ESPN Football Analyst Walks Away, Disturbed by Brain Trauma on Field

Re:ESPN Football Analyst Walks Away, Disturbed by Brain Trau... by jethro_tell on Thursday August 31, 2017 @05:28PM (#15144101)

Go back to leather helmets and cotton pads and it's a different game. No reason we need to turn their heads into sledgehammers. We do that because then they feel more comfortable with the big unsafe hits and the flying around but we could get back to the real game with the ruck style running game and wideouts with hand fighting all the way down the sideline and half the commercials and I bet ratings would start going up.

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Re:ESPN Football Analyst Walks Away, Disturbed by Brain Trau... by lojack on Thursday August 31, 2017 @10:45PM (#15145730)

Ratings may go up, but with half as many commercials the profits would also go down. The league only cares about ratings insofar as it helps their bottom line.

I'm not saying these changes would be a bad thing, only that I have doubts it'll ever happen.

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Re:ESPN Football Analyst Walks Away, Disturbed by Brain Trau... by jethro_tell on Friday September 01, 2017 @12:37PM (#15150056)

meh if they sold it for $2 or $4 per game directly to the customer they would get the money anyway. They need to look at new ways to monitize and it probably involves cutting the commercials and the middle men and putting the money directly in their pockets. The only reason they need cable is for 1. distribution which is not an issue since the internet. 2. to splice the commercials in which could easily be done. Sell the games directly and get 100% of your add revenue and you'd probably make more.

If viewership continues to go down, and parent stop letting their kids play at lower levels because of health conserns, they will also lose money.

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