Don't get me wrong: I love football. It's thrilling, complex, unbelievably impressive, and overall one of the most enjoyable sports on the planet. The 2017-2018 season kicks off tomorrow, and there's a lot to be excited about. But still, it's hard to shake the feeling that the football watching experience has... degraded. It's bizarre, especially when you look at all of the memorable events of the past ten years: the Saints' miraculous 2009 season, eight different Super Bowl winners, Peyton Manning 2.0, the Seahawks' Legion of Boom, TebowMania, Butt Fumble, the OBJ catch, and—love 'em or hate 'em—two of the five most iconic Super Bowl wins in history by the Patriots. We're barely scratching the surface here, but again, something doesn't feel right going into this season. And that's because, while football as a sport is still great, the NFL is just plain awful. Separating the sport from the organization is tough, especially when the sport would basically cease to exist without it. And I think that may be at the root of the problem: the NFL has a monopoly on football, and this allows them to get away with all manner of crudeness and poor decision-making. There's a lot to unpack here, so let's take a tour through some of the most egregious errors and look at why the state of the league may undermine another potentially great season of football. TERRIBLE LEADERSHIP You can't begin a discussion about how awful the NFL is without talking about this guy right here. Roger Goodell is a fool, a liar, and basically the Donald Trump of football. Since 2008, he has bungled his way through scandal after scandal, at one moment beholden to the whims of the 32 team owners and at another caving under immense pressure from the fans--despite what he may say to the press. A small sample of his greatest hits of ineptitude involve Spygate, Deflategate, and the hideous Ray Rice scandal, but one very recent incident stands out. In 2012, famed linebacker Junior Seau committed suicide, re-igniting fierce debate and scrutiny over safety and concussions in the NFL—specifically their relationship to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which Seau suffered from. And this is far from the first time it's come up; players sued the league over this in 2011, saying that they weren't informed of the link between the two, and the movie Concussion taught us that concerns over this began over a decade ago (and also that we should, you know.) Seau was absolutely beloved by fans and league officials alike, and the fervor that his suicide created caused Goodell and the NFL finally cave. They pledged $30 million dollars to the National Institutes of Health, beginning a partnership to fully research the CTE issue and develop solutions. For once, it looked like the league would be cooperative. But then, on July 25 of this year, a slightly sensationalized but still unsettling study revealed that 99% of brains examined from deceased NFL players showed signs of CTE. What was the NFL's response to this? Four days later, they ended the partnership with the NIH—with more than half of the pledged money unspent. Under the leadership of Goodell, the league has had about as productive a relationship with truth as our current White House administration, and there has been no show of remorse, self-awareness, or a willingness to cooperate with anyone who won't toe the company line. Every time we pay to watch a game or buy an NFL product, this goon gets more money. It's enough to make interacting with football at all a moral dilemma, and having an amazing sport like this held hostage is sickening. (And here's a bonus list by GQ of Goodell's top 25 blunders. Great read.) TERRIBLE OPTICS This is wrapped up in the "terrible leadership" aspect, but the errors in public relations and political correctness (unfortunately, that's become a dirty word to many) aren't limited to Goodell alone. This culture of deflecting and ignoring the truth has seeped down into the lower rungs of the organization, and we see this more and more and more. For one thing, the domestic violence problem is truly becoming an epidemic. Players like Ray Rice and Greg Hardy, both guilty of domestic abuse, were defended by coaches and teammates until backlash forced the teams to get rid of them. Tyreek Hill, a current receiver for the Chiefs, has been lauded by fans, coaches, and the media for his impressive athleticism—ignoring the fact that he pleaded guilty in 2014 for punching his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach. Some have acted appropriately; the Giants cut kicker Josh Brown after he admitted to domestic assault, but it's always balanced out by some foolish decision by the league. Ezekiel Elliot was just suspended for 6 games (more than Ray Rice was!), and the evidence against him is far from ironclad. Like many choices by the NFL, it seems reactive, as if they're just trying to "make up" for their past failings by being heavy-handed in a high-profile situation—exactly like Deflategate. And then, of course, there's the National Anthem protest scandal. The reaction by the general American public was heinously disgusting as is—sorry a player inconvenienced you with their values and a silent, nonviolent protest—but the league doubled down and effectively blacklisted him. The reasons are many and all ugly, especially as they relate to the deep-seated and ongoing racism within the NFL. Apparently, punching your pregnant girlfriend in the stomach isn't enough for a team to abandon you, but the second you try to make a (quiet, peaceful) statement about being black in today's America, your career is over. Though it may seem like yesterday's news, the specter of this fiasco is still around. After a dozen players on the Cleveland Browns knelt for the anthem last week, the Cleveland Police Union is now protesting by refusing to hold the flag at their games. The irony and hypocrisy would be hysterical if it wasn't so depressing, and so emblematic of the NFL as a whole. And speaking of being tone-deaf, ESPN recently hosted a fantasy football "auction" on live TV. It's common practice in money leagues to auction off players during the draft, but the optics of "selling" black athletes on television a week after the Charlottesville riots were... well... TERRIBLE COACHING Being a head coach in the NFL must be one of the most difficult jobs on the planet, because it seems like there are only 5 or 6 at a time that are even capable of doing so. The world of football coaches is incredibly small—if your dad or your dad's friend isn't in the business, you'll probably never be unless you're a former player—and it means that there are too few new ideas and far too many chances for bad but established coaches. Sure, surprises like Jack Del Rio and Bruce Arians, who finally got the shot he deserved after decades of struggling through the ranks, have led to some explosive and entertaining seasons. But Andy Reid and Chuck Pagano are still hanging around, well past their primes and with their teams winning despite them in many circumstances. Jeff Fisher, Chip Kelly, and Gus Bradley were still coaching at this time last year, and we still aren't rid of characters like Mike Mularkey and Jason Garrett. Front offices are deathly afraid of change, and that's why they'll hang onto guys like Marvin Lewis, who's never won a first-round playoff game, for 13 years. Even the good coaches have been bad as of late. Mike McCarthy has let conservative game plans sink the Packers in the playoffs three years running (though the 2015 NFC Championship loss to the Seahawks remains the worst). Pete Carroll got Jedi mind-tricked in the closing minute of Super Bowl XLIX and threw away the game to the Patriots. His pupil Dan Quinn apparently learns through imitation, because he choked away a 28-3 3rd quarter lead in Super Bowl LI to those same Patriots. Coaching against Bill Belichick isn't exactly a fair fight, but it demonstrates how far behind the others have fallen. Rather than concoct new strategies and try to gain the upper hand, most coaches have either a) shamelessly co-opted the pass-heavy offense and punted on defense or b) stuck rigidly to tradition and insist on running the ball in obvious situations. When coaches innovate, they succeed; just look at what Jim Harbaugh did to the 49ers before getting run out of San Francisco, or what Pete Carroll did with the Seahawks secondary. Unfortunately, only a couple coaches other than Belichick understand this. Take a look at this ranking of the 32 head coaches and tell me if there are more than two or three people that really, truly excite you. I'll wait. TERRIBLE ANALYSIS I could just say the names "Stephen A. Smith" and "Skip Bayless" and get out of here. Still, I do want to briefly touch on the "hot take" culture they've created, and why it's so damaging to sports writing as a whole. Smith and Bayless started their show First Take in 2007, and it's there they came up with the "hot take," or saying whatever bullshit comes to mind the second something happens and then arguing about it for the sake of arguing. It's the kind of thing that led people to say Tom Brady's career was over in 2014, only for him to win the Super Bowl a few months later. It's the kind of thing that led Bayless to say Tim Tebow could have won a Super Bowl, or Smith saying any of this. All these guys do is yell and scream and create things to fight over—they literally call him "Screaming A." Smith—and the NFL has been there to support them. When Bayless left First Take in 2016, the league started promoting the new format of the show during Monday Night Football half-time, putting Smith in the spotlight once again. ESPN and the NFL website put "hot take" in their headlines like it's something to be proud of. To be perfectly clear: it isn't. This kind of reporting provides nothing but stirring up controversy, and it takes away from the worthwhile work that actual sports journalists like Bill Simmons or Matt Miller do. And speaking of Simmons, he used to work for ESPN before being suspended multiple times for bad-mouthing Roger Goodell. Funny how that works. TERRIBLE FANTASY LEAGUES If there's one aspect of the football-watching experience that's exploded over the past decade, it's fantasy leagues. Almost every sports-affiliated website has their own client, including NFL.com itself, and daily fantasy play on websites like FanDuel and DraftKings have basically created an entire industry around it. Even The League, one of the most popular shows among millennials and stoners, is built on the premise of a fantasy football league. However, as any player or outside observer can tell you, fantasy is obnoxious and complete B.S. We all know the guy who won't stop talking about his team, even to people who have no concept of who Jay Ajayi is. We all know the guy who says he'll join your league, then doesn't show up to the draft, has his team picked automatically, and rolls everyone else (the Taco). And we all know that, at the end of the day, fantasy is almost entirely luck-based and a one-way ticket to disappointment for 90% of players. Sure, you can make educated guesses, but there's just no way to truly predict what a given player will do on a given day. You have better luck winning a game of Mario Party, and at least the mini-games are mostly in your control (unless it's this crap). There's more to this than just obsessive players and crap chute scoring, though. Like so much in the NFL, something sinister is going on beneath the surface. FanDuel and DraftKings had an insane rise to prominence circa 2015, aided by huge partnerships with and heavy advertisement by the NFL itself (their RedZone highlight channel was sponsored by DraftKings for a time, and FanDuel had a segment on Monday Night Football). These sites allow players to pay for a weekly chance to win huge sums of money for a high score; DraftKings is currently offering $1 billion for a "perfect" team. This has come under intense scrutiny because daily fantasy is online gambling—technically, it's Unlawful Internet Gambling. The organizations have defended themselves, saying that fantasy is a game of "skill" instead of "luck," but this tests the limits of common sense. Several states have banned the sites for servicing their citizens until they attain proper licenses, including Alabama and Nevada, and a high-profile legal battle in New York has led to the sites paying a hefty tax to the state education fund. But again, there's more unsavory behavior going on past this in the daily fantasy world. Remember those big cash prizes that you can win for having the best teams? Well, it appears not everyone is playing on the same field. In 2015, FanDuel and DraftKings got busted for insider trading, after a DraftKings employee won a $350,000 FanDuel pot using usage data from his own site. Class-action suits rained down from above, as did an FBI investigation. And finally, to put a cherry on top of the troubling behavior sundae, the two sites attempted to merge in late 2016. The FTC rightfully blocked this merger, saying that it would create a monopoly on daily fantasy sports. Again, I want to stress that football is an incredible sport. It attracts the world's best athletes, features thrilling competition and dazzling plays, and is so unbelievably complex and rewarding that it can facilitate discussion and analysis all year round. However, as long as the NFL is the sole purveyor of American football—and it looks like that's unlikely to change in our lifetimes—there will be moral baggage that comes along with being a patron of the sport. Maybe we'll get lucky, and Goodell will step aside and let the football equivalent of Adam Silver come in and get us on the road to recovery. Maybe there will be a revolution of self-awareness, and league personalities will stop espousing the subtle discrimination that runs deep in the football world. But right now, all we have is that hope.
I don't have many answers, other than you should speak with your wallet. Watch a game at your local sports bar or restaurant, instead of watching on cable or paying the league for a TV or online streaming package. Don't go to the games, don't buy the merchandise, and avoid sites like ESPN, NFL.com, and daily fantasy sports. Read the local beat writers for each team instead—they're the ones who are working hard and need the views. The game of football is what's important, and right now, the NFL is an obstacle on the road to enjoying it.
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