Middle class abandoning football

If the NFL fails to entertain it will lose popularity and market share until it entertains once again.

College-wise, football and to a lesser extent basketball pay the bills. Most FBS schools lose money on their athletic departments. Think of the red ink if these athletic departments lose their primary source of income. Not to mention the 85 male student-athlete scholarships lost. Which 85 female student-athlete scholarships will be cut per Title IX rules?

The NFL has serious problems but until they start losing money not much will change. Do your kids watch the NFL?

after reading that I remembered why I don't read most opinion pieces. I'm so sick and tired of hot takes.

Does this mean we can get the NCAA Football video game back? Asking for me.

If your son isn't cut out for high school football, there's always cross county!

I have three boys. They are age 33, 31 and 28. Despite my best efforts none of them are interested in football. They all played soccer when younger and have since moved on to other sports. Very little interest in team sports. Sad. All they seem to enjoy is that Michigan football 13 times each year makes their otherwise taciturn and buttoned down father go nuts. They watch from a distance in a bemused manner.

Millennials are more interested in soccer over football. Probably due to the helicopter parents.

Why in the world does anyone need full-pad tackle football before high school?  Why not just play flag or 2-hand touch with no pads or helmets?  You'll have more participation and less injury and still learn a lot of the skills.  Youth football always seemed like a parental thing to me.  Nervous dads pacing the sideline?  Geez come on.  

What is strange to me is how this narrative floats around at the same time kids are being scouted in elementary school and there are national tournaments and coaches dedicated to mechanics, nutrition, strength, etc. through more camps and private training than has ever existed before. The most recent piece I read with it cited a town in New Jersey with an influx of Indian families in the schools spelling the demise of their high school football program.

Meanwhile, IMG has yearly roster turnover of NFL talent and hasn't lost in three years while playing some of the best competition in the country and grandmothers are commissioners in fantasy leagues. 

Football is an event.  It is bigger then a sport.  In this sense, it is just like soccer.  Yes, it is violent.  Yes, like posters here have stated: it needs to change.  It badly needs to get to a level of parity with other sports like hockey or lacrosse in terms of bad injury rate or even rate of concussion / etc.  How it does this is up to people hopefully smarter then me.  I love the game but I do really hate to see players carted off. The NFL is beyond idiotic and should've expanded their rosters 20 years ago.  Do people realize only something like 47 guys even dress for NFL games? It is greed and idiocy plain and simple.  NFL is sewing its own seeds of destruction there. 

What people on the outside, the football haters, the baseball purists, the basketball jonesers forget to realize is: football, like soccer, is an event.  A popular, once-in-a-week event! 

Outside of the NBA finals or the NBA playoffs (with my team - the Wizards), I really don't care at all about NBA games.  They are a dime a dozen.  They happen literally every night.  82 games a year.  Blah.

Baseball has a game almost every night.  Nobody cares!  It isn't an event! There's no suspense.  So, your team lost 6 out of 7?  Oh no!  They just have 100 more games left to play.  Playoff baseball is the only time it MATTERS.  Baseball is just too long of a season to ever be something I'll get hyped for.  And if my team isn't in the World Series?  Forget about it. 

Football is an event, just like champions league soccer, just like boxing.  There is a specific time, date and place for Michigan football.  It only happens 12-13 or 14 weekends a year!  It is special.  You can plan parties around it and spark up the tailgate and have a great time.  It is a community and family event.  I'll always cherish and love football memories and events and I hope the game continues evolving but never changes its once-a-week scheduling nor tailgate scene. 

I can't believe this thread. Must be a record for most total votes both up and down

It seems to me that the sport has focused on the equipment rather than the players (apart from the manner of tackling, etc.). To me, this misses the point. You're not going to limit damage to the brain over the long term by adding a centimeter or two of material in the helmet (nor by taking it away altogether, for that matter). What if, instead, the mass of individual players was capped? Heresy, you say? Everything in football has a limit - so why not the size of players? That reduces the kinetic energy and momentum the players create by their movement. What if linemen were limited to - say - 250 lbs? Technique would become everything to the game; more so than it is now, because a lineman couldn't count on a size advantage.

I'd say it was football that abandoned the middle class.

OP, not understand how a social economical class is abandoning football. I read reasons why the game may be unsafe, but don't understand how it's income related. Can some explain how money has to do with football risk ?

I coach high school football and have for the past 9 years. I am not the end all be all by any means, but here's what I have come to believe:

1. Football is safer than it's ever been. The MHSAA is creating rules that eliminate a lot of the serious collisions, and the sport is better for it. Coaches are emphasizing tackling the right way, even if it is not as explosive or as effective as tackling has been taught in the past. 

2. The research into CTE is totally slanted. I'm not saying it doesn't exist (that would be dumb). The most recent study that got all the headlines was from a large group of people who were already experiencing symptoms and had concerns. Of course there's going to be a high percentage of the brains studied showing CTE. What I really want to see is the brain of a regular guy, who played football through high school.

3.Youth football offers no athletic advantage. 8 year olds tackling each other doesn't make them better football players when they're in middle or high school. Have your son play flag football or soccer when they're young; I think those will help overall athleticism more than trying to run around in pads that weigh as much as your son. 

4. Football is still, and always will be, a great sport that I think is invaluable in building young men. I know that I haven't invested as much time in other sports as I have football, but I have seen the impact that it has had on countless kids. It's not the only thing that will help your son grow and mature into a respectable man, but I believe it's one of the best. 

The Lyons Tigers? Seriously?

I've enjoyed skipping thru the opinions and reading the memes. Can't keep track of the sides anyway. All I know is I am middle class, and I will never stop watching football. So at least there will be one.

I wonder why I never here of CTE studies say, soccer players from heading the ball for example.

clickbait by an uninformed "journalist"