Women and Football.

Seems every sports news site and every football origination from the NFL to the NCAA are hell bent on increasing women viewership. I’ve got some bad news for you all you only do so at the risk of losing your viewership.

I’ve been married to a loving and devote wife for going on 25 years, she has tolerated my obsession for all things football these 25 years now, because one she loves me 2 it’s really only about 16 weeks out of 52 or at least it used to be. She’ll appease me occasionally and watch a game and pretend to be interested just so she can spend time with me, generally this happens late in the season because I think she misses my company, well I hope. She has a general football knowledge and is probably more up on what teams are really doing then craig james which doesn’t say much. But to go to a football game, to read daily a football site to take more than a passing interest in the game is near ever going to happen.

Even in the dead of winter she took a pass on going to AZ for the Fiesta bowl, same too for a trip to DC, Toledo just 70 miles away to watch her first in person Boise State game, nope she has curtains to sew.

I can always tell when my articles are starting to get a little to pink panty hose and I need to turn it up a notch when my women visits become more the 20% of site traffic, and invariably total site traffic shrinks.

Now don’t get me wrong there is plenty of women out there about 20% of the population that love and know the game just as well as most fans, there is about another 15% who due to some loving attachment consider themselves fans but are still of the did he really have to hit that guy that hard variety. The rest which is about 70% could give a rat’s arse about any of this and just are buying time until the whole thing is over so they can get on with their lives. For some reason the NFL the NCAA and many news site and football organization are fixated on capturing the” I don’t care market “while diminishing the sport for those that truly love it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ofko6NG0HQI

Sorry NFL, I lost my mother to cancer at the early age of 37, but every time I see the pink for cancer month I want to turn the channel. We get it support cancer research, but this pink everywhere is over blown. Add in all this pink panty hose web sites and blogs and one would think Dennis Leary would be unwelcomed to post!

A few years back Heavy weight boxing was the ticket and even middle weight and feather weights had huge pay preview draws today no one cares about the sport, because we have the UFC!!! Now I’m sure if we were to go back into the 90’s (not that long ago) and said by 2010 no one would pay to see a heavy weight fight but a new martial arts form would totally out stage boxing, people would of laughed at you, but here we are. This is the path the NFL and to a larger degree college football is heading. It’s like political parties, the reason neither ever throws a knockout blow is as soon as they get all the power they screw it all up and that’s just what is happening to football. Between the Not Football League and the BCS the powers that be are doing everything they can to destroy themselves. Everyone is trying so hard to tone it down, to protect their money to attempt to make things fair. All the while doing just the opposite. I could give a million examples of this from the BCS statement that they make every game count in the season which leads us to ask well if that’s true why does bama get a second chance? To Hit a the Packer QB to hard while in the act of throwing is a flag but if the Packers take 2 steps after your young QB throws the ball and levels him that’s ok? It just has gotten all too soft and fuzzy for the back bone fan, the fan that built the league in the first place the fan that paid the way. More and more fans are feeling cheated just like with boxing. 

Beauty of a capitalist system is one day something else will come along and fill that need and when that happens you will be wondering why you can’t fill a stadium anymore and the TV contract shrink, what happened?. The answer simple you stopped being what you were in the first place.

Women in large numbers will never be a fan base to build a contact sport with, and certainly attempting to try will not only alienate your core men base but the diehard women fans as well.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OhyhzlL-hh8

There still is time flush the BCS go to a real play off in the FBS, fire Roger Goodell hire Condoleezza Rice, but baring that I see a decade of slow decline until something else replace what we have.

4 years ago I watched every NFL game I could, had several fantasy teams, today I haven’t watch but one play and that was while I walked thru my living room I have almost no interest in the game. I once went to games, spent money buy NFL gear, today I haven’t spent 1 dime towards the league and I don’t see any reasons for that to change.  I’m sure I’m not the only who sees the nfl now as nothing more than a light weight protected class sport vs the gladiator sport it once was.  To me the product has decreased in value I no longer find it must watch tv, more like maybe watch tv. As more and more of those like me who help build the nfl move away from it the more and more we become viable to a competing source.

Five years ago if you would of said to me, you will be more interested in baseballs offseason then a Lions run for the playoff’s I would of laughed yet over the last 5 years I have spent 1000’s time more money and time on baseball then the NFL, and maybe that’s why it will remain America’s game, as it is  true to its self sport there is..

Rome wasn’t built in a day and it certainly didn’t fall in a day, but after years and years of appeasement did it to fail, and so to unless the tide is turned will the nfl.