The Beginning of the End of the National Football League

Since the end of August I have had to devote most of my energy to my place of employment. For the most part, since October, with the exception of the Thanksgiving holiday, I have been working six-day weeks. Working six days a weeks, ten hours a day, there's not much time for anything else. My reading dropped off to what I could squeeze into a lunch break; my music listening, to what I could hear on my iPod walking to and from the office.

But through it all I did have the National Football League on Sundays and on Thursday night. If anything, my attention to the league has increased this fall, not because the level of play has been particularly excellent, but because I haven't been able to manage much else.

It has been an interesting season in that the weakness and contradictions of American society are bringing themselves to bear. To juice his cracker base, Trump has targeted players protesting institutional racism and corporate militarism. Television ratings continue to slide, with no hope for improvement. Now, the #MeToo moment has arrived. After being accused of abusive behavior by his female employees, Carolina Panthers founding owner Jerry Richardson  has promised to put the franchise on the auction block at the end of the season.

Ken Belson's write-up yesterday, "The N.F.L. Shows Surprising Deference to Jerry Richardson," quantifies the value of a National Football League team:

The coming sale represents a rich opportunity for all involved. N.F.L. teams are among the most valuable in sports, and they rarely change hands. Most are relinquished only when their owners die, such as in 2014, when Ralph Wilson died, prompting the sale of the Buffalo Bills to Terry and Kim Pegula for $1.4 billion. Given the exploding prices paid for sports franchises, the sale might turn into a silver lining for the N.F.L. and its owners, as team values are based partly on recent sales.

[snip]

The sale will most likely provide him and his partners with a windfall. The N.F.L., sports industry financial experts note, brings in significantly more money than the N.B.A. — more than $14 billion this year. Nearly every team is profitable because the teams share equally more than $6 billion in annual television, sponsorship and merchandise revenue. The Panthers play in a far larger, more vibrant region than the Bills, the most recent N.F.L. team to be sold. And the Panthers also have a more favorable stadium lease. Quarterback Cam Newton, one of the league’s biggest stars, led the team to the Super Bowl in 2016.

Forbes, which conducts an annual survey of team values that industry critics claim are imprecise, estimated that the Panthers are now worth $2.3 billion, 11 percent more than in 2016. The team, Forbes said, carries almost no debt and had $102 million in operating income, the ninth most among the league’s 32 franchises.

Even with the ratings drop, the NFL is still the primary vehicle for identity in the United States. My guess though is that this is the beginning of the end. The main reason this season has been so uninspiring is the large number of injuries. You could feel the funereal pall fall over TVland when Aaron Rodgers was knocked out earlier in the year with a broken collarbone. Injuries are not an aberration. They are getting worse as the schedule expands and athletic excellence increases. The Seahawks have been virtually erased because of injuries.

We will have to look for an identity elsewhere.