New Football League (from the people that brought you the XFL)

[KAPA]

Could be entertaining! Sounds like they are going to try and go for a bit of a patriotic flair with all the anthem stuff that has been problematic for the NFL.

Anyway, news conference at 1PM mt

https://www.alphaentllc.com/

[Gman]

Again? He tried this in 2001. Anyone remember the USFL back in the '80s? There's declining interest in sports and the talent pool is beginning to dry up, so he's trying this again now?

SMH

[KAPA]

How is the talent pool drying up since the 80s?

[Gman]

How is the talent pool drying up since the 80s?

More and more parents are keeping their kids from playing football due to the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

[MarkCO]

More and more parents are keeping their kids from playing football due to the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

When another parent complimented my kid for being so fast and asked him why he did not play DB or WR on the football team. He answered..."Baseball takes a lot of time to work on all phases of the game. If I want to play football in College I'll try and walk on and speed is all you really need because I won't be big enough to play line." I'll spare you the other parents comments, but that was pretty much what the HS football (who really wanted Blake to try out) and baseball coaches told him.

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

When another parent complimented my kid for being so fast and asked him why he did not play DB or WR on the football team. He answered..."Baseball takes a lot of time to work on all phases of the game. If I want to play football in College I'll try and walk on and speed is all you really need because I won't be big enough to play line." I'll spare you the other parents comments, but that was pretty much what the HS football (who really wanted Blake to try out) and baseball coaches told him.

Even still, baseball can be +/- a lifelong sport, as all my fantasy camp friends are sending pictures from Phoenix. If he can get some money for college from baseball, do it, but why destroy your body for your entire adult life trying to play football if you won’t get a penny, and baseball already nets the scholarship? Then he can get a real job and play NABA or MSBL or whatever until he bores of it.

[CoGirl303]

How is the talent pool drying up since the 80s?

all the concussion stuff coming out the past ten years. The NFL hid the evidence from players, even though they KNEW what was going on. Watch the movie Concussion with Will Smith. great movie.

More and more parents aren't letting their kids play football anymore. Quality talented QB's have been marginally thin for years and it's expected to get worse. In the next 15-30 years I think we will see the quality of the NFL and college product really drop. Won't be surprised to see the NFL dissolve entirely.

[Martinjmpr]

More and more parents aren't letting their kids play football anymore. Quality talented QB's have been marginally thin for years and it's expected to get worse. In the next 15-30 years I think we will see the quality of the NFL and college product really drop. Won't be surprised to see the NFL dissolve entirely.

Yes, I've heard the same thing. As far as the future of the NFL, that's going to really depend, IMO, on what colleges and universities do. After all, colleges are the "farm teams" for the NFL.

A few random thoughts occur to me:

If you think about it, it's the college football programs that really do the "heavy lifting" when it comes to both finding and making new talent - NFL just swoops in afterwards and cherry picks the best players out of a huge pool (except for the VERY few players who go straight from High School to NFL - but isn't that like a fraction of a percent?)

But...colleges and universities - especially big public universities - are so hooked on all the money that college football brings in, that it's hard to imagine them walking away from that money.

The big question is going to be, what will college football programs do if middle-class parents start keeping their boys out of football for fear of head injuries? The only thing I can think of is that they will move "down market" in terms of recruiting. IOW, when the middle-class Suburban and small-town high schools start ending their football programs due to not having enough players, colleges and universities will have to try to move into the inner cities and poorer parts of the country where people might be more willing to risk a life-changing injury if it's their only shot at improving their economic status. But that brings its own problems, not the least of which is that kids from those schools are less likely to be successful in college which means that the colleges will have to "dumb down" their academic programs in order to keep the players from getting cut.

Who knows? If it gets bad enough, colleges may eventually drop the pretext that players are "students" and simply hire them to play football as professionals.

The other possibility, I suppose, is that something replaces Football as a popular spectator sport. Soccer? It's possible, I guess. To me watching soccer is about as interesting as watching paint dry but then again, I could say that about a lot of other sports, too. Certainly soccer is popular enough in the rest of the world that it's a major, major sport that makes billions of $$ for a lot of people.

And if you think about it, football really hasn't been a major spectator sport for all that long. I think the NFL goes back to, what, 1960 or so? So just 60 years. If you look back to the time before and after WWII, baseball was the "national pastime" and the biggest spectator sporting event in the country, for a LONG time. There are lots of people alive today (my parents, for example, both in their 80's) who can remember a time when football was a little-known and little-cared-about sport played at high schools and colleges in front of small crowds.

[crays]

...
colleges and universities will have to try to move into the inner cities and poorer parts of the country where people might be more willing to risk a life-changing injury if it's their only shot at improving their economic status. But that brings its own problems, not the least of which is that kids from those schools are less likely to be successful in college which means that the colleges will have to "dumb down" their academic programs in order to keep the players from getting cut.

Who knows? If it gets bad enough, colleges may eventually drop the pretext that players are "students" and simply hire them to play football as professionals.
...

Aren't they already doing this? I was going to make this same point yesterday, but was having a hard time putting it into words without sounding racist or elitist.

[Zundfolge]

Again? He tried this in 2001. Anyone remember the USFL back in the '80s? There's declining interest in sports and the talent pool is beginning to dry up, so he's trying this again now?

Now is the best time ever to try it as the NFL commits suicide by becoming Social Justice Converged. Back in the 80s and 2001 the NFL was still beloved ... now there will be the biggest boycott of a Super Bowel game ever this year (I know I won't be watching it). People are sick of the politics of the NFL.