A whopping 21 percent of U.S. residents now speak a language other than English at home. Of the 23.7 million people in Texas who are five years of age or older, more than a third speak a language other than English at home.
Both college and pro, the sport might have seen its best days.
You may be right. I don’t expect the NFL numbers will come back for years to come. I am surprised at the drop on the college side, however. Many schools are building new, larger stadiums to allow for larger attendance figures at the big games. We shall see...
It's all about the money...
I dont watch college football until my Ole Miss plays. Other than that, dont care about it.
Besides, I boycotted the Super Bowl and didnt watch a second of it.
College football attendance has quietly been declining for a number of years.
Students are less interested, tickets and parking are much more expensive and jacked sky high for bigger games, and there’s much less tolerance for tailgating.
College being dragged down by pros.
Both have the same problem - TV has been a Faustian bargain, as the devil demands more and more time to air ads.
But whereas the pros have players to pay, colleges have very few payees, mostly coaches and ADs. And, of course, all the Title IX harpies. Because they remain convinced that someone, somewhere wants to watch women’s crew.
Stretching games to 4+ hours at the college level is madness. It taxes the attention of even the most rabid fan and the ADHD crowd (read: students who would rather get high and stay in the dorms and apartments) simply aren’t going.
Throw in the cost of tickets, ‘donations’ for tickets, ‘donations’ for parking passes and college games can easily exceed the outlay for pro.
College football used to be part of a greater Saturday schedule. Now it demands that attendees give up fully half their weekends for it - sometimes the entire weekend in the case of road games.
In sum, they’ve killed their own fatted calf.
I’m sure someone else has touched on this prior to this post, but I believe the pros have essentially killed “the sport of” football’s golden goose.
When you turn the major league sport into a weekly trashing of our nation, folks aren’t going to limit their disgust to only the pro brand.
It’s killing the appreciation for the sport across the board.
And after all, isn’t that ultimately what the Leftists have wanted for the last decade.
I can’t imagine them finding a more ignorant league commissioner.
A whopping 21 percent of U.S. residents now speak a language other than English at home. Of the 23.7 million people in Texas who are five years of age or older, more than a third speak a language other than English at home.
I go to college football games; love to go to the stadium on game day; love it. That said, the first display of ‘kneelers’ or other types of disloyalty to our country and I’m gone...just like I left the NFL behind years ago, not just due to the recent politicization of the sport. I dropped NFL when the ‘DeionSanderization’ of the game took over. All that ‘look at me’ showing off stuff literally ‘turned me off’ to the NFL long before the so-called ‘protests.’
(Loved the quote attributed to NFL great, Chuck Bednarik who supposedly said, “Deion Sanders couldn’t tackle my wife.”)
Regarding watching the games, most, if not all, of us watch sports to escape reality, especially politics, for a couple hours.
Throught history there are times when a small and totally unexpected event, seemingly coming out of nowhere, alters the course of a much larger and more powerful venture or endeavor.
Can it be that the Kaepernick idiocy is one of those events?
Did it hit the sport of football (pro and college) at a time when the excesses of the sports craze in general had peaked and brought football to a tipping point?
There was a time when my friends, family and I were avid football fans. Over the years our enthusiasm had waned somewhat but the Kaepernick idiocy put us over the top. I don’t think any of us watched even one game, pro or college, in the last year.
Including the Super Bowl.
The college attendance, might be impacted by the NFL shenanigans. People might be swearing off football altogether because of the NFL, instead of swearing off just the NFL.
A second reason might be the effect of concussions on players. People might be deciding that they are contributing to health problems for the players.
A third reason might be Call of Duty.
A fourth reason could be the lingering effects of the Obama economy. People may not have recovered enough to spend on sports. Or to afford college educations.
With almost 40 bowl games, they become Participation Bowl games.
A bowl team has a 6-6 record, that hardly encourages attendance.
I doubt that, University of Michigan has one of the largest stadiums in the country with an official capacity of 109,901 and they’re sold out for every game......And average ticket prices are $65
Many games are now being played during the week and people can’t or don’t want to go to a game on Thursday or Friday nights. Friday night is high school football in most places and going to a Thursday night game means taking off from work and maybe even Friday. Most people can’t afford that.
In person attendance numbers may be down but ratings are up unlike the NFL. With the advent of 4K Tv it is hard to make a case to attend a game when watching at home is a better viewing experience.
I have seen MAC Conference games on ESPN played on rainy Wednesday and Thursday nights where it appears there were not 5000 people in the stands. Obviously those schools opted to trade attendance for TV dollars.
I don’t attend Pitt Panther home games because frankly the ticket prices are just too damned high. Particularly when they schedule I-AA cupcakes every season.
Yep. Younger generation finding v games and social media more entertaining than watching others play a game they do not play. Too long. Viewer vs. team demographics/attitudes a possible issue. Most kids played soccer, for a long time now. Who knows. Movies replaced live theater, too.
Time to send in the robots.
Nat. Robot League.