Terry Bradshaw says football will 'fade away'

Interesting article. Also interesting that Smizik calls Terry Bradshaw the "biggest phony I've every covered."




http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazet ... f-football

 

He's right.

 

Good thing he doesn't have any sons then. Sounds to me like he's just jumping on the bandwagon with the other "Captain Hindsights" Football is a violent sport but not nearly as violent as it was when Terry played. Remember Terry, not everyone who's played the game ends up as drooling fools because of concussions and not every drooling fool has had a concussion. Soccer bigger than football in this country? Not likely.

 

I didn't read the article but I have to agree that the game is going to be a shell of what it once was. It already has transformed into a much less physical sport.
By the time Roger Gooddell gets done with it there will be players altering their game so much that it will be nearly laughable to watch. The scores will reflect that of all the Pro Bowls and the Superbowl will be like watching American Idol.

 

I'm terrified that his prediction is right... God save football!

 

I listen to Sirius NFL a lot. A few weeks back an old man called in and was talking about football back in his day. He talked about when they played with leather helmets and no face masks. He said when they instituted face masks, fans were up in arms, complaining the sport was dying, that it was going to be a shell of its former self, etc, etc, etc. Tim and Pat got a good laugh out of it as anytime changes are made to the NFL (and all pro sports), fans get anxious about the game fading away to nothing.

While I love physical football and while I acknowledge the game is changing, football is not going anywhere. It's arguably more popular now than ever before.

 

The last part confuses me (and not because I've played contact sports...). He seems to forget the original point he started out with.

Anyways, I very much doubt soccer will elevate itself in the USA. You've had millions invested in it, you've had a World Cup, you've had World Champions (in the women's game)... but the Women's professional league folded, just as every professional mens league did before MLS, and the current standard of MLS remains, to quote a friend of mine who was coaching in the States last year, "****ing awful". It's irritating that FIFA are so obsessed with tapping the American market, when a) there have been so many failures in the past and b) other continents could probably use the investment better.

I wouldn't be surprised if NFL lost out in popularity at some point to NBA, but these things tend to go in cycles anyway, and it would have nothing to do with the level of contact.

 

Is that a real quote? GOOD LORD!

 

i think it is outpricing itself. you can't keep taking away the way the game was meant to be played and expect fans to keep paying more for it. at any level.

 

Competition is good in most things, but not when it comes to pro sports. You want the best playing against the best. You don't want Aaron Rodgers in one league and Tom Brady in another league, never having to face each other. You want all the best players in one league so they can all play each other and all be compared against each other.

Not sure if you follow MMA, but when Pride and UFC were both going strong, the fact that Fedor never fought the top UFC guys was always an issue for many fans, including myself. It would be the same thing with the NFL if another league was present. Not to mention the fact that with the way it's setup and how powerful the NFL is, it's not even possible.

 

You guys are thinking wrong when you're thinking about 'football fading away.'

You seem to be fixated on changes in the game making it less popular or head injuries becoming an issue to the point where parents wont let their kids play.

If those were the two drivers, then yeah you would be right. It won't fade away.

But thats not how its going to happen. Football will wither from the ground up. And not by choice. Its only a matter of time before lawsuits and liability will kill the youth programs. When school districts, because of the lawsuit and liability issues start eliminating their programs, the feeder system to college FB will be gone. When that goes, college programs are soon to follow. Followed by the NFL.

It may never reach the point of extinction, but FB could absolutely become a far less popular sport than it is now. RIGHT NOW is the heyday of football. Enjoy it. Its not going to last forever.

 

Now this is a very realistic possibility. All the former players that made football great, are now killing the sport. It's unfortunate really, as many of them are just looking to cash in on a bogus lawsuit. Some truly are in a bad way as a result of the game and deserve some form of compensation, but the number of lawsuits is getting out of hand.

 

Lawyers don't get around lawsuits, lawyers cause lawsuits, and if the liability becomes too great, no amount of lawyers in the world will prevent schools from dropping football altogether. Schools haven't faced the lawsuits the NFL has yet, and although colleges can absorb a certain number of lawsuits, public schools can't. If these smaller schools start getting sued, they will drop football. If this happens to enough smaller schools, it will affect the game at the college level, and then eventually the NFL.

 

Amongst % of kids playing? Yes.

 

Good points. I don't know if it will die out, but what I do see is a sport that that may be played almost exclusively by poor black kids in the south. In effect, the 'slave labor" references made today will become more applicable in the future: a bunch of uneducated kids, exploited for their talent at the college level (as it already is) and then further exploited by owners, agents, networks, and fans at the pro level. In fact, the south will become a breeding ground for football players to quench the public thirst for the sport. It's sort of like the Dominican Republic and baseball.

 

Bradshaw said, "There will be a time in the next decade when we will not see football as it is."

I interpret this as meaning the sport will not be the same in the future. And he's probably right. Will we see tackling replaced by flags? Or flags on QBs? College rules where knee down, even without contact, ends the play? Will kickoffs be eliminated? Punts? As Bob Dylan once sang, "The times they are a'changin..."

 

If the lawsuits end up like 'Big tobacco' then you have an excellent point. Our overly litigious society is taking hits in a lot of areas thanks to attorneys. Hopefully that won't happen with the NFL but we can see why Goodell is doing things that fans are screaming about. At this point, he has to.

 

What the heck are you talking about? There's lawyers for everything Shaner, you don't think the NFL has cooperate lawyers to get around lawsuits? To write up contracts, agreements, waivers to prevent such things? And to fight the ones that get to court???? The Tobacco industry is still here, even after record setting lawsuits and so will the NFL survive. And if the NFL sees it's future in jeopardy because the low level schools are getting hammered by lawsuits, you can bet they will figure out a way to help them. We're talking about a billion dollar industry, money always wins.[/quote:170jaq9i]

How is the NFL going to help XYZ School District when XYZ SD has a class action lawsuit filed against it for injuries to explayers? And when this starts happening, and the class action lawsuits start winning, insurance premiums are going to rise. Possibly rising to the point where cash strapped school districts are going to find it fiscally irresponsible to continue on. This along with the negative public perception that football is a barbaric sport that will inevitably happen once more and more is known about head injuries will lead to calls for SDs to drop programs. Rising costs plus negative perception will lead to increasing public pressure (egged on by the inevitable publicity seeking do-gooders) to have programs dropped.

To me, its pretty clear and seems like a pretty likely scenario.

 

I am actually hoping the lawsuits against football will finally wake up America to the damages caused by our over litigious society.

Instead of the NFL dying, I'm kind of hoping the current civil lawsuit "system" we have in our country dies once and for all. It has been sucking our economy dry for so many years and causing untold hindrances to our growth, it's scary to think how much better a country we could be with a better and more fair method of defining "negligence".

The thing about the NFL lawsuit and it's insurance impact on lower level sports is that it won't just effect football. By definition it will effect ALL contact sports. Hockey. Soccer (which has a higher concussion rate for women players than football does). Possibly Field Hockey and Lacrosse as well. Any sport where concussions could happen could be open for long-term damage claims.

Maybe it's a petty and stupid reason in the scheme of things, but if the lawyers and insurance companies go after football and try to kill it, middle-america might just fight back. I think those "lobbies" have to be very careful how they handle this, despite the deep pockets sport has in this country.