The NFL ratings are sagging in my house for 3 reasons:

1. I'm a lifelong Browns fan and an avid golfer. For the 1st half of each season while the weather is nice, I choose the activity that has potential to produce a sliver of enjoyment on Sunday afternoons. I do usually watch the Sunday night game if it's an interesting match up.

2. The games take too long and I don't spend the money to subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket. I cannot change the station to any of the other games during commercials, so I get annoyed at the constant breaks in action. I used to get RedZone, but I realized I didn't really miss it last season when I didn't buy it. I hate fantasy football and suck at sports gambling, so I have nothing really connecting me to the majority of the games.

3. I prefer college football Saturdays, so I gorge on football on Saturday and do other things on Sunday if the weather is nice. At least in college football, there are interesting stories about everything from the schools, the coaches, the fans and the players. The NFL is full of boring coaches and criminals. I am entertained by a little showmanship, and the NFL has clamped down on everything from touchdown celebrations and sack dances, to the shoes the players wear. Let the players have some fun. How else will we identify the interesting characters and the villains?

Never pegged you as a firewood guy, Alan. Fascinating what you can learn on BA.com!

OK. I'll bite. Where does this idea come from? It is a totally bogus idea. It is a straw man built up by people who need ratings. Or who want to get people fired up so they vote a certain way. Totally, totally bogus.

NFL games are hyper patriotic. Huge flags on the field. Military tie-ins galore. Honoring first responders left and right. It is everywhere at NFL games.

A few players take a knee to protest something and Commissioner Goodell is "welcoming liberal views and discarding conservative ones"?

Huh? That idea has to drive the NFL crazy.

The NFL has decided to not force their employees to stand during the national anthem. The vast, vast, vast majority stand. Overwhelmingly the NFL is pro-military and first responders.

We have to stop letting the tail wag the dog. And, that's all the media is lately. Using the tail to get big ratings....

Agree with BTC here.

Anything that isn't new is not as popular as it once was. The world is always changing but especially in the last 10-20 years and how the internet and constant connectivity has changed everything. TV & sports and general are dropping hard.

But I do think this is the beginning of a prolonged trend for the NFL, I have been calling it for years. I know hundreds of parents of elementary school kids, out of 100 I would say maybe 5 actively push football for their kid, 15 don't care, 30 will try to steer their kid away from it but won't fight it, and half will simply not let their kid play it. And a lot of these parents forbidding it are huge football fans. That isn't sustainable long-term, sport fandom and sport participation is very directly correlated.

I also think one reason missing from the discussion that no one brings up or even realizes is the lack of parity in the NFL. There's a huge myth that the NFL has great parity when in fact it is poor. Of all the professional sports in the last 15 years, the sport that everyone thinks has terrible parity actually has the best by far...baseball.

The Steelers run a "god fearing program"? I think I've heard everything now. Instead of just projecting patriotic ideals on a game where guys try to take each other's heads off, it's religion too.

Ok guys, I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek with my comment above. Yes, I am from the Valley and love both the Steelers and high school football in the Valley. I figured the reference to Big Red would get some going, and I agree Alan, although they do make the State Championship game on a regular basis, they have had serious issues. And no, I am not meaning to drag religion into the NFL mix, unless of course you have never had the experience of attending a home Steelers game, which some do equate to being a "religious experience" in itself. The Steelers do represent our region well, and they are old school. No cheerleaders or domed stadiums.

If elements of activism and civil disobedience get mixed in with the sport's long history and tradition, what on earth is wrong with that?

As an agnostic, I've never been bothered by the heavy amounts of religion involved with sports. Never stopped watching a game as a result. Never gave it a moment's thought. I know where my beliefs lie, if others have different ones, I'm happy to have a great dialogue, but I'm not insecure in my thoughts to boycott opposing views.

I find it interesting and odd that one guy silently taking a knee before a game affects so many (remember, he was doing it for two weeks in the preseason before anybody noticed, so it wasn't necessarily for attention). I disagree with him, but it wouldn't stop me from watching a game. There are other reasons that I would stop watching, but I never watch the national anthem on a nationally televised game anyway...other than the Super Bowl. So it honestly affects me and the game none. If he was taking a knee on a snap in protest, that would be different. That would affect the integrity of the game.

No, people aren't alarmed or mortified about the potential health risks to players long term, not worried about the rapists, spousal abusers, or other criminals in professional sports. The real crime is the guy kneeling before the game even starts.

**I'm not a Kaepernick fan. Doesn't strike me as somebody who has any real answers or ideas, just complaints. As is a constant message at my place of work, "Don't just admire the problem, offer solutions." I would rather hear his solutions, but no matter what, it won't affect my viewership.**

That's the thing. Nobody said it's a crime. Nobody's stopping him. What they are doing is voicing their displeasure with him. That's what activism is going to generate--a response. Did you think the public would just sit on their hands and disregard him?

Finn Ohio a couple of points. Do you have any school age boys? The reason I ask concerns seeing plummeting football numbers with your own eyes. You have posted that bogus link about participation before and I have posted the real numbers, not some phony ESPN-NFL everything is just fine scam. Others besides myself have talked about seeing middle school programs actually disband in the Columbus area where once they fielded strong teams. Where I grew up in rural north central Ohio, once proud high schools are having a hard time fielding teams.

http://www.vocativ.com/298019/youth-football-participatio... /

However this whole Kaepernick civil disobedience thing is really appalling. I had a couple of interesting discussion with an African American man in my parish who is a few years older than me. His father was from the deep south and active in the Civil Rights Marches. His father will have nothing to do with Kaepernick and the son (an army veteran) whom I know says the whole thing makes him angry. He can't stand Kaepernick and can't believe how many people have fallen for his shtick.

The idea of comparing Kaepernick to Civil Rights marchers of the 60s is just plain insulting. It would be like going to an art gallery and being told that you are viewing a work of one of the masters, when in fact it was the work of some beret wearing guy hanging out on the sidewalk with some paint brushes and an easel pretending to be an artist.

One comment - if the games taking too long is really a reason, then watching any D1 college football game would have a time as a similar deterrent as well because they're longer than NFL games most of the time.

This is where I need emoji's.

Come on Finn Ohio. We are both in the same line of work. Let's not play the game of projection here. Since you say you are not religious, I will use terminology from your neck of the woods and point to Sigmund Freud and his use of projection. I have no idea if this website is a crazy right wing or crazy left wing site. I typed in youth football numbers and this site came up with numbers to match the content. It is the statistics and numbers that matter to me. It is akin to someone doing a serious interview and it is sold to Rolling Stone or Playboy, it isn't the writers fault.

I have no idea of what city you live in but here in the Columbus area (and you would think an area growing like Columbus) there would be skyrocketing youth participation levels in football as there are in youth soccer and lacrosse in the city and it's suburbs. It is not the case. If you can't understand that I am not sure what other evidence I could give. You have made up your mind and logic and statistics won't persuade you.