Nooooo!!!!!!!!

[CharlieK]

Scary stuff.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...k-end-football

[CajunFun]

I think it's also accurate, his analysis makes very good sense. Once HS football collapses-- and is there any doubt that lawsuits over injuries will become more prevalent?-- colleges will lose their feeder teams.

The lawsuits and the loss of talent will force smaller programs to drop football first, until there are only a few big schools still playing it, and they will have to drop it for fear of looking more like gulags than universities.

Rather than fret, I think we would spend our time better thinking about where we should be investing resources now, so that if, or when, football goes away we will already be on track.

[CajunRed]

It could happen...but the chance of it happening in the next 50 or so years (I probably could have said 150 years) is not reality. When he compared the possible demise of football to that of fortune 500 companies, I could have stopped reading.

[Turbine]

I think it's also accurate, his analysis makes very good sense. Once HS football collapses-- and is there any doubt that lawsuits over injuries will become more prevalent?-- colleges will lose their feeder teams.

The lawsuits and the loss of talent will force smaller programs to drop football first, until there are only a few big schools still playing it, and they will have to drop it for fear of looking more like gulags than universities.

Rather than fret, I think we would spend our time better thinking about where we should be investing resources now, so that if, or when, football goes away we will already be on track.

OK . . .putting Fun down for . . . Invest in Track.

[CharlieK]

Best correlation is boxing. If you had told people 50 years ago boxing would be a marginalized sport they wouldn't have believed it either.

[CajunRed]

Boxer was NEVER like football is. Young kids don't start boxing at 5 years old in their local recreation park. And their aren't boxing teams in middle...junior high...and high schools in every town throughout the country. And college boxing doesn't make millions...billions...for colleges and the networks year in and year out.

It ain't the same.

[CharlieK]

Everything you just described was the case for boxing. Kids did start young and box all through high school. And it used to be a dominant professional sport, not on the scale of pro football now but that's a function of the size of the economy and rise of television. Boxing was huge in the first half of the century. Thats not my opinion it's a historical fact.

[CajunEXPRESS]

Boxing was in fact huge for the poor. It was seen as a ticket out of poverty. The big difference is in spite of high school, golden gloves, and a gym in every town boxing was never considered to be the same on the social sports as football, baseball, basketball, and all the rest. There were of course boxers in every social strata, but to get your brains beat out, your face deformed, well it just never clicked with the participants past the amatures for the most part.

I clearly recall going to high school boxing matches, the gyms were bursting at the seams, but for the most part it ended in high school in a different way than the other sports, people chose not to continue. With basketball, baseball, and football becoming sports that could move the poor out of their situation, boxing shrank on it's own.

[RedTails]

Rather than fret, I think we would spend our time better thinking about where we should be investing resources now, so that if, or when, football goes away we will already be on track.

Soccer. We need a men's program. If anything can replace football in the distant future, it'll be soccer. That's just my bet. It didn't explode in America yet, and interest grows with each new year.

[CharlieK]

Boxing was in fact huge for the poor. It was seen as a ticket out of poverty. The big difference is in spite of high school, golden gloves, and a gym in every town boxing was never considered to be the same on the social sports as football, baseball, basketball, and all the rest. There were of course boxers in every social strata, but to get your brains beat out, your face deformed, well it just never clicked with the participants past the amatures for the most part.

I clearly recall going to high school boxing matches, the gyms were bursting at the seams, but for the most part it ended in high school in a different way than the other sports, people chose not to continue. With basketball, baseball, and football becoming sports that could move the poor out of their situation, boxing shrank on it's own.

Yes. Once the base of support (youth participation) dwindled to just the poor desperate to advance, the sport slowly withered. No doubt football is much more entrenched and orders of magnitude larger in scale than boxing ever was, but that doesnt' mean it can't happen. The money could be it's undoing as once the lawyers get a sniff, it's trouble. Things always change and it's unrealistic to think football can't decline just cause it's super popular now.

Look I don't think it's likely, nor do I hope it occurs, but to think it can't is ignoring history.

[Lexhead]

Soccer. We need a men's program. If anything can replace football in the distant future, it'll be soccer. That's just my bet. It didn't explode in America yet, and interest grows with each new year.

Please shoot me. I would rather watch paint dry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftlfPb0gyxI

Rugby is the answer my friends. If football ever goes away (and I sincerely hope that day never comes), Rugby is the answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-wiB...eature=related

[Just1More]

Best correlation is boxing. If you had told people 50 years ago boxing would be a marginalized sport they wouldn't have believed it either.

You're correct in using boxing of yesteryear as proof that despite the massive fan and money tied to a sport, a sport can die away. I'll even add that if football and head injury data start converging on an epidemic medical proofing, we'll see football disappear much faster than avid boxing did. It is a huge bummer, but I would not take this author's article lightly.

I fear that there is little that equipment, rules and/or modification (short of radical) of the sport itself can do to limit brain injury. If modern science and data starts to prove that not only do concussions create instant and permanent irreversable brain damage but even successive head blows are part of the suspected damage being studied... football could be in for a near instantaneous ending. Medical evidence is on the cusp of substantiating these claims. If substantiated, responsible parenting will kick in (just kidding)... lawsuits will ensue... and football will be knocked out overnight.

This is being given significant attention in the neurological medical community. We shall see where it goes.