Sports journalist Jason Whitlock, on the April 25th episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, happened to knock it out of the ballpark with his comments — bottom line, fundamental, common sense comments — about the NFL, players who kneel, Colin Kaepernick and the actual role of the NFL itself.
Damn Jason Whitlock to daring to speak the truth: the NFL is a television show and NFL players are commodities in a television show. Abuse the consumers or viewers of this television show and you stand to lose eyeballs and ratings. Hence you stand to lose money and the program itself.
If you haven’t heard — as a direct result of this, Vince McMahon said he’s bringing back the XFL in 2020. Why would he do that? From GQ.com:
Vince McMahon Is Bringing Back the XFL and Diving into the Culture Wars
by Jay Willis
And there’s no better time to try it out than now.
Nearly two decades after the XFL’s first and only season ended with the Los Angeles Xtreme besting the San Francisco Demons in the first and only Million Dollar Game, Vince McMahon’s football league will return to a stadium near you in January of 2020. “I wanted to do this since the day we stopped the other one,” the billionaire WWE chairman told ESPN on Thursday. Although he denied that the timing of his decision is motivated by the NFL’s well-documented recent ratings slide—”What has happened there is their business,” he said politely—it’s hard to believe that the timing is coincidental. For a multitude of reasons, there are plenty of fans right now who have become disenchanted with the No Fun League, and for a businessman as shrewd as McMahon, the formula for giving those people what they want has never been more apparent.
As I’ve said numerous times — and as I’ve had it hammered into my thick skull on too many occasions to count in law enforcement — timing is everything.
“We’re going to give the game of football back to fans.”
To summarize: I don’t believe I’m farting in church when I say that the NFL’s ratings are plummeting because average viewers, frankly, don’t give one fragmentary shite about the political leanings of players.
In fact, these days, most viewers seek solace in sports for the exact opposite of what too many players and the NFL are embracing: politics.
NFL viewers — hello? we are customers — are sick and tired of politics. We just want a release. We want some stats, we want some hits, we want our local teams to win, we want to get excited about next Sunday’s big game. Trust me: everything else is extraneous. We seek out sports events because we want to, for just a few hours, try to forget about the chaos surrounding our lives.
It’s an escape. Plain and simple.
My prognostication is this: if the NFL continues to soothe the perceived “injustices” by NFL players (more black millionaires in sports than at any time in sports history), this could be the last season the NFL flourishes. Ratings are plummeting. It is clearly overexposed. Get rid of Thursday Night Football. Get the players in line. Have them play and then babble incessantly about injustice on their own time.
The NFL needs to realize two recent fundamental changes:
- Many people have already gotten used to doing something else on Sunday and/or Monday. Going on trips with the family. Cleaning the garage. Playing a sport themselves. Coaching. Mentoring.
- Watching and/or supporting the NFL falls into the category of “discretionary spending” for families. It is far from mandatory. It’s an option, not a demand.
Let me be frank: I do not give one flying monkey what any NFL player thinks about _________. Fill in the blank. They either play the game or I am gone.
Guess what?
I’m not alone.
And if the NFL dies?
I’m okay with that.
I’ll live.
They too are discretionary.
BZ
