But it's the players that are protesting. Is the suggestion that ESPN should be ignoring it, or refusing to broadcast it? Because that seems counterproductive for everyone involved.
They link out to it aggressively from the homepage of espn.com.
It is a very strong SJW site that I often find cringeworthy.
Here is a story from today: http://theundefeated.com/allday/daily-dose-102816/
"Did you know that not all black people live in the inner city? Did you know that not all inner cities are ghettos? Did you know that conflating all three of these things contributes to a harmful mindset that causes many Americans and others across the globe to believe that people of color aren’t even aware enough of their own condition to be given agency of themselves in larger society? Oh, you didn’t? Well, now you do. On Thursday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proved that all of what I just said, is news to him."
I find this type of messaging across all of ESPNs platforms these days, and I can see how it turns off many subscribers.
There was a really interesting dynamic between ESPN's highly rated "barber-shop" sports talkshow, "First Take" between Stephen A. Smith (SAS) and Skip Bayless (Skip aka. Master Troll) where they talk about NFL/NBA/MLB etc and a lot of sports-fandom controversies were made from this (e.g., the chosen one became the frozen one, Tebowmania).
My very blunt take and very racial take is that SAS kind of represented the Black urban side of sports if you will, the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton figure, the black preacher who calls out social injustices as embodied in the sports arena (e.g., Kobe should get his money despite crimping his team as the white owners get their money) or also calls out the hypocrisies in his own community (black athletes getting suspended due to drug testing). SAS usually touts players who are proven super-stars, shoots too much in games, score big or miss big, who are ultra-athletic.
Skip if you will represented the white man from Oklahoma City prefers more team-oriented play (San Antonio Spurs) and players who aren't necessarily the most athletic but have the "it character," modesty, God-fearing and Skip's clutch-gene (Tim Tebow) and revels in the downfall of players who are touted for their athleticism but whom he thinks lacks so-called "character" (LeBron James lacks the clutch gene).
The two battled it out, in my opinion, the identity politics of the Left Coast (SAS) vs. the sensibilities of the Flyover Country/South (Skip) as embodied in the sports arena. It made for a really compelling TV show for entertainment.
Recently however, Skip left the show to join Fox Sports Network. His white replacement, Max Kellerman is no longer an antagonist against the other side but more supports the identity politics of SAS (e.g., basically just nodding along in the whole Kaepernick not standing during anthem). This made the show extremely boring IMO and no longer compelling TV.
My take might sound extremely contrived and racist if you haven't watched the show. But IMHO, the elements are all there and the producers/hosts are very careful to coast up to the edge of right sensibility of PC while still boosting the controversies and ratings. I'd love for other watchers of the old First Take to comment if they disagree or have other takes.
And finally why you'd care about the dynamics of a popular sports talk-show if you're not a sports fan - like art imitating life and life imitating art back, politics as represented in the current US election cycle is IMHO a spectacle imitating popular sports culture, and the opposing party nominee of your party is the rival team of your division, the heel, the against team of your sports bet staked with your political identity. Perhaps for the League, the owners of the teams sitting in the owners box ultimately isn't who wins on the field but the constant tout in the media so that the fans in the stand are fanned to keep buying in.
Nothing at all is wrong with that. If ESPN, NFL, et al. feel the need to implode their white guy safe space and destroy their own finances in the process, well, it's a free country. I'm good with it. It will also serve to pull some of these people out of the la-la land they live in and face the reality of the hate filled grievance mongers they're surrounded by and have been studiously ignoring all their lives. I see that as a big win. So yes, please continue; fill every game and all the space in between with lectures and --- most importantly --- continue pretending the collapse of NFL revenue has nothing to do with it.
Some have argued that this is really about cord cutting and nothing to do with the intrusion of political controversy. That is badly naive. Watch a Trump rally some time. Call it cultural interest or whatever. Note the thousands of people yelling "CNN sucks! CNN sucks! CNN sucks!" No, it's not really about the Cable News Network specifically; they have the entire MSM in mind, including Hollywood, all cable news and --- now --- professional sports, the only remaining reason they had to justify their $100+/month cable bill. It's exactly the same demographic; some are just a bit ahead of the curve.
The rest will follow.
40% is a polling number of likely Trump voters which means about 16% of the U.S. population will vote for him and some of them maybe think Trump is a racist.
I think his numerous, recurring, overtly and thinly veiled racist remarks may play a role.
Showing that Kaepernick is a dumbass and a hypocrite. [1] And that's what parent meant. It's a play to get extra 15 minutes of fame that modern media provides, because it has an extra narrative for this kind of content.
So black people are not oppressed in America because some are allowed to play football? Not convincing.
Imagine if that were white Trump supporters, media would be trembling from justice calls.
This is the flip-side of your logic coin. See how that works? Is this the kind of discourse we want on hacker news?
http://www.espn.com/espys/2015/story/_/id/13264599/caitlyn-j...
are going to be poorly received by a number of ESPN's (previously) core demographics.
ISTM people who don't watch much sports think that NBC's Olympic coverage is typical sports coverage. Jenner would fit right into that execrable human-interest pablum, but actual sports fans who watch lots of sports can't stand it.
This is an example of telling half-truths. Jesus spoke truth. He condemned sin. He specifically confirmed the Creation order of male and female. If Jesus were here today, he would have compassion for those who do not understand their gender, but he would not endorse enabling their confusion. In fact, his greatest criticism on the issue would be directed at those in power and authority who encourage people to deny the reality of their physical bodies and try to become something they cannot, just as he warned against causing others to stumble.
Putting Jenner on the front page of your anything is going to be wildly controversial and upsetting / offensive to a good chunk of people. This just a fact not a moral statement.
I'd suggest this 'social' issue may possibly be at least one of the factors in the decline, it would be difficult to prove, nevertheless, it's a perfectly reasonable speculation. Americans do protest with their wallets.
It'd be nice to see some time-based data for their decline - overlaid with cable cutting trends.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2016/10/05/confirmed...
The NFL product hasn't changed that dramatically this season, and last season was an all-time record. That's not to say that the product itself isn't contributing to the decline, or to dismiss demographic shifts mentioned in a sibling comment, but rather to note that dismissing the ongoing culture-war element out of hand is foolish.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/nfl-executives-blame-confluence-...
did you hit your wife? 1 game unless the public starts getting more angry about it.
smoke weed? 6 game suspension. no no, make that 8 games. or drop 20 spots in the draft.
celebrate on a touchdown? flag and a $20k fine later.
deflating some footballs in which your team was already punished for doing so but you destroyed your cell phone and now you're making me look dumb? 4 games.
all of this and the huge cte stuff the nfl wishes would go away has turned me off to watching any kind of football at all.
so... maybe the protests? i bet a large majority of those polled still watch the nfl anyways, even as i sometimes do despite my frustrations. i know a lot of fans who don't give a shit about any of the above. they just want their team to WIN.
but the fact of the matter is, the nfl product is terrible this season. it's just not very interesting at all unless you're one of the 5-1 teams
Those are the 2 reasons I and a lot of the people I talk to have stopped watching. Subpar product on field has never been discussed. The quality of play seems he same as it has any other year (from some highlights I've seen... but I haven't watched a game so I guess I wouldn't know).
The puritans were virtue-signallers par excellance, so that probably also flows through to what you see today.
That's the symbolism they are invoking when they kneel! They do not want to show a solidarity that they do not believe exists. That people would give up watching football over it sort of supports their side of the argument.
The short answer for why it is still played is "tradition". There's a lot of things in a lot societies that are "weird" for the same reason.
This seems a lot more fun to me than the current (awkward) practice of standing there trying to look more serious than the guy next to you, hand over heart, while some ostentatious diva who lost the last Eurovision contest belts out yet another over-dramatized and over-personalized performance.
The current incarnation of this tradition needs to die for aesthetic reasons, if not political ones.
Is it a catch? This seems to change every week.
No more hits: It's good for players' health, but maybe the players should change their style of play and not go up for that super high pass across the middle and show some self-preservation rather than penalizing a defender.
Reviews: this can be reviewed but this cannot. Why? If the ultimate goal is to get it right, everything should be reviewable.
Officiating: Tumbled to terrible quality recently. Even the league, which is loathe to criticize its officials, has admitted that officials have screwed up that changed the outcome of several games. This is historically bad.
Games in far off lands: This needs to end. Now.
Preseason: Stop making ticketholders buy these worthless games. Should be 2 preseason games. NFL doesn't make the networks carry preseason games, why should season ticketholders foot the bill?
Teams moving around for money: Talk about fan alienation.
I'd be interested in knowing how these sorts of stunts play out in a more macro sense. As a whole, it may be a net profit for the NFL, but I wonder if it's more of a medium-term win.
The big problem is that a lot of star players were injured at the beginning of the season - Brady, Romo, Dez Bryant, JJ Watt, RG III, Adrian Peterson, etc. Just so many injuries this year.
And we have millennials doing a lot more online games, so we have that competition now.
Here's one: https://www.google.com/amp/www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/poll-m...
But yea, I'm sure it's seems like it wouldn't matter.... to people still watching.
The audience wants their stars.
I can see how mismanagement can influence it but ai wpuld love to hear of occurences
There is also rampant team mismanagement. The best teams in the NFL are the best teams in the NFL largely because they have competent, stable front offices and coaching staffs. Hitting on a good quarterback also helps, but isn't necessarily the key, as great quarterbacks in shitty systems can't surmount that handicap by themselves. Some teams shuffle their management every other year, routinely overpay for players, leaving gaping holes in their rosters in other areas, constantly trade away valuable draft picks for over-the-hill veterans, cut players on guaranteed contracts that then count as deadwood eating up their salary cap to no benefit, and many other examples of unsound, short-term thinking. This kind of mismanagement is crippling, because a year of two of whiffing in the draft or mismanaging the salary cap can impact a team for years down the road.
Trying to get more viewers they've turned to soap opera and reality TV territory, much like 24 hour news outlets have.
Trying to get more sometimes gets you less.
All those degrees in liberal arts colleges that manufacture PC followers did its job. I'd also connect the increasing modern feminisation of the western males to it and removing the competition in schools - participation prizes and such.
What used to be healthy values you stated are now condemned if not demonised for being majorly male.
ESPN transparently wants to position themselves as "progressive" and "history-making" by placing a female in a traditionally male role, at the expense of product.
I can go on about why I find her style of commentary so grating, but suffice it to say I've switched to listening to radio for Sunday night games.
But this is exactly why I and many of my family and friends have:
1) stopped watching the NFL this year and
2) stopped watching ESPN years ago
Another contribution to decline of NFL is the scandals involving domestic abuse. All of these factors come together to alienate the audience, who is increasingly at odds culturally with the message being pushed by ESPN and the like.
https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/59n8gf/even_my_78ye...
And to add to the general discussion about ESPN, streaming, and the like: I'm internet-only with TWC (now Spectrum, as I'm constantly reminded) but even if I had a tv subscription I still wouldn't have been able to watch the EPL on NBC Sports streaming site since they're Comcast-owned.
The league knows it has a problem but inertia, greed and a clueless front office are impediments to change. Let's call it like it is: The league has become greedier with every passing year. And please don't believe the hype: They don't care for the players health and safety either, despite the rule changes [2].
Having been in the stands at a number of games, it's obvious that the players want to go and dislike the commercial breaks because it breaks their flow. To summarize, players aren't happy, fans aren't happy; no surprise then that ratings are falling.
The path forward is to rein in game time (2-2.5 hours a game) and make more games available on interactive, online platforms like Twitter. Additionally, it is time that the league revise their monetization strategy for game broadcasts. What works for soccer might not work for the NFL given that a season is 16-weeks, but what's in place today isn't future-friendly. The league needs to evolve with the changing milieu or perish.
Fortunately for a fan of the game like me, the league has shown that it can change its spots.
1. https://www.google.com/search?q=average+actual+play+time+NFL...
2. http://www.theplayerstribune.com/richard-sherman-nfl-player-...
[1] http://www.oregonlive.com/nfl/index.ssf/2015/11/nfl_games_ru...
[2] http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/how-long-is-t...
You: > "...college games average longer than your "universal" time you mentioned." is not an accurate statement
Your second link: > Football Bowl Subdivision games averaged 3 hours, 23 minutes (i.e. 3.38 hours long)
So it is a 100% accurate statement, even if the difference is small. Regardless, the GP asking if GGP watches or saying someone's statement is not accurate (when it clearly is) does not help the discussion. Games are long and not a subject worth being dismissive about.
This is certainly the narrative I've heard Limbaugh advance of late, but this[0] NPR post has stats that my offer another explanation:
"The Wall Street Journal reports the prime-time audience of adults under 50 for the top four broadcast networks, which schedule dramas, comedies, and so-called reality shows in that slot, is down 9.2 percent from last year's fall TV season."
"But the cable news networks...up 39 percent in a three-week span this fall from the same time period during the last presidential election."
"Movie attendance since Labor Day is down 16 percent"
[0]http://www.npr.org/2016/10/29/499801719/stop-lying-america-y...
Can you explain what this narrative is?
It's not progressive, it's mainstream, the social norm. The racist right is a small segment of the population.
The big football markets are major cities, such as New York, which are even more liberal and ethnically diverse than the rest of the country.
There is far more to the USA than the major coastal cities, and if you go out into the hinterlands, you'll quickly find that there's a goodly number of people that aren't as progressive as some would like.
I think it is foolish to dismiss any one particular contributing factor, particularly for ideological reasons. Reality is more interesting when one is able, as best one can, to set aside ones own ideology when observing.
But I suspect the gossip headlines of "What color underwear is the QB wearing today?", are mostly to blame for the ESPN attrition.
What is particularly interesting is that Hannity is now beating everyone else in ratings and he is probably the most unapologetic Trump supporter.
Seems like people punish media that is pushing HRC.
The rest is just your opinion, which you are obviously entitled to. I happen to disagree and I think most would too, otherwise he wouldn't have that kind of viewership.
ESPN has been increasingly pushing a progressive narrative on its viewers, many, perhaps most, of whom are conservatives. The NFL is seeing the same thing, with big declines in viewership since the national anthem protests began.
I see a lot of newly developed/developing antipathy towards professional sports among my right-wing acquaintances. What's funny is that the reasoning is often very similar to what my left-wing acquaintances had to say back when I was at Berkeley.
As with the libertarian -> alt-right shift of the last five years, I think it is one of the more interesting sociological developments I am aware of, and largely unremarked upon by the press.