CONTINUED COLLAPSE OF THE NFL – AT 12:48 P.M. ET:  This can no longer be considered a temporary thing.  Professional football, which has probably been the true national pastime for decades, is in trouble.  From outkickthecoverage.com: 

This past weekend the NFL had three very competitive games among its four divisional round playoff contests.

Unfortunately for the league, ratings continued to plummet.

In fact, ratings are plummeting so much that virtually no major media outlets are even talking about ratings at all. It’s almost like the league and its television partners have put out the code red not to acknowledge the collapse in viewership so far in 2018.

Adding all these numbers up 120.8 million viewers watched the NFL divisional round playoffs in 2018 vs. 144.1 million who watched in 2017, a decline of 23.3 million total viewers.

That’s an overall viewership decline of over 16%, even steeper than last week’s 13% playoff decline. (Even if you leave out the Packers-Cowboys numbers completely the NFL playoff ratings would have still been down 10.3%).

These playoff numbers weren’t just bad compared to last year either, they hit a ten year low.

COMMENT:  Are we seeing the death of a major sport?  No one can predict, But the combination of increasing public awareness of serious injuries, and the absurd, anti-American "taking a knee" by outrageously overpaid players, has cast a pall over football.

Not much is being done to improve matters.  The feelings of the fans are simply ignored.

January 18, 2018