Why Football Will Never Die

The results of a new survey conducted for Bloomberg Politics suggests that, due to its epidemic of concussions, football is in trouble. Well, that’s not quite right: The poll doesn’t claim that football is in trouble; large numbers the people questioned in the poll claim it is. That might sound like an obvious and rather pedantic differentiation, but it isn’t. Because I believe the poll—but I don’t believe the people who took it.

The poll's first semi-major finding shows that a third of the wealthy (those who make more than $100,000 a year) and the college-educated believe football will lose fans over the next 20 years. This is a common perception, particularly inside the world of the intelligentsia and journalism, the people who tend to drive the conversation on these topics. But those are precisely the type of people predisposed to be against football in the first place, or at least predisposed to believe football is perpetually in trouble. Former commissioner Paul Tagliabue once famously called the league’s concussion issue a “journalist’s problem” rather than a fans’ one. Though this was taken as callous (and it sort of was), his point has been proven over and over again: You can write all the think-pieces about “the end of football” you want, and it won’t stop anybody from watching football. Ratings are up like they always are, Roger Goodell is still in power making billions for his owners and the Super Bowl will remain the central organizing principle in media as it is every year: More every year.