While the NFL pre-season is already underway, the NFL season is
set to begin on Sept. 5, 2012 in a
game
between the Super Bowl champion New York Giants and the Dallas
Cowboys. While fans may be excited about the upcoming NFL football
season, one cannot help but notice a number of aspects of today's
NFL that may be cause for concern.I. Signs of the Times. The
ongoing football concussion crisis with its accompanying lawsuits
would appear to compromise the future of both the NFL and American
football.
Former-NFL quarterback Troy Aikman's comments
at the close of last season might seem relevant. Aikman said, "The
long-term viability, to me anyway, is somewhat in question as far
as what this game is going to look like 20 years from now." Aikman
also suggested that if he had a son, he does not know whether he
would be encouraging him to play "whereas, with other sports, you
want your kids to be active and doing those types of things."
Aikman continued, "I think we're going to look back at this point
in time and say these were the missteps that the National Football
League took that kept football from being the No. 1 sport." In
light of the football concussions crisis, Aikman is not alone in
his assessment. In June 2012 while speaking with Jay Leno,
NFL legend Terry Bradshaw commented
, "There will be a time in the next decade where we will not see
football as it is." Bradshaw added, "If I had a son today ... I
would not let him play football." In addition, Bradshaw suggested
that other sports like soccer, baseball, and basketball will grow
in the years to come amid football's decline. He said, "There's too
much fun to be had in athletics." Even so, Bradshaw commented that
he would "absolutely" play football if he could do it all over
again. What might football look like in a decade or two? For one
thing, fans might see female referees on the field.
USA Today's Pete O'Brien recently reported
how, "Shannon Eastin made history Thursday, becoming the first
woman in the NFL's 97-year history to officiate a game. Eastin
served as a side judge in the San Diego Chargers' preseason home
opener against the Green Bay Packers." How might fans respond to
seeing such changes in the sport? Might we see a woman kicking
field goals in the NFL one day (akin to Manon Rheaume in the NHL)?
Only time will tell. On Aug. 8, 2012,
Forbes' Patrick Rishe
asked whether "the NFL [will] ultimately face a financial headache
if the concussion issue plaguing the sport's past and present leads
to future declines in fan interest." Per Rishe, "a legitimate
concern that the NFL may face with the long-term interest in its
popularity stems from how parents deal with growing evidence which
links football to long-term health concerns." In light of medical
reports linking football with chronic traumatic encephalopathy
(which can cause early dementia and other mental problems) and
lawsuits from former players, Rishe concluded that the NFL may be
forced "to safeguard their sport so much that we may all be
watching something akin to professional flag football. And that
would likely cut into the sport's massive popularity and wealth."
George Will recently commented
that "[w]e are ... rapidly reaching the point where playing
football is like smoking cigarettes: The risks are well-known."
Even so, "football has bigger long-term problems than lawsuits."
Will speculated how fans would deal with the fact that football
"may cause the players degenerative brain disease." Will added,
"Not even football fans, a tribe not known for savoring nuance, can
forever block that fact from their excited brains." Will concluded
his analysis ominously, "Today ... the problem is not the rules; it
is the fiction that football can be fixed and still resemble the
game fans relish." Between the concussions crisis, the prospect of
female referees,
Jerry Jones' recent "glory" comment
, and the fact that a former Pittsburgh Steelers minority partner
(who in 2010 claimed to be
"1,000%"
a Steelers fan) now owns the
Cleveland Browns
, American football is
changing.
II. Football Stocks to Watch. Even aside from issues of football's
viability with respect to lawsuits and concussions, there are also
a number of other facets to the NFL that individuals may want to
take into account. The first facet is video games. Before the NFL
began issuing exclusive licenses for video game rights, video game
enthusiasts would have a range of video games from which to choose:
Tecmo Bowl, NFL GameDay, NFL 2K, NFL Blitz, et al. Now, with EA
Sports' (NASDAQ:
EA
) Madden franchise having
an exclusive license with the NFL
, the Madden NFL series of video games would appear to effectively
have a monopoly on the football video game market, cf.
Tecmo Bowl Throwback
. An extended exclusivity agreement between EA Sports and the NFL
carries with it negative implications for football's overall
viability and options for football video gamers. Another aspect of
football's viability is that of broadcasting NFL games. The effects
of changes in television for football fans may be sensitive, owing
to differentiations in the American populace. Television may be
getting harder to watch -- and in light of NFL televising
agreements with respect to blackouts, there's a certain level of
uncomfortable scarcity for fans' desiring to watch their favorite
teams. As per the commentary of the
Chicago Tribune's Mary Schmich
in July 2011: "[E]ven as TV has gotten better, it's gotten harder.
Once upon a time, it was simple. You bought a TV. You plugged it
in. You turned it on. Now the options on how to watch -- not just
what to watch, but how -- make TV as daunting as advanced
calculus." For cash-strapped citizens unable to afford NFL tickets
and
perhaps unable to afford cable television in a weak
economy
, such developments make football that much more inaccessible. In
comparison, it may be getting easier to watch foreign fútbol
matches than to watch NFL games. With the younger generation
ditching regular television in favor of the Internet, it would be
nice to have a minimal-cost NFL service online that allows fans to
watch their favorite teams online. The NFL currently offers a
service to watch preseason games online and NFL Sunday Ticket
through DirecTV (NASDAQ:
DTV
), but even still, for many in America, the ability to watch NFL
football is coming with quite a substantial price tag that
previously did not exist. In order for a sport to remain viable, it
helps for the sport to be reasonably accessible. Many fans may be
hungry for a viable, economically-priced avenue for being able to
watch NFL games online on legitimate NFL-sanctioned websites.
Again, changes in television programming affect different
populations and different regions (in particular, parts of rural
America) in different ways, but being an NFL fan and watching NFL
football these days appears to have gotten a bit more expensive
than in the past -- when you could just plug in a TV and watch the
game. Where it may be less expensive to go to high school or
college football games, in coming years we may see a bit of a
decline in NFL fan participation in favor of NCAA and/or high
school football. In anticipation for the start of the NFL season,
traders can take a look at Nike (NYSE:
NKE
), which is the NFL's official jersey supplier. In April 2012, Nike
and Reebok settled litigation over Reebok's selling of New York
Jets clothing that featured quarterback Tim Tebow. According to the
Wall Street Journal
, Nike had "reportedly paid $1.1 billion for the right to be the
league's official provider" of jerseys. Traders can also take a
look at stocks like Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:
BUD
), Coca Cola (NYSE: ), PepsiCo (NYSE: ), and Boston Beer Co. Inc.
(NYSE: ) in anticipation of fall beverage sales that come with the
the NFL season. All in all, NFL fans can look forward to another
great football season -- though one cannot help but notice various
factors that seem to be calling into question the future of both
the league and the sport.
(c) 2012 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice.
All rights reserved.