Sportscasters Discuss Declining NFL Numbers

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
Bob Ley, leading the Friday Four on ESPN's Outside the Lines, mentioned on a recent episode that the NFL's Thursday Night Football game on television lost 27% of its audience, compared to last year's numbers from the game during the same time of the year. That's more than a quarter of its viewers!  Faced with such a stunning revelation of reality in 2017, he asked if the violence of the game was turning off viewers.

In a conversation with an anti-Trump friend of mine who is an avid football fan in the Pacific Northwest, he said to me that the empty stadiums and declining numbers in television viewership was a direct result of the public's recent awareness and anger over the NFL's inability to deal with the rising numbers of "concussions" and "head injuries" in the game.

Are these people that stupid?

Three and a half years ago Reuters called the NFL the "last bastion of white, male conservatives."

If professional football's audience is largely conservative as Reuters says, with an NFL fan base that is 83% white, 64% male, 51% aged 45 years or older, only 32% made less than $60,000 a year, and registered Republicans are 21% more likely to be NFL fans than registered Democrats"; and that prior to the kneeling of the players during the National Anthem the sport was surviving despite "widely reported homophobia or the growing awareness of the dangers of head injuries or the accusations leveled in a lawsuit filed by 500 former players that they were pumped up with painkillers and sent back onto the field after being injured" (in 2014; how is it that suddenly the NFL is in trouble despite surviving all of that?

Bob Ley said the violence.  Others say the head injuries.

Those things have emerged as a concern in recent years, but three years ago they weren't damaging the product. How is it that the violent nature of the game and the threat of head injuries, now, suddenly are?

When it comes to the NFL, when comparing the game to what it was when Reuters was touting its appeal to conservative America, to today's league that finds itself facing declining number, the only thing different between now and then is the fact that many of the players have been disrespecting the flag and country by kneeling during the national anthem, and the fans have said, "Enough is enough."

But, the liberal left media is unwilling to admit the obvious.

Meanwhile, college football numbers are doing really well.  That said, college viewership numbers are down for the alphabet networks, but for FOX the numbers went up.

⬝ABC: 4.203 million, down 18% from 5.097 million
⬝CBS: 4.951 million viewers, down 10% from 5.489 million
⬝ESPN: 2.155 million, down 6% from 2.3 million
⬝NBC (Notre Dame): 2.742, down 3% from 2.814 million
⬝Fox: 3.625 million, up 23% from 2.951 million
⬝FS1: 819,000, up 4% from 743,000

If it was the violence of the game that was the cause of the sudden disinterest in the NFL, wouldn't the college numbers also be down around 25% or more, as well?

Immediately, after scrutinizing the college numbers dropping when it comes to the traditional networks, while rising on Fox and FS1, I am thinking that from a conservative's point of view, we see the big networks as the evil liberal stations, and FOX and FS1 (because we have FOX News in the back of our mind) are the more conservative friendly networks.

Could it be that it's not the violence that is influencing viewership, but the fact that conservatives are walking away from the NFL, and changing their college viewership away from sports productions by the mainstream liberal left media to something they believe to be more politically friendly to what they believe?

ESPN's leftist garbage hasn't exactly been catering to any audience other than the far left, anyway - and in fact has gone to such a level of stupidity - which includes the stupidity of them releasing Robert Lee (an Asian reporter) because his name so closely resembles the name of the famed Confederate General - that they are losing viewers hand over fist.

But, Bob Ley blames it all on the violence of the game on the field.  The leftist narrative being defended, or promoted, through the misplaced practice of kneeling during the National Anthem to support a false narrative, has become too much for the conservative viewers.  Sure, I get why the leftist media thinks its the violence in the sport that is hurting its viewership numbers.  Violence of any kind upsets the Peace-Love-Dope minds of the liberal left sheep.  Bob Ley, like his fellow lemmings, can't see beyond the narrative.  He is not willing to recognize that factors including kneeling for the National Anthem might be to blame.

Maybe he was worried that if he doesn't defend the narrative, he'd be targeted for injury like the Oakland Raiders' quarterback Derek Carr was [@12:38 on the linked video] (Carr stands for the Star Spangled Banner, hand on heart, and prays) by the thugs who believe that change is accomplished by brute force and thuggery.  The Oakland Raiders has the only all-black offensive line, and after going 12-3 last year with Carr behind center, this year the Silver and Black can't even break .500 after upgrading parts of their offensive attack.  Carr has been running for his life after each snap, and his back injury (the one Mika Grimes referred to in the above linked video as being purposely allowed as punishment for Carr's refusal to kneel) knocked him out of a significant number of games.

It seems, when it comes to the NFL, good guys are beginning to finish last for daring to refuse to comply with the thugs of the liberal left - and the fans are noticing . . . and migrating away from the NFL faster than we are seeing the middle class migrate out of California.  But, the religion of cultural Marxism is so strong that the NFL will literally let themselves dwindle into nothing, rather than admit that their leftist narrative is what is damaging their product.

Perhaps WWE billionaire Vince McMahon ought to bring back his XFL . . . but this time do what the USFL did, and have Trump get involved, too.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary