Column: The demise of football is coming

Professional football should enjoy its time on top of the sporting world while it can.
Although the sport currently rules the landscape of athletics in America, it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable fall takes place.

Just look at what is happening to the game.

First of all, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the rest of the league’s executives are trying to do the impossible: make a violent game safe.

From excessive fines to moving the kickoff to the 35-yard line to relentless flagging, Goodell and his partners are trying to transform the game into something the die-hard fan doesn’t like to see.

Fans love the Ed Reeds and Troy Polamalus of the world, high-flying safeties that crush any receiver who dares set foot in their territory.

As football goes further away from this violent style of play, more fans become outraged that the game isn’t close to what they grew up with.

Still, the league is forced to apply these rules because of the more than 2,000 former players suing the NFL for supposedly withholding information about concussions and other long-term effects caused by a career of playing football.

Health-wise, football is heading down the same road boxing once did. Boxing used to be one of the top sports in America, but the violent nature ultimately caused its downfall. Parents didn’t want their kids to spend their lives taking blows to the head, so they strongly encouraged or sometimes forced their children into safer sports. Now, boxing is an afterthought in American sports culture.

With information available to everyone now, 2012 parents are beginning to drive their kids in the direction of basketball or baseball rather than the concussion-prone sport of football.

If it were only for the aforementioned reasons, I think football still could survive, even if not as the nation’s top sport.

But the always condemning factor of greed gives football almost no shot of surviving in the long run.

Just like any business, the NFL is trying to continually grow and spread its already incredibly wealthy brand. If you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse, because competition is always improving.

This has led the league to attempt several new gimmicks. Most notably, 2012 is the first year in which a Thursday night game occurs every week of the regular season except for the last two. This year, the league has begun playing annual games in London, and Goodell has been pushing for an 18-game regular season.

While these are great attempts to promote the game’s popularity, they completely contradict any measure taken to increase player safety.

The Thursday night game scheduling forced the Baltimore Ravens to play their first four games in a span of only 18 days.

Traveling to and from London provides the participating teams much less time to rest and recuperate from grueling NFL matches.

And how can anyone possibly think adding two games is a good idea when player safety is the number one concern heading into the future?

I don’t see any way a sport can survive this perfect storm. Fans want the game as violent as possible, player liabilities demand maximum safety and the league’s plan to promote the game disrupts any growth in either area.

The NFL is far from invincible. Other sports have had their time in the limelight only to see their clocks expire.

Baseball, formerly “America’s national pastime,” is slowly declining and clearly behind football in popularity. Horse racing and boxing used to rule the sporting world and now rarely draw any attention.

It surely won’t happen fast, either. For now, fans will continue to watch their beloved sport despite their objections to how the game is changing.

It may take 10 or even 20 years as today’s athletic youth begins to focus on safer sports and the younger generation of fans replaces the traditional gridiron-loving crowd.

But unless Goodell and his coworkers come up with some genius plan to satisfy every party, football’s demise will come.

It’s just a matter of time.

­— tlstutzm@indiana.edu