Millenials to end football? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

pendell

2012-10-21, 04:19 AM

At least, that's the contention of this article (http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/1019/Millennial-generation-could-kill-the-NFL/(page)/2)

The emergence of the Millennial generation poses an existential threat to the future of the National Football League.

Pro football, depicted by Mr. Sabol as a confrontation between good and evil in which there can be only one winner, matched the values of baby boomers a half century ago. But this focus is not as appealing to the Millennial generation with its focus on win-win solutions and an instinct for avoiding confrontation.

Furthermore, out of concern for the future health of their children, many protective mothers and fathers of Millennials are deciding their kids should not play tackle football at all. These attitudes could close the NFL’s pipeline to many talented players within the coming decade. But these concerns also have the potential to change NFL culture for the better.

:Blinks, puzzled:

My initial gut is that this is hogwash. Anyone who's seen Millenial people playing call of duty or reads the game threads here knows that good vs. evil still sells. A LOT. That while we all know we're supposed to be good little boys and girls and talk our problems through, a good old-style kick-in-the-door-and-smackdown-the-dark-lord is still something people love to do.

I'm curious whether the author read Generation Kill (http://www.amazon.com/Generation-Kill-Evan-Wright/dp/0425224740/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350810801&sr=8-2&keywords=generation+kill), which suggested the opposite -- that violent video games had so normalized violence that millenials are a more violent generation than previous ones.

=============

But then I think, these articles are written by people who are not millenials. And where can I find a couple thousand millenials except at the playground?

So .. any millenials here? What do you think? Are you the wishy-washy diplomats who can't stand conflict that the first writer seems to think you are? Or are you the hyperviolent killers of the second writer? Or neither?

For myself .... I was born in 1971. My mom tried very hard not to let me play with toy guns or play with violent games or watch violent movies. It didn't work. At all. Getting the snot beat out of me in public school more or less permanently cured me of pacifism.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Tvtyrant

2012-10-21, 04:23 AM

I take it that millenials are the generation born starting with the year 2000?

Aedilred

2012-10-21, 07:26 AM

I'm a child of the 80s; however, my instinct is to cast my vote firmly for the "hogwash" column. There's been a long-running fuss in this country about non-competitive sports days and refusal of parents to let their children engage in competition for fear they might lose, but I don't believe it's either a serious going concern or something which actually has any long-lasting effect: rather, that it's something that certain papers use to sell copy when they can't think of anything better to write.

Health and safety (and an increasingly litigious personal injury culture) might yet put a stop to contact sports, but I think that's a long way off.

Coidzor

2012-10-21, 07:36 AM

Well that's utterly bizarre.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-21, 08:29 AM

I'm not sure what a millenial is, and I'm certainly no (american) football fan, but you'd be pressed if you tried to find someone with more generally violent tendencies. If not for a significant amount of self-control and a generally rational mindset, I'd probably be in jail over a violent crime by now. I was born in the 80's by the way.

Seriously, my first instinct upon being sleighted is usually something to the effect of, "punch 'em in the throat and take his wallet." Fortunately I never act on that initial instinct.

Flickerdart

2012-10-21, 08:34 AM

Yes! Millenials shall crush football, trampling it mercilessly under their iron-shod boots, because they hate conflict.

Wait, what?

Eldan

2012-10-21, 08:46 AM

Probably more meant as "They have no interest in playing or watching it". I can't tell, I'm not a sports fan and American Football doesn't exist over here. World Football won't die out any time soon.

pendell

2012-10-21, 08:59 AM

I see some definitions are in order.

Americans name specific generations of families thus:

The Greatest Generation (born 1920-1945). So-called because these are the people who fought in World War 2. Not many of these left. The critical event marking this generation is that they remember WWII. Not many of these left.

The Baby Boom (Born 1945-1965). So-called because there was a massive birth spike when all the soldiers came back from the war, and the Baby Boom is the result. People of this generation remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also the Beatles , Woodstock, the Rolling Stones. The Civil Rights Movement. People of this age listened to old people rant about rock music and long hair.

This is the most important generation currently because they are more numerous than the succeeding generations, which are smaller. They also tend to be the people in the most important jobs.

Generation X (born 1965-1995) This generation was the children of the Baby Boom's youth. It is quite small, IIRC , because many baby boomers waited until much later to have children. People of this generation remember the Challenger Disaster, The Wall coming down in Europe, the events of 1989. Ronald Reagan. Guns & Roses. Duran Duran. Nirvana. The original My Little Pony, GI Joe, and Transformers. People of this age listened to old people rant about Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the generation I am from, born in 1971.

Millenials (also known as generation Y) (born 1995-??). These are the generation of my children if any of them had lived, and the children of the baby boom's maturity. It is larger because many boomers had to work through college, pay off their debts, and gain financial security before they really started having many kids.

These are the people who are currently going through high school and college. The events so far of their generation are the events of 9/11/2001, the wars of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and the current economic crisis. Not to mention my little pony remakes, Harry Potter, facebook, google. Old people rant about all of the above.

At any rate, that's what Americans mean when they use the word "millenial". I may not be using the definitions quite correctly, but I think they'll do well enough to get on with.

Yes! Millenials shall crush football, trampling it mercilessly under their iron-shod boots, because they hate conflict.

Wait, what?

I believe the hypothesis is that because their parents will not put them into the "feeder programs" that lead into the NFL, there will therefore be few new players for the national football league. I have a hard time believing this. I have a friend whose son is a vigorous little athlete, just like his father, and he will certainly be on a football track if he can overcome his asthma.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-21, 09:30 AM

I live in the "south" region of the US. From what I've seen around me, I don't expect (american) football to go away any time soon. My younger sister has absolutely plastered my nephew with the logo of her favorite college team. He's only 2 so he doesn't seem to mind. :smalltongue:

Chromascope3D

2012-10-21, 12:42 PM

I'm a millennial, and honestly, American Football is the only sport I can stand to watch. Although, that may be because I'm Southern...

dps

2012-10-21, 01:17 PM

Any threat to the future of American football will come from safety issues, and lawsuits over those issues, not because some people are less interested in win-lose competitive sports.

Aedilred

2012-10-21, 01:38 PM

Generation X (born 1965-1995) This generation was the children of the Baby Boom's youth. It is quite small, IIRC , because many baby boomers waited until much later to have children. People of this generation remember the Challenger Disaster, The Wall coming down in Europe, the events of 1989. Ronald Reagan. Guns & Roses. Duran Duran. Nirvana. The original My Little Pony, GI Joe, and Transformers. People of this age listened to old people rant about Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the generation I am from, born in 1971.

Millenials (also known as generation Y) (born 1995-??). These are the generation of my children if any of them had lived, and the children of the baby boom's maturity. It is larger because many boomers had to work through college, pay off their debts, and gain financial security before they really started having many kids.
I had always thought (informed by Wikipedia) that Gen Y started around the time I was born (early 80s) and that the "millennials" were the next generation after that.

(Incidentally, I've always felt that "Generation Y" with its inherent unoriginality of terminology was an apt enough assessment of my peer group).

If the article is correct, it's really addressing two completely separate issues. Firstly is the apparent lack of aggression and competitive instinct apparent in modern young people that would lead to a decline in sport viewing and participation. I think this is largely a red herring, but it'd be too early to see a pattern either way I think.

The second is a failure of the supply of contact sports players due to an overemphasis on health and safety on the training field. This isn't really anything to do with the millennials themselves, but rather a policy imposed by their parents (Gen Xers, for the most part). This is probably a more realistic concern, but one I think is largely overplayed.

Eldan

2012-10-21, 02:23 PM

Hm. I'd feel strange being grouped with people who grew up with the eighties as their childhood. I mean, they define a lot of the stereotypical "Nerd stuff" of today, but you know what? I was born in 1987. I don't remember the eighties. I don't remember the Soviet Union existing. I don't know the NES, or He-Man or GI Joe or most Schwarzenegger and Stalone movies, except as late-night re-runs.

TheThan

2012-10-21, 02:23 PM

Yeah, calling hogwash on it too.

Everyone know that a little competition ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsSb7s2rVaE) is healthy.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-21, 02:30 PM

Telonius

2012-10-21, 02:35 PM

Yeah, I'm calling baloney too. I'm just on the outer edge of Gen-X, born in 1980. (I've never heard of anybody using "Gen-X" to refer to a birth year as late as the 1990s - most sources I've seen use something like 1965-ish to 1980-ish, at least for the US).

There's definitely a lot more concern about safety, especially with all of the concussion studies coming out recently. But there's a lot more awareness about the issue, and there have been some youth football rules changes for injuries. (The Pop Warner league has recently changed (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-06-13/sports/ct-met-pop-warner-concussion-20120614_1_concussions-youth-football-pop-warner-little-scholars)some of its rules to address just that). I really don't see this as stopping the game generally. As long as high schools are raising money by having football teams, there will continue to be football teams.

Starwulf

2012-10-21, 04:03 PM

snoopy13a

2012-10-21, 05:27 PM

I had always thought (informed by Wikipedia) that Gen Y started around the time I was born (early 80s) and that the "millennials" were the next generation after that.

(Incidentally, I've always felt that "Generation Y" with its inherent unoriginality of terminology was an apt enough assessment of my peer group).

Every media outlet has its own definition for Generation X, Generation Y, and the millennials.

Generation Y are simply the people that don't fit into X or millennials. I think it just represents the gap of people who don't fit into Gen X or the millennials. Likely those who were born around 1980.

Actually, I think the stuff about the millennials being "win-win" is silliness. Upper-middle class millennials have been pressured to succeed throughout their lives. If anything, they may be more competitive than their predecessors.

Aedilred

2012-10-21, 06:02 PM

Every media outlet has its own definition for Generation X, Generation Y, and the millennials.

Generation Y are simply the people that don't fit into X or millennials. I think it just represents the gap of people who don't fit into Gen X or the millennials. Likely those who were born around 1980.

Well this is the problem. It's a useless label if everybody has a different understanding of it. There's a world of difference between someone born in '65 or even '75, who grew up during the Cold War and whose formative years were entirely in its shadow, and someone born in '85 whose first memory of any global significance was the Wall coming down. The formative political, cultural and economic circumstances are completely different.

In fact, though, I think the generational labels are too wide and generic as it is. Generations (like centuries) are really epochal and locative rather than strictly chronological.

In any case, I'd consider myself towards the top end of "Generation Y" rather than the tail end of Gen X, although I'm inclined to reject the label altogether. The cultural touchstones I have in common with someone born in 1974 are just as few as those born in 1994.

snoopy13a

2012-10-21, 06:16 PM

Well this is the problem. It's a useless label if everybody has a different understanding of it. There's a world of difference between someone born in '65 or even '75, who grew up during the Cold War and whose formative years were entirely in its shadow, and someone born in '85 whose first memory of any global significance was the Wall coming down. The formative political, cultural and economic circumstances are completely different.

It's the same with baby boomers. Someone born in '46 had a vastly different upbringing than someone born in '62. It is easy to identify the first baby-boomers--those born after WWII, but when is the end date? 1950? 1955? 1960? 1965?

Still, I think millenials can be identified as people whose entire lives have been in the internet era. They don't remember the internet's growing pains, and they don't remember when it was uncommon to have a cell phone.

Hiro Protagonest

2012-10-21, 06:59 PM

Personally? I have no interest in football. The complex rules combined with a chaotic warlike atmosphere makes it arbitrary and confusing. Possibly the only good football memory I have was when Eli Manning made an amazing catch for the Giants at the end of a Superbowl game. I think it was Giants vs. Colts, one Manning brother on each team.

However, I can see the appeal for people who care enough to study the rules, and I don't think it's going anywhere. I just wish that the Powers That Be (the TV executives) would stop showing football as the only sport on non-sports channels. Either air regular shows, or show some variety, dammit!

Klose_the_Sith

2012-10-21, 07:24 PM

I think that realistically millennial should stretch as far back as 1990. Because nothing of real significance happened in the mid/late 90's (or at least, nothing they told me about) the realisation about world events and such started with 9/11 for that generation. We also shared in the Harry Potter boom. Heck, I can remember waiting for the release of 2 and 3 - these were the books that literally taught me how to read.

At any rate, if you look at the popularity of competitive and violent video games then you know that the spirit of competition/violence is far from dead and that in fact if anything was to pose a risk to football it would probably be these acting as competition and drawing kids away.

Not that any sports fan would ever admit that their passion is no longer the best way to get kids fired up, excited and entertained :smallamused:

(OTOH, I live in Australia and sports are obviously far from dead here. Well, maybe Rugby League.)

Androgeus

2012-10-21, 08:14 PM

Two years makes a huge difference then. I was born in '85 and I remember all of that to at least some extent.

I was born in the 80's and I don't remember any of them... what do you mean being in the 80's for 2 weeks doesn't count? :smalltongue:

Katana_Geldar

2012-10-21, 08:15 PM

There were a few things that happened in the early to mid 90's. the Gulf War, the OJ Simpson trial, Oklahoma bombing (I remember the front pages), Sydney Olympics being announced, Y2K paranoia (though that was more late). Michael Jackson was still the coolest guy ever, Jurassic Park came out, The Simpsons was well into their stride and we wore bright colours and hyper coloured t-shirts and went to arcades.

I was born in '84 and I consider myself Gen Y. Why? I still remember what it was like before the Internet or even the GUI (computers we had when I first started school we had to manually load program's through the 5 1/4 disks. Internet when having a mobile phone (an enourmous brick) meant you were either a businessman or a tradie.

And back then, video games WERE for kids. Thing is, that generation are or have grown up and are having kids, and they're still playing games. I think we've slowly killed the whole 'games are for kids' thing.

As for sports, I don't mind them. We live near a stadium a d did go to an AFL game, but the world doesn't stop. I don't see sports dying as long as there are people who go (and there are a lot). That guy was being rather hysterical, I think.

Besides, what would we do without the coma imposed on Australian makes every summer by Channel 9?

And I cannot understand gridiron, either how it's played it the methods. So I stopped trying.

INDYSTAR188

2012-10-21, 09:02 PM

As a member of the U.S. Military I can vouch for the American fighting spirit and can proudly say that I've seen it is alive and well first hand. There are roughly a million people in the military (throughout the different services) and a lot of those folks are the Gen Y/Millennials. So, I don't think we're being conditioned to shy away from confrontation.

I agree that the largest threat to football is lawsuits and the potential for severe injury. But that can happen in soccer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVySrSYH2VM)too.

*I was also born in 1984.

Klose_the_Sith

2012-10-21, 09:09 PM

There were a few things that happened in the early to mid 90's. the Gulf War, the OJ Simpson trial, Oklahoma bombing (I remember the front pages), Sydney Olympics being announced, Y2K paranoia (though that was more late). Michael Jackson was still the coolest guy ever, Jurassic Park came out, The Simpsons was well into their stride and we wore bright colours and hyper coloured t-shirts and went to arcades.

I said mid/late 90's which really excludes the Gulf War if you were born 90-94. The others weren't really big international affairs (except for Billy and the Cloneasaurus/Simpsons, but I was talking about big news type affairs). Maybe they dominated the news of their day, but the morning of 9/11 everyone at my Primary school was huddled in small groups and talking about it and nothing else. I imagine it would have been the same with the fall of the Soviet Union, which is why I draw the comparison.

EDIT: Toy Story. That was bigger for my generation than Jurassic Park by a mile :smallbiggrin:

Renegade Paladin

2012-10-21, 09:16 PM

I hope so. American football should be destroyed as rapidly as possible.

Dimonite

2012-10-21, 09:20 PM

As someone born in 1993, I would call myself a millenial; I don't remember any of the things you have listed for Generation X. Personally, I love football just the way it is - something about the raw savagery just appeals to me (I think I would have done well in a culture where gladiator fighting was still a thing). And when people talk about how "everyone should be a winner" and "we don't want anyone to get hurt," that just annoys me. Could a kid get hurt playing football? Sure. But if you're keeping that kid from playing sports because he could hurt himself, you're lowering his life expectancy a LOT more than those potential injuries ever would. Seriously, if this article is true (which I wouldn't think it is, the way my peer group reacted to the games today) I'm gonna be really mad at my little cousins.

Chromascope3D

2012-10-21, 09:40 PM

I hope so. American football should be destroyed as rapidly as possible.

I wouldn't buy that for a dollar. I rather like it.

Katana_Geldar

2012-10-21, 09:47 PM

I said mid/late 90's which really excludes the Gulf War if you were born 90-94. The others weren't really big international affairs (except for Billy and the Cloneasaurus/Simpsons, but I was talking about big news type affairs). Maybe they dominated the news of their day, but the morning of 9/11 everyone at my Primary school was huddled in small groups and talking about it and nothing else. I imagine it would have been the same with the fall of the Soviet Union, which is why I draw the comparison.

EDIT: Toy Story. That was bigger for my generation than Jurassic Park by a mile :smallbiggrin:

Ok, here's another. The death of Princess Di.

Klose_the_Sith

2012-10-21, 10:37 PM

Ok, here's another. The death of Princess Di.

Yeah, that one I'll probably grant you. Except that I was in the UK went it happened, so there didn't seem to be anything strange about the news coverage or obsession :smallbiggrin:

Amridell

2012-10-21, 11:07 PM

SaintRidley

2012-10-22, 12:01 AM

Being from 1988, I've always felt kind of in a weird spot in generational terms. I'm too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union, but my brother was born in part due to the Gulf War and I have a few memories around then. Jurassic Park was a formative experience and Toy Story was revolutionary. I remember the NES very clearly, and Alex Kidd in Miracle World was my first video game ever.

I still don't like cell phones and I feel like it wasn't until high school that most people my age started having them. I remember before the internet was very interesting to most people, when having a computer lab in an elementary school was weird. I remember when it was possible that you would accidentally discover a pornographic web site when trying to do research on the president at school because the whole .com/.gov domain issue was not something everyone was aware of.

The death of Princess Diana was the first major international news I was aware of. 9/11 came at the time when I was already beginning to become interested in watching the news to begin with. Y2K was a hilarious letdown, and I still remember computers before Windows, though only just. I was close enough in age to Harry Potter when the first two books and the last three books came out that I was, basically, growing up parallel to him.

I'm not really an 80s kid, since I remember nothing from then, but I remember too much of the 90s to really feel like I belong to the same generation as anyone born in the 90s.

So mostly I'm just confused.

Aedilred

2012-10-22, 03:06 AM

I'm not really an 80s kid, since I remember nothing from then, but I remember too much of the 90s to really feel like I belong to the same generation as anyone born in the 90s.

So mostly I'm just confused.
You see, this is the problem. Life and experiences don't just fall neatly into brackets. I was five when the Berlin Wall came down; I remember being sat in front of the TV and told this was Important. That's just about the first thing I remember from outside my own direct life experience. I remember all the other stuff Katana_Geldar mentioned, and also stuff like the wars in Yugoslavia, but mostly I remember the 90s, probably falsely, as an era of hope and innocence. The Cold War was over and we had nothing to be afraid of any more, at least until 9/11 brought a new kind of threat to our attention via our living rooms. Of course there were still wars going on, but our way of life was no longer directly under threat. I still can't work out whether it was ever actually the case in the West, or whether it was just the age that I was.

But I'm still old enough to remember a time before the internet; before even my parents had a mobile phone; before we had a computer in the house; when neapolitan ice cream still included a mint flavour; when "digital" was still a magic word; when it looked as though minidisc players were going to revolutionise the way we listened to music; when waterbeds were still the height of fashion. My memory of the 80s is largely second-hand (a lot of it was recycled during the 90s, of course) and my memory of the 70s is obviously completely nonexistent; but I'm not a millennial either.

I am a millennial. I am also an American. And I will say that I hope we do end it. In my opinion, I simply have no interest in it, and I think that this generation can move on to much more complex games.
This... depresses me. Destroying something just because you have no personal interest in it is a one-track route to cultural barbarism, even if your intentions are at least nominally philanthropic. It's a sad society that has no room for escapism. Besides, of all sports widely played, American football is one of the most tactically complex. If sports are to be exterminated on the basis of lack of complexity (which, to be honest, I find a rubbish measure on which to judge them) then gridiron should be one of the last to fall. Cricket might survive it, but even that's debatable.

GnomeFighter

2012-10-22, 03:48 AM

This... depresses me. Destroying something just because you have no personal interest in it is a one-track route to cultural barbarism, even if your intentions are at least nominally philanthropic. It's a sad society that has no room for escapism. Besides, of all sports widely played, American football is one of the most tactically complex. If sports are to be exterminated on the basis of lack of complexity (which, to be honest, I find a rubbish measure on which to judge them) then gridiron should be one of the last to fall. Cricket might survive it, but even that's debatable.

Cricket less complex than American football? T20 maybe, but a test match is like a 5 day game of chess. You call yourself british? Pah! (Ye, I'm a cricket fan :) )

Anyway, ye, people should live and let live. I don't see American football going anywhere soon, and this "this generation is rubbish" is utter nonsense. Personally I really hate it and think it has far more of an effect than any "no losers sports day", and I also think that even if they do actually exist in more than a few hyped up news papers they are probably less damaging than the past attitude of "your worthless if you don't win" and "trying is not good enough".

On the generation side, for me it has always been roughly defined as:

Generation Y don't remember a time without computers being everywhere.
Millennials don't remember a time without the internet.

Thats not to say they were not born before we had computers or internet, but that they do not remember a time when they were not able to get easy access to them.

That puts Generation Y starting between about 1980 and 1985 and Millennials around 1995. I was born in 1980 and I just about remember computers starting to come in to every home and school, by my brother born in 1983 always had access to computers at school.

Aedilred

2012-10-22, 03:58 AM

Cricket less complex than American football? T20 maybe, but a test match is like a 5 day game of chess. You call yourself british? Pah! (Ye, I'm a cricket fan :) )
Oh, I'm a huge cricket fan (Tests, principally, not hit-and-giggle). But the tactics of the game have never seemed to me to be that complex, even though the number of variables in play at any given time is enormous. American football, on the other hand... well, I just don't have a clue what's going on. Maybe it's just a question of familiarity.

GnomeFighter

2012-10-22, 04:12 AM

Eldan

2012-10-22, 04:21 AM

Look, eventually, we'll all play Blernsball anyway.

Hiro Protagonest

2012-10-22, 05:03 AM

I am a millennial. I am also an American. And I will say that I hope we do end it. In my opinion, I simply have no interest in it, and I think that this generation can move on to much more complex games. Maybe this is just all the International (great pudge hooks, Dendi!) and IPL I've watched, and all the other Esports I forgot talking, but I am hoping my generation carries this article through.

...

No.

I think American TV should get out of the sports rut and show a wider variety than football, basketball, and baseball being the only sports shown on non-sports channels, and being the majority of what's shown on sports channels with NASCAR and hockey as well.

But until we perfect simulation gaming and can send in teams of real people to fight in warfare, or the SCA can find the right balance between realism and safety, have less restrictive rules for archers and crossbowmen, and get people to actually learn how mass combat works, football stays.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-22, 07:03 AM

Aedilred

2012-10-22, 07:57 AM

Cricket is a very complex game, but subtle in its complexity with long stratagys playing out, much of it pre match with team selection, then in terms of bowler and fielder variation. It is a game of car and mouse with allot of levels. Take a look at the subtle shifts in the team as you reach different parts of the day. You will often see changes in aggression to throw batsmen off, or speeding up and slowing down of batting to put bowlers off there stride, or get the field to move round. It's subtle, and plays out over a long time, but its there.

I like to compare it to F1. You can enjoy the cars zooming round and think it is nothing more than going round in circles (or hitting a ball), but there is great hidden depths of subtle tactics going on.
Oh sure; I guess I just see a lot of the subtlety in cricket as being strategy rather than tactics per se.

I'm also yet to be wholly convinced of the effect that "good captaincy" (i.e. tactical application) actually has on the game. Everyone is in agreement that Stephen Fleming, for instance, was just about the best international captain of the last ten years, but it didn't seem to carry through into their performances. It was commonly claimed both that Michael Vaughan was a better captain than Strauss and that the class of 2005 was better than that of 2011, but Strauss's win/loss record was very similar (until this last series at least). In Australia, famously, each successive captain throughout the 90s-00s was considered to be a step down from the previous in terms of ability, but their win rates went up.

It just seems to me that on-field captaincy is a relatively insignificant factor in terms of winning games in comparison to the individual and collective ability of players. Occasionally you get a captain who is obviously so clueless or lackadaisical that the team is losing or drawing matches they could or should have won (*cough*MSDhoni*cough*) but those are rare, and I don't think I've ever seen a captain drag his team out of the mire with brilliant tactics (Ponting at Old Trafford 05, maybe, but that was more down to his implacable batting than any tactical nous).

Indeed, the captains with really impressive records tend to be those who had a weapon at their disposal that nobody else could match - such as Jardine (bodyline), Lloyd (express bowling quartets), Imran (reverse swing) or Bradman (the best eleven players hitherto to set foot on a cricket field).

None of which is, of course, to denigrate the game, which I love dearly!

KuReshtin

2012-10-22, 08:33 AM

There will always be competition in some form or another. It's just part of who we are.
even if that means that the competition is who's faster, stronger, can throw something the furthest or is part of a winning team, there will always be people wanting to compete, and therefore, I believe that American Football won't disappear because people are becoming less interested in beating up another person.
American Football is also one of the few team sports where you don't get as much segregation because of body type as a lot of other sports. in an American Football team, there is a place for the chubby kid who can't run very fast, as well as there being a place for the kid who can run fast and catch the ball that the kid who may not be very fast, but can chuck the ball downfield.

American Football was the only sport I ever felt comfortable being part of the team, and that the others in the team didn't judge me for being too short and too fat and too slow. And I believe that is another thing that will mean that American Football will survive as a sport.

Also, Eldan, as a side note, just because you haven't seen American Football in Australia doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's there, you just haven't looked in the right places.

INDYSTAR188

2012-10-22, 09:02 AM

Not that I'd miss football if it fell to the wayside, but if there's any american sport that bugs me, it's baseball. I just don't get it. Even golf makes more sense to me. Of course golf isn't an american sport, so it doesn't really fall into the same category as the other two.

I wouldn't either. My personal preference of sports is:

Pro Football
College Basketball
College Football
Pro Basketball
International Soccer
Pro Soccer

I find baseball incredibly boring. Going to games is fun-ish (beer, hot dogs, babes). But I find drunk super aggressive sports fan to be a huge hinderance in taking my daughter to games.

Eldan

2012-10-22, 09:45 AM

Also, Eldan, as a side note, just because you haven't seen American Football in Australia doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's there, you just haven't looked in the right places.

I'm not in Australia, though. Haven't been for, oh, three or four months. I just constantly forget to update my location tag.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-22, 10:35 AM

I wouldn't either. My personal preference of sports is:

Pro Football
College Basketball
College Football
Pro Basketball
International Soccer
Pro Soccer

I find baseball incredibly boring. Going to games is fun-ish (beer, hot dogs, babes). But I find drunk super aggressive sports fan to be a huge hinderance in taking my daughter to games.

There are only really two sports that draw my interest and only one of them is regularly televised.

MMA
Parkour/Freerunning.

Guess which one gets air-time. :smallwink:

PS: I'm making an assumption here because I've never seen it televised. If anybody knows of a parkour/freerunning show, I'd be very interested in giving it a look.

sktarq

2012-10-22, 01:05 PM

A few things. according to the various newspapers, market reviews, and economics books I read the millenials are variously placed at starting between 1980 and 1983 and ending at 1999. The internet seems to have a rather differing standard. I do not know why. It does seem that early memory and world awarness has more to do with "generation" than actual age of birth. I personally put the difference here in america if people remember the looming dread and fear of the MAD policy and the the pre AOL internet.

As for American Rules Football dying out. Possibly and very much so in my part of nation. Schools avoiding liability, growing popularity of soccer, rugby, etc. Less to do with violence than taste and fassion. Also a growing distate for the very rowdy fan antics assosiated with the NFL may be involved on a generational scale. But who knows

EDIT:Thinking on it one other things comes to mind that does seem at least partially generational. A lower tolerance for commercials interupting gameplay. I don't know if this is just the people I know but if true on a larger scale could drive people away from the this sport to others. . . But still little of the violence issue.

Aedilred

2012-10-22, 01:56 PM

Realistically, American football isn't likely to die out, although there might be a culture shift in which it loses some of its pre-eminence.

Over here, football (soccer) is far and away the biggest sport, with far bigger sums of money at stake, a much bigger fanbase, and a truly disproportionate amount of coverage compared to other sports. However, a hundred years or so ago, cricket was the most popular sport by some distance, and soccer was a relatively eccentric pastime.

It's also regional. In the UK, we have two competing codes of rugby football. Rugby league is more popular in the north, but is hardly played at all in the south. I gather that in Australia, AFL is dominant in some areas and league in others (union being the third-most popular football code, and they're still consistently one of the best teams in the world *grumble*).

The trick, I suppose, is for sport to embrace societal changes and adapt to them rather than try to stick them out. We've seen periodic changes in recent years to the rules in rugby union to make it less dangerous to players and more attractive to spectators. Cricket is currently undergoing a deeply controversial revolution to try to get more people to watch the game. Meanwhile, aside from a change about twenty years ago to make the game more about skill and less about skewering opposing players with your studs, soccer is firmly and increasingly impolitely refusing to change a thing, despite mounting evidence in some areas that the current situation isn't good enough. It'll be interesting to see if it pays the price for that.

Morph Bark

2012-10-22, 02:56 PM

I see some definitions are in order.

Americans name specific generations of families thus:

The Greatest Generation (born 1920-1945). So-called because these are the people who fought in World War 2. Not many of these left. The critical event marking this generation is that they remember WWII. Not many of these left.

The Baby Boom (Born 1945-1965). So-called because there was a massive birth spike when all the soldiers came back from the war, and the Baby Boom is the result. People of this generation remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also the Beatles , Woodstock, the Rolling Stones. The Civil Rights Movement. People of this age listened to old people rant about rock music and long hair.

This is the most important generation currently because they are more numerous than the succeeding generations, which are smaller. They also tend to be the people in the most important jobs.

Generation X (born 1965-1995) This generation was the children of the Baby Boom's youth. It is quite small, IIRC , because many baby boomers waited until much later to have children. People of this generation remember the Challenger Disaster, The Wall coming down in Europe, the events of 1989. Ronald Reagan. Guns & Roses. Duran Duran. Nirvana. The original My Little Pony, GI Joe, and Transformers. People of this age listened to old people rant about Dungeons and Dragons.

This is the generation I am from, born in 1971.

Millenials (also known as generation Y) (born 1995-??). These are the generation of my children if any of them had lived, and the children of the baby boom's maturity. It is larger because many boomers had to work through college, pay off their debts, and gain financial security before they really started having many kids.

These are the people who are currently going through high school and college. The events so far of their generation are the events of 9/11/2001, the wars of the first decade of the twenty-first century, and the current economic crisis. Not to mention my little pony remakes, Harry Potter, facebook, google. Old people rant about all of the above.

At any rate, that's what Americans mean when they use the word "millenial". I may not be using the definitions quite correctly, but I think they'll do well enough to get on with.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generations#List_of_generations), Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born from 1982 up to the early 2000s. (Probably because they became adults after the turn of the millennium is why they're called "Millenials".)

The generation after that, called Generation Z, starts from somewhere in the early 90s onwards. The definitions often seem to overlap somewhat, except for the Baby Boomers, which have a clearly defined beginning, and the Greatest and Silent Generations.

I don't know whether these are the generation definition the article you linked used, but considering that around now is the time that the early millennials (from 1982-1990 for instance) are having kids or have young kids growing up and steering them away from football (if they really are doing that, that is), it very well might be.

GnomeFighter

2012-10-22, 02:59 PM

Oh sure; I guess I just see a lot of the subtlety in cricket as being strategy rather than tactics per se.

I'm also yet to be wholly convinced of the effect that "good captaincy" (i.e. tactical application) actually has on the game.

Ah, I think we are working to slightly different meanings of the word "tactical"!

Getting in to the details of the meanings of each word I would argue cricket is more of a tactical game, relying on the ebb and flow and reacting, and american football a strategic game relying on set plays and pre planing. However, I don't know much about American Football.

As for the effect of captaincy I do think it dose have some effect, but the selectors have as big an effect, as the building of the right team, with the right synergy of batting pairs, infield groups of players, etc can have a huge effect. If the players are not gelling the captain can only do so much. However I do think that tactical changes, moving around fielders, using your bowling line up and bowlers using variation of line, length, spin, etc is what makes cricket. Contrast that to football (uk) where it is just about players out playing each other with, to me, very little tactics.

Were realy not helping the cliché that all we do in the UK is drink tea and watch cricket.

sktarq

2012-10-22, 03:20 PM

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generations#List_of_generations), Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born from 1982 up to the early 2000s. (Probably because they became adults after the turn of the millennium is why they're called "Millenials".)

The generation after that, called Generation Z, starts from somewhere in the early 90s onwards. The definitions often seem to overlap somewhat, except for the Baby Boomers, which have a clearly defined beginning, and the Greatest and Silent Generations.

So we seem to be of the agreement that the definitions of generation seems to be so blurry arbitrary etc as to have lost most conversational value.
Being born in late '81 I can certainly attest to idea that some kind a generational change happened around then but there seemed to be another about '89-90 and probably more since then. So have "generations" as a useful term sped up to every 5 or ten years instead of the 20 or so that was the common idea of the term previously?

Klose_the_Sith

2012-10-22, 04:22 PM

I gather that in Australia, AFL is dominant in some areas and league in others (union being the third-most popular football code, and they're still consistently one of the best teams in the world *grumble*).

Union is dominant in the Canberra area and the better-off parts of NSW/QLD. All the Super 14 club teams are doing very well, whereas a lot of the League club teams are desperately reliant on gambling revenue from owned clubs to stay afloat.

There are people who love their League, but it's the third code more than Union is.

KuReshtin

2012-10-22, 05:53 PM

I'm not in Australia, though. Haven't been for, oh, three or four months. I just constantly forget to update my location tag.

Fair enough. My comment still stands, though. There is a whole lot of American Football played in Switzerland as well.

THAC0

2012-10-22, 05:55 PM

There are some economic factors to football as well. Many places I have worked have been higher up on the socio-economic scale. Football was there, but not really more than any other sport.

Where I work now though? Football is god. You know why? In part, for a lot of these kids, they have no way out except through a sports scholarship and football is the most lucrative scholarship out there. I think they also field the largest teams.

Eldan

2012-10-23, 03:49 AM

Fair enough. My comment still stands, though. There is a whole lot of American Football played in Switzerland as well.

Is there? I knew a Rugby player in university, but I've never seen American Football. And I just ask a few people, most don't even know the difference, beyond "One's British, the other American".

KuReshtin

2012-10-23, 07:45 AM

Is there? I knew a Rugby player in university, but I've never seen American Football. And I just ask a few people, most don't even know the difference, beyond "One's British, the other American".

Problem with American Football in Europe is that it's still a niche sport in most countries, with only a few having national exposure (germany and Austria spring to mind).
However, it's played in a majority of European countries. Just no one knows about it.

Maelstrom

2012-10-23, 12:20 PM

Problem with American Football in Europe is that it's still a niche sport in most countries, with only a few having national exposure (germany and Austria spring to mind).
However, it's played in a majority of European countries. Just no one knows about it.

Quite a few teams in France I know of as well...one right here in Dijon. Of course the only reason I know about it is my fellow teammates thought it was amusing an American playing rugby in France rather than on the AmFoot team...

Morph Bark

2012-10-23, 12:57 PM

Is there? I knew a Rugby player in university, but I've never seen American Football. And I just ask a few people, most don't even know the difference, beyond "One's British, the other American".

Rugby is basically American Football without the padding. Or rather, American Football is rugby with padding. Rugby is known as "a thugs' sport played by gentlemen" in the UK, whereas football is known as "a gentlemen's sport played by thugs".

Maelstrom

2012-10-23, 01:52 PM

Rugby is basically American Football without the padding. Or rather, American Football is rugby with padding. Rugby is known as "a thugs' sport played by gentlemen" in the UK, whereas football is known as "a gentlemen's sport played by thugs".

Rugby is every *but* American football...yes, the shape of the ball is the same, the field is similiar, but that is about where it stops....

As for quotes, how about George Orwell's describing rugby as the equivalent of “war minus the shooting.” ;)

Aedilred

2012-10-23, 03:43 PM

Rugby is every *but* American football...yes, the shape of the ball is the same, the field is similiar, but that is about where it stops....
Yeah, they are very different games. Having said that, rugby (union) is becoming increasingly stop-start these days - but then that's considered a bug, not a feature.

Joran

2012-10-23, 04:24 PM

On the terminology question, I always considered myself Generation Y (or Why?) if you're being pithy and I was born in the early 1980's. I have reproduced successfully and am trying my best to raise a functional, productive member of society.

I am a football fan. I participate in a fantasy football league, have a subscription to RedZone, and thanks to the spawn, I can't watch as much football as I used to, I still get in an occasional game.

Now, that said, I'll have a son soon and I absolutely, will not allow him to play tackle football... pretty much ever. The research seems conclusive that football causes brain injuries and these brain injuries are severe. There are other sports out there that he can enjoy, but I'm drawing the line at sports like boxing, MMA, and football.

I have a friend, who is a diehard Steelers fan. She just told me that she can't in good conscience watch anymore football; that by doing so, she was contributing to a corporation that profits off of brain injury. I doubt many people will do this, but I think we as a society will eventually come to an uneasy truce like fans of boxing and MMA do.

Aedilred

2012-10-23, 06:39 PM

I have heard that the padding and helmets used in American football might actually be contributing to serious injury rather than preventing it. The construction of the armour is designed to protect against impact, but it can't protect as well against torsion, which is what causes a lot of the really nasty injuries. Moreover, the feeling of protection which it gives players causes them to run in harder than they otherwise would, and makes them hit harder when they do, increasing their risk to at least a corresponding level anyway. Rugby players by contrast develop better "natural" protection in muscle and fat which actually insulates them better against the sort of injuries they're running up against.

(I've also heard a not entirely dissimilar story about skiing helmets, which are all the rage now after the Natasha Richardson business. They do a reasonable job at protecting you from injury if you hit your head, but they decrease your awareness of the rest of the slope and make you more likely to crash in the first place. Also, it means that if you hit someone else, you're more likely to injure them. So although they might make a small difference to the number of fatal injuries on the slopes, they might actually be increasing the number of serious nonfatal injuries.)

(I have also also heard commentary from cricket afficionados about the way that helmets have changed play there - batsmen now seem less proficient at the hook shot, and wicketkeepers seem to be less preternaturally responsive when helmeted. Although all the commentators fully accept that it might just be rose-tinted goggles when looking at older players, and in cricket at least nobody disputes that helmets should stay. They are very definitely a Good Thing.)

I would be interested to see comparative stats for serious injuries in rugby and American football (and AFL, for that matter). Although you do get some nasty injuries in rugby and most players sustain a lot of cosmetic damage over the course of their careers (how players like Szarzewski manage to get away with such beautiful long hair I have no idea), it seems like nasty injuries are rarer. But that might just be an erroneous impression.

Joran

2012-10-23, 07:05 PM

I have heard that the padding and helmets used in American football might actually be contributing to serious injury rather than preventing it. The construction of the armour is designed to protect against impact, but it can't protect as well against torsion, which is what causes a lot of the really nasty injuries. Moreover, the feeling of protection which it gives players causes them to run in harder than they otherwise would, and makes them hit harder when they do, increasing their risk to at least a corresponding level anyway. Rugby players by contrast develop better "natural" protection in muscle and fat which actually insulates them better against the sort of injuries they're running up against.

The same commentary can be found in hockey. The armor that's supposed to protect the player -- shoulder pads, elbow pads (in hockey) and helmets (in football) -- are coated in hard plastic and can be used as weapons. There's some talk about coating those pads with a soft material to reduce the use of them as weapons, especially in hockey. Additionally, there are some helmets that have better padding, but as you said, they don't stop some of the forces that cause concussions.

The key difference between rugby and American football is that football has many more collisions at full speed with players going opposite directions. American football has many plays like passes, punts, and kick-offs where there's plenty of room for each player to get up to their maximum speed before plowing into each other. It's absolutely devastating, especially with the mass and strength of current day players.

P.S. At least we've improved since the days of Teddy Roosevelt. American football came to the brink of being banned because too many people were dying.

Aedilred

2012-10-23, 07:30 PM

Thanks to this thread I've just spent the last twenty minutes watching videos of Wilko, Tana Umaga and BOD.

I'm not exactly complaining.

KuReshtin

2012-10-24, 08:11 AM

The difference in the hits of Rugby and American Football were measured during an episode of Sports Science.
Yes, i know these tests obviously aren't 100% applicable to a regular game, but at least it gives a bit of insight in how things work.

Video here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7tGY-VDx3o)

Now, Rugby players have started wearing flak jackets under their shirts in the last few years, so the people claiming that rugby players don't use pads are slightly incorrect. not everyone uses them, but a lot do.

pendell

2012-10-24, 08:14 AM

I have a friend, who is a diehard Steelers fan. She just told me that she can't in good conscience watch anymore football; that by doing so, she was contributing to a corporation that profits off of brain injury. I doubt many people will do this, but I think we as a society will eventually come to an uneasy truce like fans of boxing and MMA do.

The question is, if we banned football, would people stop playing it?

I'm thinking of our experiment with Prohibition, when we effectively banned the sale of alcohol. The problem with opposing a basic, primal human drive is that it's going to be expressed somehow. If there is no legal football , perhaps there will be illegal football. Run by criminal gangs. With far fewer rules and 1000% more nastiness. Or perhaps ordinary people will find other ways to compete which are even nastier.

The argument I'm giving comes right out of "Unseen Academicals". They had banned Foot The Ball (European style, what we Americans call soccer), and the result is that people kept dying in illegal matches. Re-legalizing the sport meant that there could be referees and rules and safety precautions, thus striking a balance between impossible perfection and doing what people are going to do anyway. That's pretty much exactly what happened during real-life Prohibition as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

snoopy13a

2012-10-24, 10:50 AM

pendell

2012-10-24, 11:13 AM

If the NFL was banned, fans would be upset, but they'd get over it.

...

May I ask how you arrive at this conclusion? Because I'm scanning my internal database of football fans I have known, and "get over it" is not the most likely action I would expect from banning their most beloved sport, about which they are sometimes more passionate than about their wives.

Heck, now that I think about it, more so. It's not uncommon for men to go into their Man Cave on football day and completely ignore their wives, disregarding the fact that this neglect is costing them potential future mating opportunities. It is almost as if football has become, for the moment, more pleasurable than sexual intercourse.

I'm not exactly sure how such a sublimation occurs. The meatbag mind is a mystery to me. But regardless, a person that passionate about football seems unlikely to simply get over it. Because they've invested so much of their self identity in it.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Dimonite

2012-10-24, 11:25 AM

Coidzor

2012-10-24, 11:41 AM

...

May I ask how you arrive at this conclusion? Because I'm scanning my internal database of football fans I have known, and "get over it" is not the most likely action I would expect from banning their most beloved sport, about which they are sometimes more passionate than about their wives.

Heck, now that I think about it, more so. It's not uncommon for men to go into their Man Cave on football day and completely ignore their wives, disregarding the fact that this neglect is costing them potential future mating opportunities. It is almost as if football has become, for the moment, more pleasurable than sexual intercourse.

I'm not exactly sure how such a sublimation occurs. The meatbag mind is a mystery to me. But regardless, a person that passionate about football seems unlikely to simply get over it. Because they've invested so much of their self identity in it.

Honestly I figured all that was either a colossal joke or a trained and culturally expected form of mutual spousal abuse, sort of like how many suspect that PMS largely exists because we believe it's supposed to exist.

Also, isn't the idea of the article that these people are just going to grow old and die off and not be replaced with equivalent individuals? I rather doubt that there's going to be very many angry old geriatric men to begin with, statistically, and I don't see any reason to fear what they would be capable of, as the men who are in their 40s now aren't supposed to be reaping any immortality benefits or anti-aging therapy to enable them to have hale and hearty physical shells even as they become octogenarians. :smallconfused:

KuReshtin

2012-10-24, 12:30 PM

Yes, people would stop playing it. Not that many people play football as it is, and the vast majority of players stop after high school. Few play in college and a bare handful play post-college--either professionally (NFL, CFL, or Arena League) or in a semi-pro/amateur league. Banning football would not affect that many athletes. After all, most current football players understand that their playing days will likely end at the age of 17.

American adults have other sports to expend their competitive drive: pick-up basketball, beer-league softball, golf, tennis, raquetball, running, cycling, etc. We don't need football as an outlet because we have other sports to play. If the NFL was banned, fans would be upset, but they'd get over it. There are other sports to watch. Baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer would just pick up the slack.

In the US,there are about 1.2 million high school and college football players every year [source TMQ], and while that is significantly less than the amount of people playing Association football (soccer to our Trogland friends) worldwide, it's still quite a lot of people.
Ok, so most of those players won't keep playing after they leave college, or even high school, but I don't think people will stop playing it if it gets banned. After all, there are different versions of it that can be played without serious risk of personal injury, such as flag football, or just touch football.
The thing is, though, that I would bet that if only touch or flag football were allowed to be played, people would still progressively edge back towards full contact football, and then we'd be back where we are right now again.

Coidzor

2012-10-24, 02:11 PM

The thing is, though, that I would bet that if only touch or flag football were allowed to be played, people would still progressively edge back towards full contact football, and then we'd be back where we are right now again.

Not if the infrastructure was re-purposed and American demographic shifts continue to deepen ties with and support of Association Football.

Have the sport die down to basketball or (*shudder*) baseball levels of fandom, have association football continue to rise to prominence and either equal or exceed basketball, have the real die-hard football fans mostly be pensioners or deceased due to aging, have football get actually banned and the leagues dissolved and the infrastructure and money put in other places...

Probably would be able to claw its way up to about Roller Derby, maybe Hockey levels, but definitely wouldn't be able to reclaim its place in the sun from Basketball and Association Football if it had to deal with all of that.

Joran

2012-10-24, 02:34 PM

The question is, if we banned football, would people stop playing it?

I'm thinking of our experiment with Prohibition, when we effectively banned the sale of alcohol. The problem with opposing a basic, primal human drive is that it's going to be expressed somehow. If there is no legal football , perhaps there will be illegal football. Run by criminal gangs. With far fewer rules and 1000% more nastiness. Or perhaps ordinary people will find other ways to compete which are even nastier.

The argument I'm giving comes right out of "Unseen Academicals". They had banned Foot The Ball (European style, what we Americans call soccer), and the result is that people kept dying in illegal matches. Re-legalizing the sport meant that there could be referees and rules and safety precautions, thus striking a balance between impossible perfection and doing what people are going to do anyway. That's pretty much exactly what happened during real-life Prohibition as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I doubt very much there will be a ban of football. Boxing has a similar profile in terms of brain damage; after all, the point of boxing is to cause enough damage to someone's brain to disrupt their balance or knock them unconscious. Yet there are no bans in boxing and there's both Olympic boxing and prize fighting.

The tastes of society change as we migrate from sport to sport. The three biggest sports in the United States at the turn of the 20th century were boxing, baseball, and horse racing. 30 years ago, Bruce Jenner was a household name since he won the decathalon and was thought to be the best athlete in the world. Now, I bet you can't even name who won the last decathalon.

If football doesn't handle its concussion issue, either through rule changes -- Teddy Roosevelt helped institute the forward pass as a fix to all those football players dying -- or equipment changes, I think a few more people will feel the way my friend feels and attention will dissipate. Football is the most popular sport in America by far now, but there's nothing that says it must remain so.

P.S. Where in my post did you see a sentiment to ban football? Just wondering if it was a tangent, since my friend is BOYCOTTING football, not advocating it to be banned.

Maelstrom

2012-10-24, 03:37 PM

THAC0

2012-10-24, 04:46 PM

The thing is, though, that I would bet that if only touch or flag football were allowed to be played, people would still progressively edge back towards full contact football, and then we'd be back where we are right now again.

Actually, NPR talked about this yesterday, I think. Maybe a few days ago. Bottom line? If places only offer flag football, parents won't sign their kids up. They demand the full-contact. Which is crazy.

Erloas

2012-10-24, 04:50 PM

(I've also heard a not entirely dissimilar story about skiing helmets, which are all the rage now after the Natasha Richardson business. They do a reasonable job at protecting you from injury if you hit your head, but they decrease your awareness of the rest of the slope and make you more likely to crash in the first place. Also, it means that if you hit someone else, you're more likely to injure them. So although they might make a small difference to the number of fatal injuries on the slopes, they might actually be increasing the number of serious nonfatal injuries.)
Having started using a helmet when skiing last year, I can say that with a good fitting helmet it does very little to change your awareness of the people around you. About the only thing it would change is your ability to hear, which would also be the case if it were simply cold out and you wore a thicker hat.
If anything there might be a sampling bias. Right now helmet use isn't wide spread, but it is much more common in new skiers/snowboarders, especially younger people. They are also worn a lot by people that do dangerous stuff where they know there is a good chance something might happen.

I don't see football going anywhere any time soon. What I have seen quite a bit though is that most physical activities are becoming much more niche and less commonly done. You don't have as many kids casually riding bikes but the kids you do have riding bikes are doing the more extreme side of things. I see it a lot on the SCA too, general membership is down because "modern youth" are, on average, avoiding anything that seems like it might be exercise. Its not just the "nerds" now that aren't running or playing basketball or football. Unless you are "an athlete" you aren't going to be doing much physically active any more. There are however just as many "athlete" types around now as ever before and they are still the ones that are going to be in the NBA and NFL, etc. You're average kid in high school sports is never going to do anything in sports outside of high school. So you might loose a lot of the "average" kids playing at those levels, I doubt it will change much at all in the college and pro side of things.

Coidzor

2012-10-24, 05:09 PM

Having started using a helmet when skiing last year, I can say that with a good fitting helmet it does very little to change your awareness of the people around you. About the only thing it would change is your ability to hear, which would also be the case if it were simply cold out and you wore a thicker hat.
If anything there might be a sampling bias. Right now helmet use isn't wide spread, but it is much more common in new skiers/snowboarders, especially younger people. They are also worn a lot by people that do dangerous stuff where they know there is a good chance something might happen.

I don't see football going anywhere any time soon. What I have seen quite a bit though is that most physical activities are becoming much more niche and less commonly done. You don't have as many kids casually riding bikes but the kids you do have riding bikes are doing the more extreme side of things. I see it a lot on the SCA too, general membership is down because "modern youth" are, on average, avoiding anything that seems like it might be exercise. Its not just the "nerds" now that aren't running or playing basketball or football. Unless you are "an athlete" you aren't going to be doing much physically active any more. There are however just as many "athlete" types around now as ever before and they are still the ones that are going to be in the NBA and NFL, etc. You're average kid in high school sports is never going to do anything in sports outside of high school. So you might loose a lot of the "average" kids playing at those levels, I doubt it will change much at all in the college and pro side of things.

And part of that can be attributed to the industrialization of high school sports as a feeder program to college sports programs, where the only point in playing in High School is if one thinks one has an honest shot at a scholarship to cover or defray the cost of getting an education or to generate enough press to go professional. At least as much as the general laziness and apathy of modern youth towards working up a healthy sweat.

The Bushranger

2012-10-24, 05:14 PM

Football* isn't going away anytime soon. This is journalistic trolling.

* That other game in which a black-and-white ball is kicked around is and is only soccer. :smalltongue:

Erloas

2012-10-24, 05:32 PM

* That other game in which a black-and-white ball is kicked around is and is only soccer. :smalltongue:
To go on a complete tangent... I never understood why soccer is called football in so many other places. Especially a lot of Spanish speaking countries, considering that neither the word foot or ball translates to foot or ball in pretty much any other language. Its like they want to confuse the issue. Seeing as how foot is pie and ball is bola in Spanish and most South American countries speak either Spanish or Portuguese (pe bola).

Katana_Geldar

2012-10-24, 05:51 PM

...because you actually kick the ball along the ground with your foot?

Aedilred

2012-10-24, 06:33 PM

It's called "football" because that's the name under which it was introduced. The history of football is long and complicated but it's been around for centuries and most of the time the rules were pretty basic and boiled down to "get this ball over there". Sometimes entire towns would play. There are still places in the UK where this sort of old-fashioned football is played (although usually with less violence than previously). In Eton, for instance, they play not one but two types of non-standard football: the slightly eccentric Field Game, and the totally crazy Wall Game. Anyone familiar with P.G. Wodehouse may remember the excellent scene where Tuppy Glossop gets corralled into a local village's extraordinarily violent version of rugby. And so on.

Modern football games developed - mostly in Britain - in the 19th century as people began to codify them. There were all sorts of different codes, but the main ones were rugby football and association football, out of which in turn developed Gaelic football, Australian Rules football, and American football as well as a few others. Each of these has developed quite a bit from its 19th-century origins. The most popular variety in each area would come to be known by the generic name "football". Association football proved particularly popular globally. When introduced to this new game, a foreigner would presumably ask "what's this game" and receive the response "football". The etymology likely didn't come into it.

"Soccer", fwiw, is originally a British term, used to distinguish Association football from Rugby football (or "rugger") or indeed other codes. In fact I first heard the term "soccer" used by public schoolboys long before I realised it was the standard American term.

Ramza00

2012-10-24, 10:45 PM

Professional Football is not going to die because of protective parents, nor is it going to die due to some ban designed to protect the children.

This is how it is going to die.

1) We are seeing more and more evidence that brain trauma, even minor brain trauma (but over extended periods of time) leads to bad outcomes in the future. From lower intelligence to dementia, parkinsons, and alzheimers not in your 60s+ but in your 40s to 50s.
2) Due to the greater scientific evidence eventually some laywer is going to win a multiple million dollar verdict
3) High schools which are already cash strapped will see greater insurance costs due to having a high school football team. The need to have this insurance or else they are financial liable for what happens to their young students.
4) High schools will not allow football for they can't afford it
5) Besides changing the culture of football by not having your local school play it, less talent in the high school means less players going into college football.
6) Less players going into college football means less people going into the NFL

You destroy football by attacking its ability to recruit talent. By not having talented high school football students you are destroying NFL talent 10 years later.

Lawyers and Insurance are going to kill football, not some state legislature or pta moms.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-24, 10:58 PM

Ah lawyers. I look foward to the day we can hunt them openly.

Don't even get me started on those insurance racketeers.

Eldan

2012-10-25, 09:36 AM

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-25, 09:56 AM

If the NFL was banned, I'd go to Switzerland or something, because at that point the US has stopped caring about personal liberty. Oh, and it would completely screw over our economy. Basically, it's an entirely unfeasible situation.

A) I don't think the article in question was suggesting that any banning was to be done. Just that if the predicted decrease in interest (which may or may not be an accurate prediction) is as widespread as they think, that the NFL will die a natural death due to attrition.

B) I don't know how you missed it, but the US economy is already in the tank as it is. However, I really don't think the NFL is so tied up in the overall economy that it's death would have a tremendous negative impact. In fact, if we stop paying tens of millions of dollars for grown men to play a game once a week and put that money back into the economy in a more efficient manner, it might actually help turn things around instead of making it worse.

pendell

2012-10-25, 10:50 AM

Sort of a tangent, but in related generational news, millenials like to read more than their parents do (http://www.npr.org/2012/10/23/163414069/americas-facebook-generation-is-reading-strong). Evidently reading facebook and tweets encourages people to read other things as well.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Lady Tialait

2012-10-25, 11:18 AM

Yeah, the Generation definition doesn't really make a lot of sense. Mostly because it's redefined so often, and frequently to not allow for any real gaps.

For example if you look to Wikipedia, you can find that Millennials would have been born in 1980s. Millennials also being referred to as Generation Y. While Generation X being put back to the 60s and 70s. While those born in 2000 and beyond would be Generation Z (I'm sure it will be changed.)

As for the Millenials destroying American football, I call hogwash. I have heard this argument before in the late 80's claiming that Generation X would destroy American football in favor of Xtreme sports.

I also call hogwash because it's fun to say. Hogwash Hogwash Hogwash.....

Joran

2012-10-25, 11:50 AM

A) I don't think the article in question was suggesting that any banning was to be done. Just that if the predicted decrease in interest (which may or may not be an accurate prediction) is as widespread as they think, that the NFL will die a natural death due to attrition.

There are already signs of parents shying away from youth football:

Football Safety Concerns Affect Youth Leagues (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/football-safety-concerns-affect-youth-leagues-causing-nfl-to-take-notice/2012/10/24/b6a40dc2-1a13-11e2-ad4a-e5a958b60a1e_story.html).

"While USA Football, the sport’s national governing body, estimates 3 million children participate in youth football across the country, at least one study, conducted by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, a Silver Spring-based trade association, found an 11 percent decline in tackle football’s “core” participation the past three years."

Erloas

2012-10-25, 03:14 PM

B) I don't know how you missed it, but the US economy is already in the tank as it is. However, I really don't think the NFL is so tied up in the overall economy that it's death would have a tremendous negative impact. In fact, if we stop paying tens of millions of dollars for grown men to play a game once a week and put that money back into the economy in a more efficient manner, it might actually help turn things around instead of making it worse.
I think you are underestimating how wide spread the reach of the sports industry actually is. Football stadiums have a huge impact on land value in an area, a lot of shopping, dinning, and general entertainment businesses spring up around stadiums. While its true they would still exist without football, they do need some area to coalesce around and it is usually some other big draw, but it also helps those business be more profitable and less of a risk. And they bring in a fair amount of tourism, which brings in things like hotels.
On a local level they also employ a lot of people, not just the athletes and coaches, but a lot of other jobs like people working at merchandise and food booths, people taking care of the facilities. The constructor for the buildings in the first place and the continued work in and around the stadiums.

Then on the national side of things there is a lot of money in the broadcasting of the games, the ads during those broadcasts and even the distribution of it (its hard to not get ESPN because it carries NFL games, things like the NFL ticket on DirectTV and the various phone versions of about the same thing). Then you have the big events, like the Super Bowl, which is basically another holiday, it probably has more spending for parties then a lot of normal holidays.

As for what would happen with the wages paid to the athletes, you probably can't get a much better conduit for the money to circulate in the economy. Because that money is often spend rather quickly and on a very wide range of things. Consumer spending is the biggest driver to the economy as a whole and that is what they do. They also pay a lot of taxes, and its income earned in a way that usually hits the highest tax rates. There is also no way of taking that money, earned primarily from ticket sales and ad revenue (as paid to the NFL teams from the various TV/radio/print companies) and getting it into any "social improvements" types of projects directly.

Sports in general does a very good job of taking money from consumers and spreading it back into the economy and keeping the cycle going. It is also a service type of job and no resources are required to recirculate that money. It is essentially a "renewable resource" for stimulating the economy.

Renegade Paladin

2012-10-25, 07:27 PM

Coidzor

2012-10-25, 07:34 PM

Honestly if we could get rid of the idea of the boy's club it'd help with a lot of that and the other social ills that it brings.

INDYSTAR188

2012-10-25, 10:10 PM

Coidzor

2012-10-25, 10:13 PM

INDYSTAR188

2012-10-25, 10:42 PM

It already is, in part due to our changing demographics. Having that further tie with the rest of the world might even be a good thing. Maybe.

I think that they're going to have to get rid of the flops (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC-H2wXK4T4&feature=related)before most Americans will take it seriously. Personally, I really enjoy watching and playing soccer, but I can't ever talk about it to most of my sports fan friends because they just talk about how boring they find 1-0 games and orange slices.

Soras Teva Gee

2012-10-25, 11:15 PM

If you are too young to meaningfully remember the 80s, Reagan, and the end of the Cold War but old enough to meaningfully remember 9/11 you are a Millenial Generation representative. Because you were coming of age when the new millennium began. (And if you are still in high school right now you are the next generation, I'm betting on "iGeneration" winning out for your name)

And I think the article that started this might have a point before it tacks on nonsense philosophy. We the generation that coincide with the internet growth, cheap electronics, and cable television being normal had far more media options open to us then any previous generation. A lot of us probably didn't have to watch football with our parents if we didn't want to, we could go to another part of the house and turn on MTV or Nick or whatever. For that matter we're the first generation that grew up with soccer moms.

It only follows that we will have differing tastes in sports then previous generations, which could well create a sort of negative feedback effect on American football. First in decreasing the fanbase as a percentage of the population while the baby boomers age and say can't go to games anymore. Second over the longer term if we aren't carrying on football to our children where will the ground level interest come from, ergo where will the next generation of players come from?

Now yes there's always likely to be some interest, but I would point out that football is a pretty manpower and equipment heavy a sport. Would high-schools support it if its popularity waned?

Certainly not garunteed but I think the 21st Century is definitely asserting its own unique social-cultural paradigm, nothing should be considered invulnerable right now. Have to see in a few decades. This stuff takes time, the 20th Century can be said to have only begun as late as post-WWII, though just as fairly earlier then that.

snoopy13a

2012-10-25, 11:46 PM

A friend of mine compared America to the Roman Empire and said that Football was our gladiatorial sport.

I wonder if football were to somehow die out, what sport would replace it in our society? I think that maybe soccer would have a positive popularity growth spurt, which would make me happy.

The comparision of the USA to ancient Rome is cliche. Anyway, football can be easily replaced by baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer.

Ironically, soccer has quite a bit of brain injuries. Basically, from heading the ball and from collisions on the field. Out of all of American high school sports, girls soccer has the 2nd most concussions (football is first).

Ulm11

2012-10-25, 11:47 PM

Honestly if we could get rid of the idea of the boy's club it'd help with a lot of that and the other social ills that it brings.

What do you mean by getting rid of the boy's club?

snoopy13a

2012-10-25, 11:51 PM

What do you mean by getting rid of the boy's club?

Not sure. But as someone who played football in high school I'm wondering...

Coidzor

2012-10-26, 05:14 AM

What do you mean by getting rid of the boy's club?

The culture of unnecessary and harmful machismo. The thing that tells people to push children to perform when they're already injured so that they cripple themselves for life for the amusement of old men who are overly emotionally invested in some abstract idea of their own youth that requires such things to be fulfilled.

Ulm11

2012-10-26, 07:55 AM

pendell

2012-10-26, 08:23 AM

The culture of unnecessary and harmful machismo. The thing that tells people to push children to perform when they're already injured so that they cripple themselves for life for the amusement of old men who are overly emotionally invested in some abstract idea of their own youth that requires such things to be fulfilled.

I'm not sure this is entirely fair. I'm not quite sure what kind of axiom it is, but it seems to me much sports and military basic training is based around the idea that humans are often capable of a lot more than they believe themselves capable of, if they can only get past the initial discomfort of pushing outside their standard tolerances.

I'm speaking a bit out of turn here, but I suspect that anytime you do something with your body above your normal , it's going to hurt. But if you've correctly calibrated the amount of effort, eventually it becomes the new normal. And now you're ready for pushing to a greater height.

It's not a bad way of learning how to achieve things. And it's a lesson that has ramifications far outside the range of athletics.

I also think that the lesson that you can persevere and press on in spite of difficulty and in spite of pain, to master your body and make it the slave of your mind, is ALSO a valuable lesson.

There is such a thing as overtraining (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining). And there is such a thing as medical conditions brought on by too much stress. But I think that what you're proposing is a cure worse than the disease: To set up a situation where children are trained never to attempt anything if it hurts, never to challenge their assumptions or their expectations. Never learning that they are a lot more capable than even they give themselves credit for.

If we're going to teach kids that SOME pain is a necessary precursor to achievement, that means there are going to be medical cases when we wrongly calibrate what is expected and someone gets hurt. I believe , so long as these do not occur with great frequency, that we should consider this acceptable losses. The alternative of a society where we train children to avoid anything even slightly uncomfortable, painful, or dangerous has far worse implications. In my view.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Coidzor

2012-10-26, 10:19 AM

I'm not sure this is entirely fair. I'm not quite sure what kind of axiom it is, but it seems to me much sports and military basic training is based around the idea that humans are often capable of a lot more than they believe themselves capable of, if they can only get past the initial discomfort of pushing outside their standard tolerances.

I'm speaking a bit out of turn here, but I suspect that anytime you do something with your body above your normal , it's going to hurt. But if you've correctly calibrated the amount of effort, eventually it becomes the new normal. And now you're ready for pushing to a greater height.

It's not a bad way of learning how to achieve things. And it's a lesson that has ramifications far outside the range of athletics.

I also think that the lesson that you can persevere and press on in spite of difficulty and in spite of pain, to master your body and make it the slave of your mind, is ALSO a valuable lesson.

There is such a thing as overtraining (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining). And there is such a thing as medical conditions brought on by too much stress. But I think that what you're proposing is a cure worse than the disease: To set up a situation where children are trained never to attempt anything if it hurts, never to challenge their assumptions or their expectations. Never learning that they are a lot more capable than even they give themselves credit for.

If we're going to teach kids that SOME pain is a necessary precursor to achievement, that means there are going to be medical cases when we wrongly calibrate what is expected and someone gets hurt. I believe , so long as these do not occur with great frequency, that we should consider this acceptable losses. The alternative of a society where we train children to avoid anything even slightly uncomfortable, painful, or dangerous has far worse implications. In my view.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I'm talking about not properly treating repetitive stress injuries and turning sprains into torn ligaments that will never heal properly even after thousands of dollars are put into them.

Not a little bit of pain because exercise can lead to sore muscles. :smallannoyed:

Yes, that's intersecting with healthcare so it can't bear the sole blame for it, but the system as I've seen it and experienced its treatment of those I care about leaves a lot to be desired and takes the wrongheaded view that all pain and injury are good things more often than not until a player is forced to be sidelined because they're crippled or some official twists their arm.

Maybe it's changed dramatically in the half decade since I stopped having anything to do with it though.

One of the prime reasons boy's keep on playing sports is that they are one of the few places left that create a sense of achievement and camaraderie as sports, and outside of Football the only sport I know of that allows everybody to play according to their own ability and body type is Rugby.

What's that got to do with what I said though? The "boys club" here is being used to both represent the excesses and lack of policing and checks on said excesses as well as the culture when it gets into outright abuse and crime. Didn't particularly want to discuss those last two directly though.

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-26, 10:31 AM

I'm talking about not properly treating repetitive stress injuries and turning sprains into torn ligaments that will never heal properly even after thousands of dollars are put into them.

Not a little bit of pain because exercise can lead to sore muscles. :smallannoyed:

Yes, that's intersecting with healthcare so it can't bear the sole blame for it, but the system as I've seen it and experienced its treatment of those I care about leaves a lot to be desired and takes the wrongheaded view that all pain and injury are good things more often than not until a player is forced to be sidelined because they're crippled or some official twists their arm.

Maybe it's changed dramatically in the half decade since I stopped having anything to do with it though.

What's that got to do with what I said though? The "boys club" here is being used to both represent the excesses and lack of policing and checks on said excesses as well as the culture when it gets into outright abuse and crime. Didn't particularly want to discuss those last two directly though.

This confirms my suspicion that your opinion on the matter is colored by bias.

You've had a bad experience with one football program and are assuming that's how things are done in all football programs.

I don't blame you for having such a bias. I know I go absolutely bat-sh*t (forgive the colorful language) if anyone brings harm to a member of my family, and I can seriously hold a grudge, but pushing a biased opinion on others rarely ends well.

Coidzor

2012-10-26, 11:33 AM

This confirms my suspicion that your opinion on the matter is colored by bias.

You've had a bad experience with one football program and are assuming that's how things are done in all football programs.

I don't blame you for having such a bias. I know I go absolutely bat-sh*t (forgive the colorful language) if anyone brings harm to a member of my family, and I can seriously hold a grudge, but pushing a biased opinion on others rarely ends well.

I've collected bad experiences with many sports programs in several different states, not just football. I saw it in the various sex scandals in the past decade from the highschool to college to professional level. :smalltongue:

I'm not that much of a shut-in that I've only known people at one single school.

I'm thinking there's some kind of continued fundamental misunderstanding here of what you think I'm pushing on anyone.

edit: I'd like an end to corruption, tolerance of corruption, and the reasons people tolerate corruption (winning at all costs extended beyond the rules and the playing field, mostly, a sort of dark twist or mirror to the art of war or kobayashi maru) because getting rid of that blight would make it more balanced and able to care about the players.

Is it even possible? Probably not. Would it ever be attempted? No, never. I still see getting rid of it as a good move though.

And I'm frankly confused, because I must admit I've never run into the idea of a "boy's club" as good or even neutral thing, not even in the Little Rascals.

Edit2: So, to hopefully clear up a bit of my earlier verbal missteps, I see cheating, abusing/disregarding the health of the players, and the culture of shielding wrongdoers from justice as all arising from a common group of sources. I acknowledge that, yes, I may be overly generous in the overlap I'm allowing, but well, this isn't a subject especially near and dear to my heart or anything so I didn't have a prepared segment. Well, ok, my seething hatred of corruption and abuse of authority is near and dear to my heart.

Starbuck_II

2012-10-26, 12:07 PM

At least, that's the contention of this article (http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2012/1019/Millennial-generation-could-kill-the-NFL/(page)/2)

So NFL taken over by NTFL (National Tag Football League)?

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-26, 01:08 PM

I've collected bad experiences with many sports programs in several different states, not just football. I saw it in the various sex scandals in the past decade from the highschool to college to professional level. :smalltongue:

I'm not that much of a shut-in that I've only known people at one single school.

I'm thinking there's some kind of continued fundamental misunderstanding here of what you think I'm pushing on anyone.

edit: I'd like an end to corruption, tolerance of corruption, and the reasons people tolerate corruption (winning at all costs extended beyond the rules and the playing field, mostly, a sort of dark twist or mirror to the art of war or kobayashi maru) because getting rid of that blight would make it more balanced and able to care about the players.

Is it even possible? Probably not. Would it ever be attempted? No, never. I still see getting rid of it as a good move though.

And I'm frankly confused, because I must admit I've never run into the idea of a "boy's club" as good or even neutral thing, not even in the Little Rascals.

Edit2: So, to hopefully clear up a bit of my earlier verbal missteps, I see cheating, abusing/disregarding the health of the players, and the culture of shielding wrongdoers from justice as all arising from a common group of sources. I acknowledge that, yes, I may be overly generous in the overlap I'm allowing, but well, this isn't a subject especially near and dear to my heart or anything so I didn't have a prepared segment. Well, ok, my seething hatred of corruption and abuse of authority is near and dear to my heart.

See now, all that goes way beyond just football. Those are definitely things that need to be watched for and prevented, but abolishing any one sport isn't going to accomplish jack. Abolishing all sports isn't really a viable option either. Competition is part of human nature, and sports give people that feel that part of their nature more keenly than others a controlled, and relatively safe outlet.

Unfortunately, as long as competition is part of our nature, there will be people willing to go to any lengths to win. That's where your corruption comes from. Ultimately the only way to stamp out corruption completely is to have no rules to circumvent. I think we can all agree that's a bad idea.

Coidzor

2012-10-26, 01:13 PM

See now, all that goes way beyond just football. Those are definitely things that need to be watched for and prevented, but abolishing any one sport isn't going to accomplish jack. Abolishing all sports isn't really a viable option either. Competition is part of human nature, and sports give people that feel that part of their nature more keenly than others a controlled, and relatively safe outlet.

Well then you're thinking I'm arguing something that I was never arguing. The closest I got to that was casting doubts on whether Football would be able to become the number 1 american sport again after having been banned in a hypothetical scenario. :smalltongue:

And, really, it's quite possible that Association Football will become number one in time anyway.

Unfortunately, as long as competition is part of our nature, there will be people willing to go to any lengths to win. That's where your corruption comes from. Ultimately the only way to stamp out corruption completely is to have no rules to circumvent. I think we can all agree that's a bad idea.

Actual punishment, consequences, and efforts against it certainly wouldn't make things worse though. :smalltongue:

Kelb_Panthera

2012-10-26, 01:32 PM

Well then you're thinking I'm arguing something that I was never arguing. The closest I got to that was casting doubts on whether Football would be able to become the number 1 american sport again after having been banned in a hypothetical scenario. :smalltongue:

And, really, it's quite possible that Association Football will become number one in time anyway.
In that case, I apologize for mistaking you sir.

Actual punishment, consequences, and efforts against it certainly wouldn't make things worse though. :smalltongue:

Agreed.

pendell

2012-10-26, 04:36 PM

*Ponders a world without football, and visualizes a possible future as follows:*

Rule #1: You do not talk about football club.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

INDYSTAR188

2012-10-26, 08:53 PM

In regards to the popularity of sports in America I would like to compare the crappy Thursday Night Football (http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/10/26/thursday-cable-ratings-thursday-night-football-wins-night-jersey-shore-gold-rush-the-daily-show-its-always-sunny-in-philadelphia-more/154820/) game yesterday (Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs Minnesota Vikings) to the ongoing 2013 World Series (http://www.bostonherald.com/business/media/view/20121026world_series_game_2_draws_record-low_rating/srvc=home&position=recent) (San Francisco Giants vs Detroit Tigers) and also a typical 'game of the week' MLS game (http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2012/10/08/mls-drawing-66452-in-seattle-is-great-but-tv-ratings-remain-abysmal/) (they did have an impressive 66,000 fans in attendance).

So, the NFL on a night full of other stuff to watch still did almost as good as the World Series. I myself am a big MLS fan (I support the Portland Timbers!) but (to me) it feels like a niche sport here. It's cool to go to and you might even have a circle of friends who are all big into it, but you cannot get it regularly on tv and it gets almost no national sports coverage. The point I'm trying to make is that we're a very long way off from anything coming close to being as popular as the NFL.

*Interesting fun fact though... the MLS has a better game attendance average than the NBA or the NHL.

Aedilred

2012-10-26, 08:59 PM

*Interesting fun fact though... the MLS has a better game attendance average than the NBA or the NHL.
That is probably at least in part because indoor arenas will have a smaller average crowd capacity than a football/soccer stadium.

McStabbington

2012-10-26, 09:56 PM

Two points of order. First, the article doesn't say the problem is Millenials. It says that the parents of Millenials won't let their children play, which disrupts the feeding system. The parents of Millenials tend to be younger members of Generation X (appx. 1964-1982) and the older members of Generation Y (appx. 1982-2001).

Second, while the NFL would certainly like you believe that more and better equipment can fix the problem, that's really not the solution, because in the immortal words of Scotty, ya canna change the laws of physics. Basically, the problem is Newton's First Law of Motion: when you stop a body by colliding with it, as most tackles do, you don't stop the brain from continuing its momentum. What stops it is the skull. Most of the research being done now shows that most of the damage is being done by repetitive, sub-concussive brain trauma, which is what happens when you get hit over and over and over again, forcing your brain to bang into the skull over and over and over. Which is terrifying for the NFL, because a) there is no equipment that can slow a brain's momentum inside the brain case, b) current health measures are geared entirely towards getting people out of the game once they've suffered a concussion rather than dealing with sub-concussive trauma, and c) the only real way to deal with it would be to limit snap counts for players, which means either shortening games or vastly increasing team sizes and thereby cutting into their profit margins.

Having said that, I think the story is true but the use of generational language is just to increase page views. Right now the NFL is probably one of the two or three most-viewed and most-profitable professional sports organizations on the planet. But at the turn of last century, you could easily have said the same thing about professional boxing, and in 1940 you could have said the same thing about Major League Baseball. Disrupting the feeder system would have a huge impact on the quality of athlete the NFL could get access to, which in turns greatly impacts the level of play and the level of product. But being a member of Generation X or Y has nothing to do with it.