Why the NFL Will Soon Lose Its Pre-eminence

 



...no, it's not the insane concussions (or the equally insane NFL's policies to prevent them) -- I mean, how much sense does it make to render head-to-head hits illegal when the first way football players congratulate each other is by smacking their helmets together HARD?

...no, it's not the vulgar, racist, homophobic "culture" locker rooms seem to breed (as brought to light recently by Mr. Incognito's failure to live up to his name);

...no, it's not even that there is no recognizable defense anymore (caused in many ways by the first point above);

...no, what will soon deflate the "Nation's Favorite Sport" is the seven-day, 24-hour presence of a league that only plays once-a-week games.

This once-a-week-ness used to be its strength (and the reason it surpassed Baseball as "America's Game," I've been told): Focused, and intense, attention once a week for four months. 
The NFL, apparently, with its media minions in tow, has been unwilling/unable to leave it at that.

Right now, even with NFL games being spread across five (!?) days (Thursday to Monday), only so much can be said, and for only so long, about either the upcoming, or just played, spate of games. Previews of the next week's games now begin in earnest first thing Tuesday (although we know CBS, FOX, ESPN, NBC, the NFL Channel, et alia begin them as early as Sunday night), and they run their course well before the next Sunday morning.  And the injury and arrest updates of players across the league have long since worn out their appeal.  

During a season, baseball and basketball (and, I've heard, there's this thing called "hockey") can generate daily conversation because new things (i.e., games -- yes, actual performances by actual players!) happen daily during a season, and, therefore, ACTUAL new things may be talked about every day. 

(I won't mention that fantasy leagues -- a thing that couldn't interest me less...yes, less even than soccer! -- also make far more sense for sports in which the statistics are changing daily.  There's an immediacy that demands decision and action instead of allowing for the navel-gazing in which NFL fantasy league "experts" like to indulge.)  

In short, NFL, if you want to maintain your Top-of-the-Professional-Sports-Heap-edness, tell the football beat reporters to write/broadcast about something, anything, else from Tuesday through Friday. 

It's true: familiarity breeds contempt.  And nothing is more contemptible than the update on that QB's groin pull for the third day in a row.