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I'm 57, and I remember when boxing was very popular. I think the decline in popularity has more to do with boring fights (heavyweights just lean on each other), and people realizing the corruption involved. To me, it's like the Olympics- I rarely watch them anymore because so many particpents are cheating.
I think the decline was linked to the brutality of the sport and the stupid move to Pay per view.
I think the decline was linked to the brutality of the sport and the stupid move to Pay per view.
I'll agree with you on Pay per view. I think our society by and large likes brutality. One other thought- boxing matches in the movies are so much better than real ones!
I know it's hard to believe otherwise, but we do have a precedent. Ask any sports fan over 60 about how popular boxing once was (I'm a little bit shy of 50 and I can even remember it's "last heyday" a little bit). It still exists of course, but it's a shadow of what it was and a lot of why we still have boxers is they are often foreigners who did not have as much of a stigma on training young. Perhaps this is what's going to happen to football, though I think it will take a good quarter century or more.
Or maybe it will be just as popular, but all the players will be from less developed countries. To some extent, hockey is a good example of this, which also has somewhat of an issue with the amount of physical contact to the head (not as noted in the US but talked about a lot in Canada I hear). A lot more players now coming from Scandinavia and the former Soviet Bloc whereas once (as recently as 20-30 years ago) almost EVERYONE in the NHL was from Canada with a significant sprinkling from the northern US.
Another example I can think of is baseball.
I'm 70. When I was a kid baseball was king. Football was a distant second; basketball hardly existed as far we were concerned.
Was it so very long ago that everyone followed NASCAR?
The educational system is better off without football in their midst. It does not, as they claim, teach "teamwork and sportsmanship".
I do have to wonder, though, why such an outcry about NFL/American football but not rugby?
It may be because rugby does not have helmets.
Joe Paterno used to say that face masks have made it more dangerous for players because they started tackling with their heads as they were more "protected", or felt they were anyway.
Have injuries become worse as helmets improved? Something to think about.
Joe Paterno used to say that face masks have made it more dangerous for players because they started tackling with their heads as they were more "protected", or felt they were anyway.
Have injuries become worse as helmets improved? Something to think about.
Being an non football fan I have always said that, one guy literally runs head first into another guy and its considered a good tackle. In Rugby you have to grab that guy and pull him to the ground for a good tackle. Teach players to tackle properly, not just run into each other head first.
boxing isnt really a precedent. it started going away when ali, frazier, and foreman retired. tyson carried teh sport for a while until he lost the title to buster douglas, and then a few years later bit holyfields(i think, its been a while) ear in a losing effort, and had various legal problems.
but boxing would have fallen off in popularity anyway with the rise of MMA.
I guess you didn't note my second paragraph where I say it could be just as popular (I'll agree one big difference is that football is a weekly team sport and not an occasional individual event that is hyped up) but we'll have mostly foreign players, using hockey as the analogy for that.
I also noted it will still take a LONG time for football to decline and/or change, like maybe 25 years or more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankMiller
It's doomed, I mean look at cigarette smoking. People figured out it was bad for you, and bam, a century later it was only half as popular.
Century? I think it's taken less than HALF a century to halve the smoking rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Listener2307
Another example I can think of is baseball.
I'm 70. When I was a kid baseball was king. Football was a distant second; basketball hardly existed as far we were concerned.
What made baseball decline is different, not injuries:
1) Basketball is a much cheaper sport for poor and/or inner city kids to take up and baseball, especially in an organized form is a lot more expensive than it was 50 years ago to both play and see in person.
2) A generation of kids fed on instant gratification find baseball "boring".
The number of kids under age 14 playing football has dropped from 6%-10% over the last 10 years. This trend will continue. There is enough information available now to cause parents to reject football. The slow but steady rise of soccer in the USA might be traced to all the kids who now play soccer. Soccer has become a viable alternative fall sport for football.
Century? I think it's taken less than HALF a century to halve the smoking rate.
But a century ago, the smoking rate was going up, not down. So the dropoff actually looks better if you compare today against half a century ago when smoking peaked, versus comparing against a century ago (really more like 80 years ago) when we learned that smoking is bad. In fact, the smoking rate may have actually gone up since we discovered it's bad for you, but it's hard to tell because I can only find stats for tobacco consumption per capita and not specifically rates of smokers vs nonsmokers.
I think the current status of football is more like the "hey guys this looks dangerous" status of smoking in the 30s, than the "we officially treat this as a public health crisis at the highest levels of government" status of smoking since the 60s.
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