In my lifetime I've seen football go from a minor sport to the top one. I agree with the writer that the NFL is in decline but it is far from dead. For example college football is as popular as ever. My alma mater even after a three win season isn't having any problems selling out the stadium this fall.
football has always seemed like an outlier to me, in the sense that the overwhelming majority of adults I know watch and enjoy it but I know almost no one who played an organized version of it. Anecdotally, this doesn't seem to work the same way as other sports. It really is a sport made for television and gambling, which will probably continue to drive it for a very long time.
The obvious logic here is that people need to have played a sport as a child to want to watch it as an adult. I'd be curious to know if there is data to back this up.
Anecdotally, my dad played football growing up, while my three brothers and I played soccer. My dad and 2 of my brothers are extremely dedicated soccer fans now, while I and my other brother love football despite having never played.
The popularity of football among women (I don't know the stats but at games they're a significant portion of the audience) would seem to disprove this logic. For many people sports are one of the few times the entire family sits down together and roots for a single purpose. I would bet that experiencing this atmosphere as a child is nearly as effective in promoting the sport as playing the game itself.
"And you don't need to watch multi-millionaire football stars, pampered for most of their lives, ostentatiously disrespecting the American national anthem, kneeling, their raised fists in the air."
And the reason why Kaepernick's kneeling is silly is that black-on-black crime is orders of magnitude more of a problem for the black community than police shootings of young black males. Black males committed 52% of all homicides between 1980-2013, despite comprising only ~6% of the population. That's almost an 8.5x per capita murder multiplier.
There's also evidence that in lethal force situations, police are more likely to shoot whites than blacks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...). In less-than-lethal situations, it may be the case the minorities are treated more roughly, but that's not what BLM is about. It's a movement which is confused about statistics, and which I suspect is sublimating a more generalized anger about the West and a relatively low position on civilization's status hierarchy into an emotionally charged topic that they think has good optics.
I expect this post will get me banned, because applying logic to identity politics is taboo in 2017. #JamesDamoreMatters
From the abstract of the paper referenced in article:
...On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.
That's also really all specific to American culture. Look at black crime in other high income nations like Australia or Western European nations and you don't see anywhere near the same numbers.
It's more of a problem with American culture in general, possibly simply a problem with the poor .. and systematic racism has pushed/kept black people in the poor and lower classes.
The problems you complain about in the African American communities can be traced back nearly 100 years to when we created these African American communities.
The Reconstruction era following the Civil War saw African Americans distribute themselves across the entire country. We have census data to prove this. They lived and worked in every county and nearly every city. They owned homes and they worked hard for their living. Now 15 years earlier whites were pissed off at the Chinese for taking railroad jobs so they violently expelled them from their homes and jobs causing them to aggregate into cities which now have Chinatowns. This was considered socially acceptable because they were mostly illegal immigrants.
After those 15 years had passed whites started blaming blacks for their problems, the economy, etc and with the rise of the KKK into powerful cultural force and worming their way into politics unchallenged by the extremely racist Presidents Harding and Coolidge, the whites were emboldened to do the same to blacks. The whites expelled them from entire classes of jobs. They were lynched, their houses burned, and they were run out of towns. Municipalities created ordinances to prevent any blacks from living there to "protect their culture and way of life". The African Americans congregated in large cities encompassing entire neighborhoods/districts and that's where they stayed because whites were too afraid to go on their violent rampages where they may be outnumbered. This behavior however was largely absent in the old South.
In 1921 in Tulsa OK whites went on a rampage to eradicate blacks from their city. They even took airplanes and dropped dynamite on their communities. It's the only recorded air raid on lower 48 US soil. The whites failed as there were too many. The black community persisted there and still exists.
Whites caused this problem. They forced them to huddle together in ghettos. They kept them poor by taking away from their jobs and creating unions that wouldn't permit their membership (fun fact: blacks were allowed in the NFL until 1933).
This is the result 100 years later. Stop rewriting history. Read a book.
So? The US isn't a fascist dictatorship. There's nothing wrong with disrespecting the national anthem, it's just propaganda. Free speech is a more important American value than blind patriotism.
Please refrain from these snide, low effort comments. Ad hominem attacks do nothing to encourage discussion. The author either has a point or he doesn't. Whether or not he's an "a-hole" is entirely irrelevant.
1. chicago tribune's website is horrible. not sure what it is but it keeps freezing.
2. oh man, people didn't believe him about football dying, and even called him a liberal!
3. the article is titled to talk about how the middle class is abandoning the game and within the first couple paragraphs talks about how stars have been pampered for most of their lives... i guess you can make an argument that you're pretty pampered if you're middle class?
edit:
football's decline is
1. roger goodell essentially having the powers of judge dredd
2. ignoring the concussion issue for so long
3. badly handling any kind of domestic violence issue
4. essentially blackballing a competent quarterback for expressing his opinions.
As a lifelong football fan I can state that non of those issues have any impact as to why I do not enjoy watching the sport.
For me it boils down to how over hyped it has become. I don't want to spend my $$ on that product because of the behavior of the participants. They seem overly entitled.
This is why I've always enjoyed college ball. Student atheletes often have more of an affinity/comraderie to their team, and coaches don't tolerate them bad-mouthing their own teammates on TV. In pro, the inverse is true.
But in the end, I've grown tired of watching all broadcast sports except international championships (track & field, fútbol, etc)
This seems to imply that NFL players come from the middle class, and without them there will be a lack of players. But is that actually true ? The sport could just end up being watched by middle class and played by the poor, who might be more willing to risk their brains to overcome economic hardship
I think it's much harder to be invested in a sport you haven't played. People may still watch the Superbowl in the same way people watch the Olympics, but it won't be the same.
Football already is a sport watched by (and commercially payed for by) the middle class that's largely played by the poor, since at least the mid-90's, and probably the 80's as well. Take a look at who plays competitive NCAA football, and who from there goes into the NFL draft -- or watch a bunch of "30 for 30" about football (because anecdata is generally more entertaining) and the trends are clear. There are a few key position outliers, by now whittled down to "quarterbacks, who have a host of special rules and how they can't be hit".
30 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 73.5 ms ] threadAnecdotally, my dad played football growing up, while my three brothers and I played soccer. My dad and 2 of my brothers are extremely dedicated soccer fans now, while I and my other brother love football despite having never played.
Well, except women's volleyball of course.
author's an a-hole
And the reason why Kaepernick's kneeling is silly is that black-on-black crime is orders of magnitude more of a problem for the black community than police shootings of young black males. Black males committed 52% of all homicides between 1980-2013, despite comprising only ~6% of the population. That's almost an 8.5x per capita murder multiplier.
There's also evidence that in lethal force situations, police are more likely to shoot whites than blacks (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...). In less-than-lethal situations, it may be the case the minorities are treated more roughly, but that's not what BLM is about. It's a movement which is confused about statistics, and which I suspect is sublimating a more generalized anger about the West and a relatively low position on civilization's status hierarchy into an emotionally charged topic that they think has good optics.
I expect this post will get me banned, because applying logic to identity politics is taboo in 2017. #JamesDamoreMatters
From the abstract of the paper referenced in article: ...On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.
It's more of a problem with American culture in general, possibly simply a problem with the poor .. and systematic racism has pushed/kept black people in the poor and lower classes.
The Reconstruction era following the Civil War saw African Americans distribute themselves across the entire country. We have census data to prove this. They lived and worked in every county and nearly every city. They owned homes and they worked hard for their living. Now 15 years earlier whites were pissed off at the Chinese for taking railroad jobs so they violently expelled them from their homes and jobs causing them to aggregate into cities which now have Chinatowns. This was considered socially acceptable because they were mostly illegal immigrants.
After those 15 years had passed whites started blaming blacks for their problems, the economy, etc and with the rise of the KKK into powerful cultural force and worming their way into politics unchallenged by the extremely racist Presidents Harding and Coolidge, the whites were emboldened to do the same to blacks. The whites expelled them from entire classes of jobs. They were lynched, their houses burned, and they were run out of towns. Municipalities created ordinances to prevent any blacks from living there to "protect their culture and way of life". The African Americans congregated in large cities encompassing entire neighborhoods/districts and that's where they stayed because whites were too afraid to go on their violent rampages where they may be outnumbered. This behavior however was largely absent in the old South.
In 1921 in Tulsa OK whites went on a rampage to eradicate blacks from their city. They even took airplanes and dropped dynamite on their communities. It's the only recorded air raid on lower 48 US soil. The whites failed as there were too many. The black community persisted there and still exists.
Whites caused this problem. They forced them to huddle together in ghettos. They kept them poor by taking away from their jobs and creating unions that wouldn't permit their membership (fun fact: blacks were allowed in the NFL until 1933).
This is the result 100 years later. Stop rewriting history. Read a book.
Which is why he didn't go to jail.
> There's nothing wrong with dis respecting the national anthem
Sure, it isn't illegal, but that doesn't mean individuals can't be offended by it. To many, the national anthem carries significant meaning.
There is lies the whole point of doing it. If it was meaningless to people it would have no impact as protest.
2. oh man, people didn't believe him about football dying, and even called him a liberal!
3. the article is titled to talk about how the middle class is abandoning the game and within the first couple paragraphs talks about how stars have been pampered for most of their lives... i guess you can make an argument that you're pretty pampered if you're middle class?
edit: football's decline is
1. roger goodell essentially having the powers of judge dredd
2. ignoring the concussion issue for so long
3. badly handling any kind of domestic violence issue
4. essentially blackballing a competent quarterback for expressing his opinions.
For me it boils down to how over hyped it has become. I don't want to spend my $$ on that product because of the behavior of the participants. They seem overly entitled.
This is why I've always enjoyed college ball. Student atheletes often have more of an affinity/comraderie to their team, and coaches don't tolerate them bad-mouthing their own teammates on TV. In pro, the inverse is true.
But in the end, I've grown tired of watching all broadcast sports except international championships (track & field, fútbol, etc)
Money ruins things, sometimes.