victim of that culture, it’s worth noting that the known facts and emerging details of his story echo themes all too familiar in pro football over recent years: domestic violence, substance abuse, erratic behavior, gun possession, bullets fired, suicide.

His death was the most stunning N.F.L. news of the last few days, but not the only peek into a world of tortured souls and crippled bodies. In The Times, Judy Battista reported that this year would be a record one for drug suspensions in the league, a result in part of an apparent rise in the use of the stimulant Adderall. The record could reflect heightened vigilance by league officials, but still: the high stakes, physical demands and physical agony inherent in pro football indisputably encourage drug taking, and some oft-medicated players graduate to years of addiction problems.

The scientific journal Brain just published a study by Boston University investigators of 85 people who had received repeated hits to their heads while they were alive and were examined posthumously for degenerative brain disease. Sixty-eight of those people had such disease, which can lead to mood swings, dementia, depression. Fifty of them had played football, 33 in the N.F.L., including Dave Duerson, the former Chicago Bears safety who shot himself fatally in the chest last year after sending his ex-wife a text message requesting that his brain tissue be analyzed for football-related damage.

The study’s publication follows the consolidation earlier this year of more than 100 lawsuits involving more than 3,000 former N.F.L. players and their families, who accuse the league and its official helmet maker of hiding information about the relationship between injuries on the field and brain damage. It also follows the revelation this year that the New Orleans Saints engaged in a bounty program by which defensive players got extra money for knocking opponents out of games.

In May the former San Diego Chargers linebacker Junior Seau, a veritable legend whom I’d known for years as Nemesis No. 1 of my beloved Denver Broncos, shot and killed himself, and in a heartbreaking assessment of his demise five months later, the San Diego Union-Tribune noted that “within two years of retiring, three out of four N.F.L. players will be one or more of the following: alcohol or drug addicted; divorced; or financially distressed/bankrupt. Junior Seau was all three.”

In the same article, the newspaper reported that the suicide rate for men who have played in the N.F.L. is nearly six times the national average.

The Union-Tribune maintains a database of N.F.L. players arrested since 2000. The list is long, and the league is lousy with criminal activity so varied it defies belief. The quarterback Michael Vick of course staged inhumane dog fights; the wide receiver Plaxico Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg with a gun he’d toted illegally into a nightclub; the wide receiver Dez Bryant was accused of assaulting his own mother.

How all of this misfortune and all of these misdeeds do and don’t relate to one another isn’t clear. But to be an N.F.L. fan these days is to feel morally conflicted, even morally compromised, because you’re supporting something that corrodes too many lives.

The Chiefs quarterback Brady Quinn said on Sunday that Belcher’s bloody end left him wondering “what I could have done differently.” That’s a question that everyone in the N.F.L. should mull.

And we fans must demand it. On Monday morning, what didn’t feel right wasn’t just my neck, but also my conscience.

[GGGG]

OK...thanks Another.

Tell me, do you honestly think that Belcher is going to impact the NFL negatively in anyway?  Nothing else has....

[Benny B]

OK...thanks Another.

Tell me, do you honestly think that Belcher is going to impact the NFL negatively in anyway?  Nothing else has....

Literature is full of "little-guy-taking-down-the-giant" stories.  David, Gulliver, Jack, George Newman, etc.... just pick one.

[Tugg Speedman]

OK...thanks Another.

Tell me, do you honestly think that Belcher is going to impact the NFL negatively in anyway?  Nothing else has....

First I don't think it should but ... the damage is already done.  It's too late.

The NFL will constantly fight these allegations, after every terrible incident, every arrest, every injury.  Next will come investigation reports of the terrible life NFL players live in retirement.

Then they will lose the concussion lawsuit.  Why because it will never stop it will go on and on.  They will agree to put a large sum into a trust for those injured.  

This will cause insurance to skyrocket and most of the high school programs will close because they cannot afford the insurance.  Freshman, Sophomore and JV football will be a thing of the past.  College will follow after that, starting with NAIA and D3 and working up.

This will not happen overnight, it will happen over many years.  It will not start with the NFL, it will end with the NFL.  It will start with high school and then college.

The ONLY way this can be stopped is to radically change the game to dramatically reduce the injuries.  Turn it into flag football.  If that happens, we will all lose interest.

This is the peak of football, it will go down, and the conference realignment is setting up major universities in conferences that will not deliver the money they think and no rivals that will cause college sports to lose its luster.


Sorry, but stick a fork in football, it peak is now, but it will take time to unfold.

[GGGG]

Ironically Jerry Kramer wrote a story for Deadspin today where he divulged that he was going to buy part of the Saints in the 70s, but eventually decided not to because he thought the NFL had peaked.

IOW, you can keep saying it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is true.

[Tugg Speedman]

Ironically Jerry Kramer wrote a story for Deadspin today where he divulged that he was going to buy part of the Saints in the 70s, but eventually decided not to because he thought the NFL had peaked.

IOW, you can keep saying it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is true.

He was partially correct ... the NFL (if measured by ratings) peaked in the late 1970s.

One Measure
The 1978 Superbowl had 78 million viewers
The 2005 Superbowl had 86 million viewers
The 2012 Superbowl had 115 million viewers


Or

1983 Superbowl viewed by 40 million households
2001 Superbowl viewed by 40 million households
2012 Superbowl viewed by 55 million households

So the NFL stagnated for a long time until it started back up.


Note:  Looked it up and changed my original post

[ChicosBailBonds]

Yeah, but almost all ratings are done now.  Back then there were 3 over the air networks.  Today there are 4 plus 100's of cable networks and millions of other things to do that weren't even conceived yet in the 1970's.

[Benny B]

There's a saying in the insurance industry along the lines of "death is cheap, injuries are debilitating."

Sadly, the best case scenario for the NFL is more deaths.... fewer settlements they'll have to pay out later.

[Tugg Speedman]

There's a saying in the insurance industry along the lines of "death is cheap, injuries are debilitating."

Sadly, the best case scenario for the NFL is more deaths.... fewer settlements they'll have to pay out later.

Correct, disability insurance is 8 to 10 times more expensive than life insurance. 

Why do you think no one has disability insurance.  It would cost upwards of 15% to 20% of yearly income.

[Tugg Speedman]

Yeah, but almost all ratings are done now.  Back then there were 3 over the air networks.  Today there are 4 plus 100's of cable networks and millions of other things to do that weren't even conceived yet in the 1970's.

Correct, the NFL is saturated in the US.  The only place it can grow is in foreign countries.  And how did NFL Europe do?

Also, the NFL has an agreement, as part of last year's Collective Bargaining Agreement, to expand the season to 22 games.  They are talking about going to 18 initially.  

Think injuries are an issue now, wait until the league gets greedy and goes to 22 games (and then an expanded playoffs).

[ZiggysFryBoy]

Correct, disability insurance is 8 to 10 times more expensive than life insurance. 

Why do you think no one has disability insurance.  It would cost upwards of 15% to 20% of yearly income.

actually, the NFL teams do provide workers comp insurance, which picks up all of the injury payments.  The long term disability and lifetime medicals is what is going to kill the league in terms of paying premiums and/or claims.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8316657/nfl-teams-facing-large-bills-related-workers-compensation-claims-head-injuries

as far as disability goes, the average person will have 7 disability claims in their lifetime.  the average for life insurance is 1.

[Tugg Speedman]

Another Saturday, another NFL player killed.  Should we start taking bets on which NFL player is killed next Saturday and how?

Josh Brent arrested after fatal crash
http://espn.go.com/dallas/nfl/story/_/id/8726659/josh-brent-dallas-cowboys-arrested-intoxication-manslaughter-accident-kills-jerry-brown

This has nothing to do with concussions, it has everything to do with making NFL players unlikable.  It has everything to do with NFL players perceived to be a menace to society off the field.

This is another brick in the wall that leads to a peak in the NFL's popularity and a decline down the road.