Why “Boycott the NFL” Will Fail

Marky Billson, host of Tri-Cities Sports NOW

How far will the “Boycott the National Football League” movement go? While TV ratings did drop last year- nearly four million fewer viewers a week tuned in to Sunday Night Football in 2017 than in 2015- where are the conservative viewers turned off to pro football because of Colin Kaepernick going?

NASCAR- long a haven for red state sports fans- is only declining in popularity. Baseball isn’t going to gain fans for as long as it has a commissioner who wishes to bash every aspect of the game and institute whatever gimmick or politically correct narrative he can come up.

Memo to baseball, when your new breed of fans wish to turn the game into algebra problems, you have a problem.

The NBA has become so left wing it must be viewed as a cult sport. The cult may be relatively large, but it is a cult nonetheless, and frankly fans turned off by Kaepernick aren’t going to embrace LeBron James or Greg Popovich.

The sport that might be gaining the most from the Kaepernick backlash is hockey. This year’s Stanley Cup Finals are the most watched in 21 years.

Have fans upset with anthem protests given up one contact sport (football) for another (ice hockey)?

By the way, as you might expect the largest television ratings for the Stanley Cup come from Washington and Las Vegas. The Capitals also are showing their value as a regional franchise since Baltimore and Richmond are the cities with the third and fourth highest ratings, but as evidence of the changes of the times, Nashville drew the 10th highest ratings in the country for the Stanley Cup Finals.

Still, there seems to be a new wave of thought with the Alliance of American Football and XFL starting up that these leagues may challenge the NFL.

No more than how the Pacific Coast League challenges Major League Baseball.

I’m the first to admit the Alliance has hired some very fine and intriguing coaches. Birmingham hired Tim Lewis to be their head coach and that is a superb selection. I’ve covered Lewis and he is a brilliant coach.

But the United Football League (remember that?) hired good coaches. The United States Football League had Jim Mora, George Allen, and Steve Spurrier, now the head coach of the Alliance’s Orlando franchise, to start with.

The Alliance and XFL aren’t designed to compete with the NFL. They are AAA leagues. They’ll play in Memphis, not New York City. It’s the World League of American Football all over again without Barcelona; the Continental Football League without Wheeling and Jackie Robinson.

A gridiron star at UCLA, Jackie Robinson was the General Manager of the 1966 Brooklyn Dodgers of the minor league Continental Football League.

The league will own the franchises, which means they are going to be looking for the best stadium deals, not really to extend roots in a community when fans of losing teams stay away at the end of the season.

Fans won’t watch the best players; rather ones looking for second chances. Maybe a Tommy Maddox will rise from the ashes; but is the lure of seeing “The Next Tommy Maddox” going to make you a passionate fan of a league with no local rooting interest?

Tommy Maddox (left) was the XFL’s Most Valuable Player in 2001. He would become the Pittsburgh Steelers’ starting quarterback for two seasons before Ben Roethlisberger (right) assumed the position.

In the history of Major American Professional Sports in this country there are really only two that have “made it”- the American League taking on the National League in 1901 and the American Football League taking on the NFL in 1960.

Some have had various degrees of success. The mergers of the All-American Football League, American Basketball Association, and World Hockey Association brought some franchises to the established pro sports leagues but not all. Heck, the Pittsburgh Pirates, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals all started in the American Association, a rival baseball league of the 19th Century that fizzed out following the 1891 season.

But the others all failed. Generally speaking there wasn’t enough money.

And even leagues that have lasted that don’t take on the pretense of being a “major” league, such as the Arena Football League, are now wallowing in obscurity.

The Arena Football League now has only four franchises, the same as when it started in 1987.

When a Major League Baseball team calls up a player from the minors; the hope is he’ll become a star. When a NFL team will sign a player from the Alliance or XFL, the hope will be he makes second string.

If you’re so really angry at the NFL you wish to see it fail, then there are only two ways in the modern age a rival major professional sports league, football or otherwise, could overtake it.

One is to have a global league, with franchises eschewing smaller American markets for larger international ones hoping football will catch on to an audience brought up on soccer or cricket. Teams would then make their own media deals with internet companies (Amazon, Netflix) and bid for the best talent, hoping a Heisman Trophy winner or first round draft pick will find not only more money but the idea of playing in, say, New Dehli exotic enough to give it a chance.

And ultimately what that would do is take football and revenue away from American heartland cities, where the opposition to anthem protests and the like is the greatest.

The other is to have players themselves buy shares of the team and reap in the profits. This has been experimented with before (1890 Players baseball League), but it may work in theory more than practicality.

Even in the 19th Century players wanted more rights. The Players League was an attempt for baseball players themselves to run their own league, but they failed in part by charging 50 cents a ticket as compared to the National League’s 25.

It would be difficult to get a league of hundreds of players together, each paying thousands if not millions of dollars, for a stake that would have risk. Would a punter stand to make more money than a starting quarterback if the punter bought more of a stake in the franchise? How would players be cut? What would the incentive for individual performance be?

The National Football League is the strongest professional sports organization in America. Though wounded, it is likely more a scratch than anything else, and one the league is attempting to heal.

Boycott the NFL if you wish, but if the end result is successful, the demise of the league will be from bleeding hearts wishing to call football barbaric, as boxing was called prior to that sport’s demise.

Because ultimately Kaepernick is a player of dubious talent who will likely be forgotten along the lines of Dave Meggysey and Eli Strand. He’ll become Jane Fonda or Ashley Judd speaking out against perceived societal ills and over time more people will want him to shut up than anything else.

Eli Strand was better known as “Eli From Westchester,” a prominent caller to WFAN talk shows who primarily spoke on issues of race.

But the damage he inflicted on the brand of football will remain. The other side of the political spectrum will take over, ask the youth of America why they wish to be beaten up playing football and offer basketball and soccer as alternatives.

Which are two sports whose culture is diametrically opposed to conservative, militaristic, injury-riddled football.

Marky Billson hosts Tri-Cities Sports NOW on 1420 NBC Sports Radio Tri-Cities 12–2 p.m. ET weekdays. Watch his shows live and archived here and here.