NFL Breaking Point: What would it take for you to lose interest?

[sc49erfan15]

Nike-fication. This is a uniform site, right? The NFL, thankfully, has uniform rules that make it impossible for Nike to pitch their truly awful ideas to teams like they do to NCAA programs. For now. Part of me is worried that the NFL will see the potential for even more publicity and relax those rules. I'll walk away the moment we see something truly Oregon Ducks-esque at the NFL level.

I really considered writing something like that... but I don't think uniforms would drive me away. I think traditional uniforms are beautiful, but having a league of 1970-esque "0, 1, 2, or 3 stripes on either the shoulders or the sleeves" uniforms would be boring, just as having a league full of Oregon Ducks would be over the top. Heck, I've come around to the Seahawks' uniforms after hating them at first. If Nike truly had their way with every team in the league, I probably wouldn't buy any jerseys, but I'd still watch.

[neo_prankster]

Won't be giving up on the NFL anytime soon, but they still need to address those CTE concerns. Also, it's kinda stale when nobody relocates in the last 16 or so years, so I look forward to LA getting a team whether they want it or not.

[IceCap]

Nike-fication. This is a uniform site, right? The NFL, thankfully, has uniform rules that make it impossible for Nike to pitch their truly awful ideas to teams like they do to NCAA programs. For now. Part of me is worried that the NFL will see the potential for even more publicity and relax those rules. I'll walk away the moment we see something truly Oregon Ducks-esque at the NFL level.

I really considered writing something like that... but I don't think uniforms would drive me away. I think traditional uniforms are beautiful, but having a league of 1970-esque "0, 1, 2, or 3 stripes on either the shoulders or the sleeves" uniforms would be boring, just as having a league full of Oregon Ducks would be over the top.

I don't want the league full of teams looking like they came out of the 1970s. There are a few nontraditional looks in the NFL I like.

Heck, I've come around to the Seahawks' uniforms after hating them at first. If Nike truly had their way with every team in the league, I probably wouldn't buy any jerseys, but I'd still watch.

As much as I dislike the Seahawks' uniforms (and trust me, I do) I don't consider them Nike-esque to the extent that Oregon's look is. It's probably as close as you can get given the NFL's uniform restrictions but it's still tolerable. When I see teams with five different jersey, pants, and helmet options, three of each devoted to various shades of grey and some corporate neon colour Nike wants to promote is when I walk away.

[bosrs1]

All I can say for sure is that this is the first year I'm actually planning to not watch the Super Bowl. Now I've missed a few past Super Bowls, but never on purpose and quite often I'm the one actually hosting the Super Bowl party in past years. But this year I've just got no interest in watching the game. I literally feel footballed out. And with no teams I give a crap about in it I see no reason to waste a perfectly good Sunday that I could be watching NCAA baseball live or visiting Disneyland with my wife.

[Buster]

The Eagles winning a Super Bowl.

Seriously, at this point, if they continue to water the game down in the name of safety and make it into a game that's really not the way the game is meant to be played, I'd start to lose interest. It has already begun and looks inevitable, sadly. It's more of a matter of IF than WHEN. Also, when the Government and politicians begin dictating rules to the league, it will be ruined.

[Mac the Knife]

Posted in the NFL Offseason thread about the league considering removing extra points from the game. It's one in a slew of moves that the NFL is doing to totally alter it's landscape at the peak of it's popularity and exposure.

I ask you, CCSLCers, what would it take for you to really challenge your status as an NFL fan? 18 game schedule? No more extra points? Hyper-damage control regarding injury prevention? Shady league politics?

I'm pretty much already there, and have been for nearly two decades. The day Fart Modell announced the Cleveland Browns were heading to Baltimore, it dawned on me that at their core, professional sports teams are business enterprises: first, last, always. From that point on, I've equated rooting for any professional sports franchise as akin to rooting for IBM or Microsoft. I own stock in Coca-Cola but don't root for them to have a good fiscal quarter... why should I root for the New York Giants or Seattle Seahawks when I have no financial stake in their results? I pay a passing glance to the Green Bay Packers (because like some others here I own a share of them), another to the Browns and/or Steelers to see if they won or lost, then I move on.

I will watch the Super Bowl on TV. But contrast that to pre-1995, when I used to go to games and see them in person. And since the advent of DVR technology, I usually don't bother to start watching the game until 9:30 or so... fast-forwarding through the commercials, and even the play clock, allowing me to catch the last 5-10 minutes of the game live, in real time.

when the CFL season is on, the league may as well not exist.

This is how I feel about it. The worst CFL game I've seen in the past decade has been on a comparable entertainment level to the best NFL game I've seen. Not that I think the NFL needs to adopt CFL rules or anything, but it's telling.

Also, it's kinda stale when nobody relocates in the last 16 or so years, so I look forward to LA getting a team whether they want it or not.

I was thinking about it yesterday, wondering what it'd take for me to actually get back some level of interest in the NFL again, and the only thing I could think up was a 'mega-expansion,' growing overnight from 32 franchises to 40, adding a 5th four-team division in each conference. The mere curiosity of watching eight brand-new teams, no matter how bad they were on the field, come into being simultaneously would be fun to watch. But aside from that? Meh...

[HedleyLamarr]

I don't think I'll ever lose interest in football (or sports as a whole), but I watch sports just for the entertainment value.

MLB started it, and the NHL and NBA sealed it, in that these are "just another business" when they had their labor issues. If they want to play...great, I'll watch on TV and maybe attend a few games. If they don't want to play, there are other sports alternatives and other interests I have. Although, my interest in hockey has gone down significantly once the Thrashers left town. I'll watch some Hurricanes or Predators games if they're on TV or maybe catch a game on NBC or find a way to watch the Canucks (not that I have a big rooting interest in the fiance's team), but it's not appointment watching like it used to be. And maybe that's what it would take for me to lose interest in the NFL...the Falcons moving to another city.

I've run a 20-team fantasy league for 12 years now, and the fun level hasn't dropped at all. That alone will keep me watching just about any game that's on.

I do think it's kind of a cop-out to use CTE as a reason that you'd lose interest in football. Again, I look at football as entertainment only, so I don't get worked up about injury risks because the players should know that your short- and long-term health is at risk when you play a contact sport. Maybe that makes me cold-hearted, but one isn't a better fan and/or person just because they have CTE concerns for the players. If you're that gung-ho about CTE, don't watch any athletic event.

[FGM13]

When a player dies of an injury on the field would be the time I stop following the NFL.

[KCScout76]

College football is better (IMO) - for me and the NFL I lost interest in the late '90s. Game is too commercialized. I don't have a long laundry list of things, it's lots of little stuff that takes away from the game. I won't ever pay for a NFL ticket.

Too many rules as the Wussification of America continues. "here let me fluff your pillow"!

[jaha32]

For me, my loss of interest in the NFL is the result if two things - age and living outside the US. It has nothing to do with commercials or the over complicating of rules by Goodell, although these things are annoying.

As a kid in the 1990s, the players seemed super human. Now that I see how time has treated many of these one-time players, and the NFL's lack of interest in helping out those who made it into the gigantic league it is today, I see the players of today for what they are, expendable meat in the most cut-throat profession around. Here today and gone tomorrow. All pro sports are like that to some extent, but the NFL takes it to another level. I guess as people get older, some of us lose our child-like enthusiasm. I no longer was an NFL fan, but simply a Packer fan. Now that I have lived abroad for the last few years, and the NFL is not thrown in my face by ESPN on a daily basis, I hardly follow it at all. I have seen only one of the last four or five Super Bowls (the one the Packers beat the Steelers). I barely watch Packer highlights anymore. Watching the games would require me to wake up in the middle of the night, and for me sleep is more important . One could argue that the NFL is the easiest sport to follow since the season consists if only 16 games as opposed to 82 or 162, and I think this is one of the reasons it has grown so much. Plus, this one-game-a-week format makes for the perfect fantasy sport, but it is not enough to keep me watching.

I still follow the NBA as much as I can, although it is also far from perfect. It has done a nice job marketing itself as an international sport. If you're outside the US, American football might as well be from Mars because there is absolutely no interest or understanding of the game by most non-Americans.

[Lights Out]

College football is better (IMO) - for me

College football is more fun to watch now, but there are several logistical problems with the sport - most notably conference politics and the intentionally flawed postseason systems that cater to said politics, as well as the NCAA's dumb rules and inconsistent enforcement - that prevent it from being a better overall product than the NFL, IMO.

[DnBronc]

The day Fart Modell announced the Cleveland Browns were heading to Baltimore, it dawned on me that at their core, professional sports teams are business enterprises: first, last, always. From that point on, I've equated rooting for any professional sports franchise as akin to rooting for IBM or Microsoft. I own stock in Coca-Cola but don't root for them to have a good fiscal quarter... why should I root for the New York Giants or Seattle Seahawks when I have no financial stake in their results? I pay a passing glance to the Green Bay Packers (because like some others here I own a share of them), another to the Browns and/or Steelers to see if they won or lost, then I move on.

Here's the thing: I just don't see pro sports as being a normal business like Coke and IBM.

Pro Sports teams are assets to a community. Normal businesses like IBM don't usually have the name of a city as part of their brand. That's why I don't like how only one person owns a team in most cases. The way the Packers do it is better.

Modell was a terrible businessman, and the NFL let him benefit from it by taking his team to Baltimore.

[BBTV]

The day Fart Modell announced the Cleveland Browns were heading to Baltimore, it dawned on me that at their core, professional sports teams are business enterprises: first, last, always. From that point on, I've equated rooting for any professional sports franchise as akin to rooting for IBM or Microsoft. I own stock in Coca-Cola but don't root for them to have a good fiscal quarter... why should I root for the New York Giants or Seattle Seahawks when I have no financial stake in their results? I pay a passing glance to the Green Bay Packers (because like some others here I own a share of them), another to the Browns and/or Steelers to see if they won or lost, then I move on.

Here's the thing: I just don't see pro sports as being a normal business like Coke and IBM.

Pro Sports teams are assets to a community. Normal businesses like IBM don't usually have the name of a city as part of their brand. That's why I don't like how only one person owns a team in most cases. The way the Packers do it is better.

Modell was a terrible businessman, and the NFL let him benefit from it by taking his team to Baltimore.

Most community assets don't demand hundreds of millions of free dollars from their communities / customers. Obviously some major employers do get tax breaks or incentives to relocate or stay in a city (Comcast in Phila comes to mind), however they generally employee 10s of 000s with well-paying jobs and legitimately contribute to the local economy. The same cannot necessarily be said for pro sports. At the end of the day, they may lure you in and get you to become emotionally attached by having the city name as part of their brand (I'll admit - I fall in to the trap too), but at the end of the day, thinking that they're anything more than a private company is naive at best.

[IceCap]

That's why I don't like how only one person owns a team in most cases. The way the Packers do it is better.

Pro sports teams are often owned by one or a small group of very wealthy people because of the money involved. The money needed to pay players. The money needed to pay players, the money generated from stadiums and ticket sales, the money brought in by tv deals and merchandising. It all factors into a business that requires the extremely wealthy helm it. Not just rich people. Very rich people. It's just the nature of the economics of the business.

Now the Packers have a unique model, but you'll NEVER see it replicated again at the pro level. It not only forces the team to open the books up to their investors (and hence the public) but it also makes relocation impossible. Which some might see as a good thing. The problem with that is that relocation is sometimes necessary. We tend to think of it in negative terms but there are times where a team leaving a community is not only in the team's best interests but the league's as well. If the community holds a stake in the team they could very well force the team to stay in a location that's not all that beneficial.

[HedleyLamarr]

College football is better (IMO) - for me

College football is more fun to watch now, but there are several logistical problems with the sport - most notably conference politics and the intentionally flawed postseason systems that cater to said politics, as well as the NCAA's dumb rules and inconsistent enforcement - that prevent it from being a better overall product than the NFL, IMO.

The NFL is a better football product because they have the best, most talented 5% of college players.

College football could be a perfectly-run game, and their product still won't ever be better than the NFL. Politics, postseason format, and rules have nothing to do with that.

[Kramerica Industries]

That is pretty much exactly how I view it as well with regards to college football and the NFL. Two of my brothers prefer college to NFL based on various intangible "things", whatever you want to call them, but I've always been more partial to NFL football simply because of the fact that the best players from college reach the NFL; the comparative "rubbish" players in the NFL were stars for their respective college team in most cases. It's a better product.

Now, if you enjoy college more than the NFL, that's a different argument altogether; that's just a matter of preference. But as a matter of product, it's really hard to wage an argument that claims college is better.

[JackieMoon]

It has been a bunch of things for me. I have watched football ever since I first got a sticker book in 1985. To me the NFL had turned to much into NASCAR. All it is, is one huge commercial.I don't care how very superstitious this fan is I will not drink bud light yuck. Also the officiating is downright awful. Games to me seem rigged. The hit on Kevin Huber was one of the last straws. Had that hit been on Tom Brady that guy would have been exiled from football. The league has it's favorites. There are no underdogs anymore.You can predict at the beginning of the season 90 percent of the playoff teams. Fantasy football ruins out too. I remember when fantasy football was basic and fun. Now there are points for everything and everybody has a team. I love hockey more and more each year. There is a lot more play and a lot less staging.

[HedleyLamarr]

It has been a bunch of things for me. I have watched football ever since I first got a sticker book in 1985. To me the NFL had turned to much into NASCAR. All it is, is one huge commercial.I don't care how very superstitious this fan is I will not drink bud light yuck. Also the officiating is downright awful. Games to me seem rigged. The hit on Kevin Huber was one of the last straws. Had that hit been on Tom Brady that guy would have been exiled from football. The league has it's favorites. There are no underdogs anymore.You can predict at the beginning of the season 90 percent of the playoff teams. Fantasy football ruins out too. I remember when fantasy football was basic and fun. Now there are points for everything and everybody has a team. I love hockey more and more each year. There is a lot more play and a lot less staging.

To be fair, the way you have played and proposed ways of playing Fantasy Football would make participating not much fun. Your lack of kickers and team defenses, that dumbassed "All Play" format, and that proposal of playing two opponents at once and limiting how many times you can use a player....those aren't fun ways of playing fantasy sports.

[rams80]

It has been a bunch of things for me. I have watched football ever since I first got a sticker book in 1985. To me the NFL had turned to much into NASCAR. All it is, is one huge commercial.I don't care how very superstitious this fan is I will not drink bud light yuck. Also the officiating is downright awful. Games to me seem rigged. The hit on Kevin Huber was one of the last straws. Had that hit been on Tom Brady that guy would have been exiled from football. The league has it's favorites. There are no underdogs anymore.You can predict at the beginning of the season 90 percent of the playoff teams. Fantasy football ruins out too. I remember when fantasy football was basic and fun. Now there are points for everything and everybody has a team. I love hockey more and more each year. There is a lot more play and a lot less staging.

The solution to your fantasy football woes seems to be "leave your league."

[JackieMoon]

I think it just means I am burnt out on football.