FTA: "One of the biggest winners would be basketball. To the extent that fans replace football with another sport (instead of meth or oxy), high-octane basketball is the natural substitute. On the pro level, the season can stretch out leisurely, ticket prices rise, ratings rise, maybe the league expands (more great athletes in the pool now), and some of the centers and power forwards will have more bulk. At the college level, March Madness becomes the only game in town."

The authors cover this twice. Once when they briefly mention soccer, may perhaps, take more prominence among Americans, and much more thoroughly, when they posit that the collapse of football would most benefit basketball, as it would be the next substitute.

But regardless, their points about the potential resulting benefits outside of the sporting world still has merit in my eyes. For example, there are large universities that derive much of their funding and student enrollment based heavily on the marketability of their football programs. Schools like Ohio State, Oklahoma, Alabama, and LSU come to mind. Without the marketing strength of their football teams, perhaps the schools would be forced to put more effort into enhancing and promoting academic achievement.

The schools you named have it good -- the football revenues in some cases help fund academic programs.

But for most universities, the opposite is true. The football team runs a big deficit and is subsidized by the university (as are most sports, but football is by far the most expensive). Those smaller or less successful schools are the ones really hurting themselves by devoting so many resources to football.

I actually laughed out loud when the author said, "Heck, just getting rid of fantasy football probably saves American companies hundreds of millions of dollars annually." Yeah, fantasy football might disappear, but that doesn't mean that the phenomenon of fantasy sports would disappear too. It'd just be replaced with other fantasy sports.

I'm not so sure about that. Have you ever played fantasy baseball? Or fantasy hockey? Most other fantasy sports are a pain in the butt. They're too involved.

Fantasy football has a nice rhythm: Peak at your team on Thursdays half-way through the season because of the handful of Thursday night games, adjust your team at lunch on Friday, check your scores on Monday.

At least for casual people. Maybe those hard-core will move to fantasy golf...

I've gotten some of my coworkers involved in fantasy NASCAR. Ridiculous, right? But you pick your drivers, you get points based directly on NASCAR scoring (so you know exactly what you'll get), and during the Chase, you pick just one driver for the whole "playoff" season. It's turned some people from a "they just make left turns..." to a "that was a wicked maneuver when they were racing three wide and he got loose through the corner!"

Fantasy baseball is pretty popular I thought. Never played it, but that's where fantasy sports started. It's also known as "Rotisserie Leagues".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_sport#Modern_founding_-...

More likely, the NFL will gradually transition to a safer game that resembles flag football. It may lose some of its audience, but there's too much brand value to fold completely.

You know I did notice that the Seattle sounders bring a lot of fans to their games. Maybe that is the reason.

Try rugby. It's actually quite entertaining.

This article is so laughably bad, I had to doublecheck and make sure I wasn't reading The Onion.