Why Have NFL Ratings Gone Down?

As I sit in my living room watching Monday Night Football I begin to realize why ratings have gone down. Personally, I believe that football has become “soft”, for a lack of a better term. The excitement and violence that I have grown to love the game for has been removed. Quite frankly, NFL football has become boring to watch. That fact however, is an entirely different discussion. The fact of the matter is NFL ratings are down for a number of reasons, however, the least impactful of these reasons is the protesting of the National Anthem by players. For starters, the ratings for all of network television are down. Ratings are down 5% compared to last year, and while that may seem like a large decline, the rest of network television was down

There is such a discrepancy in the quality of teams and games often turn into blowouts or sh*t shows, where neither team is any good and the game is just awful to watch. Quite frankly, other than the later part of the season and the playoffs, no one wants to watch football when you can download a free app on your smartphone and check up on scores from there.To add on to this, many followers of the NFL or “fans” never partake in watchings games to root for teams, but instead, switch between games to cheer for individual players. The trend of fantasy football leagues is rising faster than ever before. Which questions the integrity of the game. In an article written for “Around the NFL”, Kevin Patra writes, “only six teams in the NFC own a losing record. A whopping 10 teams in the AFC are below .500.” This shows the clear discrepancy in the league today. While one conference never completely dominates year after year, there aren’t many true contenders. For the past decade the New England Patriots have been the kings of the AFC, only losing their division once in the past thirteen years. It is stats like this that make many regular season games pointless to watch. And in the NFC, there never seems to be a clear standout within the conference and once they have all been filtered through and one has been declared champion,

What ever happened to just playing football, quit the speculations, quit with the predictions, quit with repetitive TV shows, just let the games play out. And please, for the love of everything that is holy, quit trying to put a football game on everyday of the week. We, as viewers, don’t want football on Thursday, and we sure as hell don’t want it on Saturday, a day which is reserved solely for college football. So please, just stop trying to force content down our throats. With all of that being said let me boil it down to a main point for those of you who still believe that NFL ratings are down primarily due to the protests of the National Anthem by players. The NFL gets old, it gets boring, why watch an entire three hour production when you can quarterly updates and breaking news on your