[Dilbert San Diego]

The popularity of different sports and events changes over time.

I’ve heard people say that, back in the ‘50s, the most popular sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing. Back then, NFL football and NBA basketball were not nearly as prominent as they are today.

Perhaps part of the decline of boxing, is that there is no outsized personality such as Muhammed Ali nowadays?

[ClearCase_guy]

Personally, I think back in the '50s when boxing was “the sweet science” people enjoyed watching it as an athletic sport. But it became more and more of a thug sport, populated with crude, loud-mouthed tough guys.

Muhammad Ali was both athletic and a loud-mouth. A great athlete, but I think he led the way to the decline of boxing as a respectable sport. He made it a spectacle but it was no longer respectable.

[pepsi_junkie]

If you consider it from a theoretical perspective and ignore that kneeling aspects that automatically ruined football for thousands, one could argue that the NFL is in a golden age now because viewership is highest it's ever been (well, maybe tapering off over last two years but still waaay above the 90s, for instance). The Super Bowl is still a quasi national holiday. Goodell made it a priority to bring in viewers from foreign markets and appeal to women. That worked.

But the quality of the games is not good. The first month of football is horrible because the union negotiated all the hard work in training camp away so September football is the new preseason. So a quarter of the season is about mistakes, penalties, bad tackling, just bad football generally. Then there are the game changing penalties on the most absurd things. Couldn't define a catch for a few years, not they can't define a sack. Basically in the Goodell era the quality of the game is really bad compared to 10 years ago but the NFL is making much bigger bucks. Is it the golden age because of popularity or was it the golden age when Elway and Montana and Marino and Kelly and Moss and Rice and other hall of famers were at their peak and the game was more about making plays than avoiding penalties?

Once again, a nice debate topic over some beers if you consider it from a theoretical perspective and ignore that kneeling aspects that automatically ruined football for thousands.

[dfwgator]

I remember Tennis was HUGE in the 70s. The Wimbledon Final was must-watch TV.

I can’t even remember now the last time I bothered with it.

[discostu]

Boxing killed itself when it got addicted to pay per view. Here watch these nobodies every week but we’re gonna make you pay good cash to watch the good bouts is just not a model that keeps an audience. Then the personalities went away, and that was that.