The media is about to ruin the sport we love the most

PACardsFan

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If you give a bunch of liberals time, they can ruin just about anything. This is a long time coming.
 

MaoTosiFanClub

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The NFL is the only league in all of sports that has gotten things right for the past 20 years or so:
Umm...not at all but let's address one point at a time here.

Baseball has been ruined by outrageous guaranteed contracts, revenue sharing that effectively allows owners like David Glass of the Royals to actually benefit from not even trying to put a winning product on the field, and steroids
Agreed on the outrageous contracts but the revenue sharing is even worse in football. Teams like the Cardinals cashed checks for years while making their players pay for their own socks. I'll get into steroids later but the biggest reason baseball is perceived to have the worst steroid issue is that it is policed the most diligently there and the romanticism around records in the sport vs the other Big 3 sports.

The NBA has been ruined by too many 19 year-olds coming into the league completely unprepared, crooked officials and over-expansion
Crooked officials for sure but the 19 year olds in the game have been very beneficial for the NBA. See LeBron, Kobe, Durant, etc. Most of the top players in the NBA came into the league as teens or close to it. I also don't think over-expansion is the problem in the NBA more that they're in a few cities they shouldn't be.

Boxing has become a complete sham
Agreed here.

The NFL has had everything right and that is why it is America's most beloved sports product: An effective salary cap, effective policies against steroids and performance enhancing substances, no guaranteed contracts, competitive balance, and a beautiful product on the field. The media and the lawyers are about to take an axe to the league with the concussion issue and the implications that this is a "gladiator sport" which needs to be protected from itself. I have the sinking feeling that over the next 10 years, there will be many changes to the league that will make it less entertaining. The lawsuits and media scrutiny are a tidal wave on the horizon and I just pray that the powers that be are able to stand up to them.
Agreed on the effectiveness of the salary cap although it does shorten some careers leading to a more sloppy game than you saw many years ago. The competitive balance of the NFL is also great but in any sport if you're smart you can generally overcome salary discrepancies. The steroid thing you mention is an absolute joke. The NFL has the worst PED problem in any professional sport, it's just pretty much unenforced so these guys keep getting bigger and faster. Sit down next to an NFL linebacker someday and tell me that guy isn't on something which is probably the HGH the NFL isn't testing for.

The concussion thing is a reality that the NFL faces for one exact reason: the NFL powers that be know that if someone like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady come down with Parkinson's or ALS in a decade like Muhammad Ali for all of us to see on TV then football as we know it would be as done just like boxing. The NFL can't have it's heroes look like that later in life (it has already begun and those guys were half the size and speed as the current crop of HGH-morphed players) or people will just stop playing. In fact people already have stopped playing, youth participation has been in decline for last few years.
 
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LoyaltyisaCurse

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The concussion thing is a reality that the NFL faces for one exact reason: the NFL powers that be know that if someone like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady come down with Parkinson's or ALS in a decade like Muhammad Ali for all of us to see on TV then football as we know it would be as done just like boxing. The NFL can't have it's heroes look like that later in life (it has already begun and those guys were half the size and speed as the current crop of HGH-morphed players) or people will just stop playing. In fact people already have stopped playing, youth participation has been in decline for last few years.

Brett Favre said recently that he is concerned about himself due to forgetfulness etc. since he retired for the 7th time.
 

BigRedRage

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is the media covering incognito and player health going to make people stop watching football? If anything more people watch because of the exposure.
 

JeffGollin

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The Media Universe as I See It

1. The way it works is - a business is created that delivers a responsive audience - who wants to read, see or listen to the business's editorial content - to advertisers who, in turn pays it money for that service.

2. Their whole deal is (1) building as big an audience as possible and (2) selling access to that audience for as much as they can get for it.

3. There are two schools of thought regarding the size and quality of an audience: (a) Do whatever it takes to build as big an audience as possible; even if it cuts journalistic corners and puts sensationalism and dumbed-down content ahead of quality programming and responsible journalism. (b) Deliver a a higher-quality audience that will be more responsive to your advertisers' messages because they trust what you're telling them editorially and, by inference, are more likely to trust your advertisers. (i.e. this is why ads in some publications "pull" better than ads in other publications and command higher rates).

4. "Editorial bias" isn't always blatant. Think of news coverage as shining a flashlight into a dark closet - the things the light shines upon is "the news." From a news standpoint, the things that the light doesn't shine upon "don't exist." By simply exercising control over the flashlight, a media organization can influence what its audience considers to be "reality."

5. It is often said that responsible media would prefer to keep their Advertising and Editorial departments separate (ideally in different countries).

6. But there are a growing number of media organizations who kowtow to important corporate advertisers (examples: Big Pharma, Energy and Financial industries). The really astute advertisers use a very light, subtle hand, but can make their wishes known with a wink, a nod and a well-placed phone call).

7. This ain't your father's media. People increasingly are getting their news and entertainment from alternative on-line sources. This is a mixed bag - the good news being that anyone unhappy with the quality or believability of what they see, read or hear in traditional media can look to other sources they feel provide more useful or believable information. The bad news is that it's not always easy to separate the journalistic good-guys from the bad-guys and to know what "the real story" is.

8. What to do? Ideally, we each should become "citizen journalists" who make the right choices by asking the right questions about sources of information, believability of those sources and evidence to support that information.

Is the mainstream media responsible for a deterioration of spectator sports as we know it? It bears some of that responsibility, but "it is what it is" (a group of businesses seeking to maximize their profits. It's the American Way). In the end, it is up to each of us to spend more time using our God-given intelligence to figure out for ourselves what's really going down.

End of rant.
 
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SoCal Cardfan

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Concussions might and probably will decrease football's direction in some ways (especially the financially well off kids that don't need to play in professional sports to be successful).

The media has never caused a concussion though. And they are very real.

I bet Princess Di was concussed.
 

cardpa

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1. The way it works is - a business is created that delivers a responsive audience - who wants to read, see or listen to the business's editorial content - to advertisers who, in turn pays it money for that service.

2. Their whole deal is (1) building as big an audience as possible and (2) selling access to that audience for as much as they can get for it.

3. There are two schools of thought regarding the size and quality of an audience: (a) Do whatever it takes to build as big an audience as possible; even if it cuts journalistic corners and puts sensationalism and dumbed-down content ahead of quality programming and responsible journalism. (b) Deliver a a higher-quality audience that will be more responsive to your advertisers' messages because they trust what you're telling them editorially and, by inference, are more likely to trust your advertisers. (i.e. this is why ads in some publications "pull" better than ads in other publications and command higher rates).

4. "Editorial bias" isn't always blatant. Think of news coverage as shining a flashlight into a dark closet - the things the light shines upon is "the news." From a news standpoint, the things that the light doesn't shine upon "don't exist." By simply exercising control over the flashlight, a media organization can influence what its audience considers to be "reality."

5. It is often said that responsible media would prefer to keep their Advertising and Editorial departments separate (ideally in different countries).

6. But there are a growing number of media organizations who kowtow to important corporate advertisers (examples: Big Pharma, Energy and Financial industries). The really astute advertisers use a very light, subtle hand, but can make their wishes known with a wink, a nod and a well-placed phone call).

7. This ain't your father's media. People increasingly are getting their news and entertainment from alternative on-line sources. This is a mixed bag - the good news being that anyone unhappy with the quality or believability of what they see, read or hear in traditional media can look to other sources they feel provide more useful or believable information. The bad news is that it's not always easy to separate the journalistic good-guys from the bad-guys and to know what "the real story" is.

8. What to do? Ideally, we each should become "citizen journalists" who make the right choices by asking the right questions about sources of information, believability of those sources and evidence to support that information.

Is the mainstream media responsible for a deterioration of spectator sports as we know it? It bears some of that responsibility, but "it is what it is" (a group of businesses seeking to maximize their profits. It's the American Way). In the end, it is up to each of us to spend more time using our God-given intelligence to figure out for ourselves what's really going down.

End of rant.

Nice summary Jeff. Some of the media is blatantly bias (Fox News), some are not a blatantly bias. Some people for example see nothing good about Obamacare. Me I see there is some good in it and there are some things that are not good about it. You will always have the segments that lean to one extreme or another. Some here consider Incognito lower than dog poop. Others seem to think he is alright and was just being the big tough, macho man that you have to be to play in the NFL.

I like to think I deal in reality not perception. I know perception was a big buzz word where I once worked. It did not matter if the person was blabbering absolute garbage, all that matter was it was his/her perception so you needed to be sensitive to that. That is why I no longer work there.

I hope they dig down to exactly what was going on in the Miami locker-room. I think a Pandora's box will be opened and other teams may end up scrambling to clean their house up.
 

Dback Jon

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I was referring to the Incognito situation as well as the concussions. The mainstream media is raking the league over the coals for both

As they should.

They are not gladiators. And bullying/hazing is unacceptable, and elimination of both will not affect the game.
 

Dback Jon

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Thanks to the Jonathan Martin situation, we could see a lawsuit for a hatecrime. What is next? Lawsuits by former players who had to carry pads, got strapped to the goalpost and get dunked in the cold tank?


And what is wrong with a lawsuit over a hate crime.


You are a fool if you think the elimination of hazing will affect the game in anyway.
 

Dback Jon

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The NFL DOES have revenue sharing. The problem with baseball is that they don't have a hard salary cap and salary minimum. Too much competitive imbalance.


Correct - the socialist NFL is thriving, while the capitalist MLB is sinking because of competitive in balance.
 

PDXChris

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In Chicago no less. Probably a community organizer too

I heard Mulli was born in Kenya and his middle name is Leslie and until I see a birth certifcate, I will not believe otherwise.
 

Darkside

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And conservatives refuse to vote on fixing it.

The system works!

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk 4
 
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Kel Varnsen

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It's kind of early to be blaming the media for the Incognito story. I mean, people aren't even done blaming the victim yet.
 

JeffGollin

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And conservatives refuse to vote on fixing it.

The system works!

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+1

Much slanted journalism has less to do with liberal or conservative bias than it has to do with sensationalizing news coverage in order to increase audience-size to justify charging higher advertising rates. One obvious way they do this is to lead off a story with a banner shouting "Late Breaking News" (when there was nothing late-breaking to report). Or ginning up a juicy partisan food-fight by creating controversy where none exists.
 
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