
Mark Cuban Thinks the 'greedy' NFL is 10 Years Away from Implosion - ytNumbers
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/03/mark-cuban-nfl-implosion-10-years/
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mikestew
Baseball seems to have a lot more games than football, and it manages to stay
in business.

Seems to me the head injury problem might taken a more prominent role in the
future of football. If football becomes more commonly viewed as a gladiator
battle that liquifies the participants brains, it might become less popular.
Then again, boxing doesn't seem to going broke, either.

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cafard
Boxing has fallen way off from what it was in the middle of the 20th Century.
The big paydays at the top are much greater than they once were (so big,
somebody said, that the fighters are even getting some). But it seems to me
that it has fallen off in its share of the attention that goes to sports.

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Detrus
Mainly because MMA UFC has taken a big chunk of that attention

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adestefan
The problems started well before UFC. The problem was the exact same issues
that Cuban is pointing out: the sport started to believe in its own hype that
nothing was which caused an implosion of greed and corruption. Mike Tyson and
Sugar Ray Leonard are the reasons why boxing didn't go extinct in the 80s.

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sharkweek
The NFL has tried to put player safety at the forefront of it's PR with all
this concussion prevention talk; otherwise the talent pipeline would
eventually start drying up as more and more parents would stop letting their
kids play football. But I can assure you, alongside the head injury issues,
Thursday games are only going to increase injury in the long term as they
stand now.

The right move is to push for an 18 week/16 game season, each team gets two
bye weeks and only plays on a Thursday game when coordinated with one of their
byes to allow maximum recovery. The NFL can then sound the trumpets of
encouraging player safety as well as broadcast more games.

For fun -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78qF72JwJwA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78qF72JwJwA)

#GoHawks

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psaintla
The talent pipeline for professional football is going to dry up no matter
what. As more scientific evidence mounts of what we already know anecdotally
lawsuits will increase along with the insurance costs for youth football.
There is no stopping that.

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k-mcgrady
Isn't their this kind of risk in lots of sports? They haven't seen talent dry
up

e.g. Motorsport

In the 70's Formula 1 there were 9 deaths and many more serious injuries.
Safety has improved significantly in the last 15 years but there was never a
lack of talent in the most dangerous years.

e.g. Boxing

I don't have specific evidence here but in a sport where people punch each
other there has to be long term risk and it continues to prove extremely
popular.

e.g. Rugby

Again little specific evidence but it's at least as brutal as the NFL and
lacks the protection for the players. I know several kids in my local area who
have suffered broken necks, paralysis, and I've heard of one death. And these
were kids playing for their high school team. Yet it continues to grow in
popularity and talent.

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psaintla
There is a huge difference between those sports and football. Youth football
is sponsored and run by public schools whose residents will not want to cover
the financial fallout from a lawsuit. Private schools have been ending
football programs for awhile now because they have even less ability to pay
for a lawsuit, it's only a matter of time before public schools go the same
route.

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robg
As others are saying, I'm more amazed at how quickly society has recognized
the health problems.

Pee-wee football saw a 9.5% participation drop from 2010 to 2012:
[http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/popwarner/pop-
warne...](http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/popwarner/pop-warner-youth-
football-participation-drops-nfl-concussion-crisis-seen-causal-factor)

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runevault
I know personally I've been suffering Football fatigue these last few years.
Frankly the only reason I watched much football at all last year is because my
team was doing well (Broncos). Once Manning retires I wouldn't be surprised if
I end up taking an NFL hiatus because it has gotten so ridiculous.

Throw in the fact most of the Thursday Night games ended up with at least one
team playing horribly likely in part due to the short recovery period from
previous games...

And that doesn't even get into the whole "expanding to London" thing which is
such a cash grab that is in no other way good for the League...

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programminggeek
One of the best things about sports is that they are seasonal. If they
weren't, people would grow tired of them and they wouldn't be that
interesting.

For example, professional wrestling is a year round "sports" TV show. Without
big events like special pay per view shows and such, it would have completely
died. As it is, without "Wrestlemania Season" once a year, it would lose a lot
of its audience over time because it would have trouble building to anything
interesting. Professional wrestling has a resurgence once a decade or so
because like many fads, there is a hook that gets people in, but since it
never ends, people grow tired and move on to other things. The biggest
performers - Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Shawn Michaels, Brett Heart, Steve
Austin, Dwayne Johnson, and John Cena. Each one's careers coincided with a
short "peak" in the business that eventually trailed off as another couple
guys had their own peak 5-10 years later.

If NFL or any other sport moves towards more games, more tv, more exposure, it
is going to risk being overexposed in a huge way.

Case in point - curling. One of the huge draws of curling is that for most
Americans it is only on tv once every 4 years for the Olympics. That has added
a mystique and an interest that makes it fascinating to watch. If curling was
on every Saturday afternoon all year long, its ratings during the Olympics
would drop.

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Too
It's not just the audience that grow tired, also the players. If you have an
all year around sport then there will be no match that is the most important.
All matches are equally important(unimportant) and the players become numb.
Compare watching the early rounds of NHL each season with the Stanley Cup semi
finals, winning the former doesn't mean shit but winning the later means
_everything_ , when do you think the players will give their max, which one
will be more interesting to watch?

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jgon
As a Canadian this strikes me as incredibly true. I'm at the point where I
really don't watch that much regular season hockey anymore. The NHL keeps
extending the season and trying to add more teams and it is just becoming
tiresome. But once the playoffs are on I would pit hockey against any other
sport on the planet for entertainment. The olympics were another example of
this. The hockey played was at such an incredible level that I watched every
game I could. I couldn't get over how intense and entertaining the games were,
and if more people saw that style of hockey it would be much bigger than it is
now with over 80 games, 60% of which will be absolute snoozers.

Football has an incredible advantage in that its players get ~1 week to rest
up in between games and with only 16 games, they are all pretty important.
This means that most games are played at a high level of intensity and skill
and are thus more entertaining. Moving to dilute this quality in pursuit of
more revenue is a path I've watched the NHL walk down, and hopefully the NFL
can learn from their mistakes.

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jaxytee
I don't see anything wrong with putting more games on Thursday. As long as
teams still play 16 games a season, it won't make any difference to fans. The
league is great because every game is important, not because every game is
played on sunday.

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josefresco
It's also worth noting that there's already a Thursday game broadcasted on the
NFL network.

The issue with spreading games out comes down to people's ability to schedule
and set aside time to watch. Currently if you're a fan of one team you need to
figure out if your team plays on Thur, Sun or Monday. If it's Sunday you then
need to figure out if it's at 1:00, 4:30 or 8:00.

For those who don't want or intend to pay for the NFL Network, the options are
only Sun/Monday.

I would argue that this "simple" schedule makes it easier for fans to tune in,
and block off time to enjoy their team play.

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bradyd
Thursday games are broadcast on local networks in the cities where the teams
playing are from, so you don't have to have NFL network to watch your local
team.

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jusben1369
He has a point. One of the big values of the NFL is i) A limited number of
games and ii) All played closely together (timewise) So _every_ weekend is
important because a team's fortunes can really change from week to week.
Baseball and Basketball teams can go on multi game losing streaks and it's
just a bump. In the NFL it's almost certain death to playoff aspirations.

That makes for better analysis Monday through Friday. Because all of these
events have been compressed and the future can be mapped out. Now you're
spreading events over 4 days of the week you lose that "Completeness"

Having said all that violence and injury will be what kills the NFL before
saturation. Negotiating the move to a more athletic spectacle vs warrior
battle without losing the base of fans is key to continuing to have the best
athletes chose football over other sports early on.

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josefresco
Your first point isn't an issue as they're not proposing extending the ovral #
of games.

Your second point is valid, and I would add that the rhythm, and amount of
preparation needed to play American football at the highest level is seriously
compromised when you play on Thursday. If the NFL only has teams who have a
"buy" week on Thur than the problem is mitigated (can anyone confirm this?),
but it takes serious effort to prepare (and heal) for an NFL game and the
players/coaches surely won't enjoy the abbreviated prep time caused by the new
time slot.

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jusben1369
Agree on the rest and preparation time. Also note the article mentioned the
debate around playing less pre season games and adding 2 regular season games
(which would start to dilute the importance of any one game)

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nfg
> Football is the most popular thing in America because it’s the greatest
> spectator sport...

Pretty controversial!

~~~
freehunter
Yeah. NASCAR commonly claims that they are the largest spectator sport, and
for certain definitions they are probably right. If you define spectator sport
as a sport with very low active participation compared to the viewing figures,
it's probably NASCAR. Not a lot of weekend racers or race car drivers out on
the playgrounds of schools.

Wikipedia says MLB is the largest spectator sport [1]. NASCAR doesn't make the
list (NASCAR estimates between 3-5 million per year).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_attendance_figur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_attendance_figures)

~~~
MitziMoto
NASCAR fan here.

I think when NASCAR says they are the biggest "spectator" sport they mean that
their individual events attract more spectators to one spot than other sports,
which for many tracks is absolutely true but misleading. Capacity at Daytona
for example is around 150,000 seats which is far more than the highest
capacity NFL stadium (Redskins at 82000). With that said, Indianapolis motor
speedway has attracted almost 250,000 race fans for the Indy 500, but
unfortunately not in recent years.

Anyway, what NASCAR doesn't talk about is that there is only one race going on
at one track on any given sunday, and with a few exceptions the sport only
comes around once a year. Compare that to the 14+ NFL games that take place in
any given week during the regular season and there's really not much of a
comparison. The NFL blows them out of the water.

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mildavw
If this is interesting to you, you might enjoy this long form book excerpt
from a former NFL player:

[http://deadspin.com/my-injury-file-how-i-shot-smoked-and-
scr...](http://deadspin.com/my-injury-file-how-i-shot-smoked-and-screwed-my-
way-1482106392)

This reminded me of the dangerous, unhealthy culture I knew well as a high
school player but had forgotten as the NFL's marketing efforts replaced that
perspective with their own narrative over the years.

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jmduke
It's worth noting that the commissioner of the NBA (the league in which Cuban
is an owner) recently announced that they'll likely be putting sponsors' logos
on NBA jerseys within five years:

[http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10637752/commissioner-
adam...](http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/10637752/commissioner-adam-silver-
says-nba-jerseys-sponsor-logos-future)

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KC8ZKF
It's also worth noting that Mr. Cuban is not allowed to criticize NBA
policies.

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jmduke
I don't believe that's correct -- though he certainly receives more attention
and scrutiny when he does so. Recently, he (along with pretty much everyone
else) criticized the new sleeved jerseys:

[http://espn.go.com/dallas/nba/story/_/id/10198314/mark-
cuban...](http://espn.go.com/dallas/nba/story/_/id/10198314/mark-cuban-dallas-
mavericks-says-nba-made-mistake-new-jerseys)

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cpher
I've been playing fantasy football for 17 years and the past 2 have been the
worst w/r/t the schedule. We now have 2 days to "manage" our teams: Tuesday
and Wednesday. Instead of the occasional Thurs game, it's now nearly every
week with multiple teams, etc. God forbid you get busy and miss Tues and Wed.
It's definitely a fatigue. And forgetaboutit if you have small children. You
almost need a personal assistant to help with the scheduling.

Edit: I think the player safety issue is completely separate. I would still
get football fatigue even if we completely solved the head injury issue.

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k-mcgrady
>> "There’s a certain richness to Cuban complaining about the NFL trying to
take over every night of television. His team plays in the league that runs
from October through June and has a playoffs that lasts slightly longer than
the gestation period of small mammals."

>> "Still, Cuban’s completely right."

Emm, how? People will get sick of too much or a sport and start turning off.
Ok. Yet the sport he is part of proves his own point wrong. And the author
still thinks he's right?

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slouch
I can't find a more recent graph, but perhaps Mr Cuban means this gigantic gap
in leadership is what will implode: [http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/09/...](http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/09/sportsregularseasonviewers.jpg)

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rayiner
"Greedy" is such a meaningless criticism in the modern economy. He means short
term greed that compromises long term greed.

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walshemj
Aww you wait til that nice Mr Murdoch buys up all the rights and you can only
get NFL on sky just like football in the UK.

Oh and Bar owners get ready to pay a lot more to show NFL in your bar.

Part of me thinks that its contract negotiation time with the players union.

The NFL ought to have relegation/promotion last team in each conference gets
drooped and replaced each year.

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MarcusVorenus
He is mistaken. Soccer is a 24/7/365 thing in South America and Europe and
people don't seem to be getting tired of it. The sport itself is not what
matters, what people care about is the competition.

