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The XFL American football league, which played a single season in 2001, could return in 2020:
Television ratings for the N.F.L. have fallen 17 percent over the past two seasons. The league is embroiled in a continuing crisis over concussions, and youth participation rates are falling.
All of this suggests a difficult future for the sport, yet the N.F.L.'s most notorious competitor, Vince McMahon's X.F.L., has a comeback in the works. McMahon, the chairman and chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, announced on Thursday that he would take a second crack at professional football, with play scheduled to start in early 2020.
McMahon first tried to reimagine pro football 17 years ago. The old X.F.L. was a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation (W.W.E.'s former name) and NBC, which had lost rights to broadcast N.F.L. games. Violence was amped up: An opening scramble replaced the coin toss and fair catches were banned. So was the sex appeal, with cheerleaders who were even more scantily clad than the ones in the N.F.L., and advertising that included innuendo about them.
[...] Other than the name, this version will have little in common with the old X.F.L., he said. There will be no cheerleaders, McMahon said. Players with criminal records will not be welcome. Political statements, such as kneeling during the national anthem, will be prohibited.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday January 27 2018, @11:01PM (4 children)
The current style of NFL football played is the most boring, risk free style of football ever. Roll back the rule changes that have, since the 1970's, continually put defense at a disadvantage.
Sports in general have become unwatchable. The various powers that be, in order to attract more non-fans to the sport, have always seemed to assume that scoring equals excitement. They make rule changes to get rid of those tight, tense, edge of your seat matches in which a single play could decide the outcome. Instead of 20-17 down to the last play football games, we have 42-21 yawnfests. The NBA used to feature hard fought games with scores in the 80's by both teams. Now we get 135-113 games where the players trot up and down the court lofting up seemingly unopposed shots. The NHL eliminated the blue lines to make the game "more wide open", detracting from the skill required to excel. MLB is talking about implementing pitch clocks, complaining the games take too long and end too late. Bring back day games if you want to get to bed earlier!
The end result is that while a sport may temporarily get a boost in interest, they do so by attracting those next big thing fans who, as the name implies, are soon going to depart looking for the next "next big thing". In doing this, the various sports have tended to anger or price out the hard core, long time fans of that sport, and when the johnny come latelys leave, there is a lot less of their base support left to sustain them. You can look at NASCAR for a prime example of this effect. Daytona International Speedway for years and years used to sell out months in advance, now they have eliminated whole sections of the grandstands and still don't sell out. They have even resorted to painting all the seats different colors from the seats next to them so when the cameras pan by the empty seats look occupied!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28 2018, @01:27AM
The tag-up rule, while reducing stoppages and generally favoring offense, did not reduce the amount of skill required. If anything it requires more skill on both sides. For the defense, it requires more skill to defend, as you can't grind everything to a stop on a dump to center ice and to keep track of who is doing what. For the offense, it requires more situational awareness to properly tag up and good hands to keep it away from the numerically superior defense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tekk on Sunday January 28 2018, @01:58AM (2 children)
It's not that people want to go to bed earlier, it's that baseball has a ridiculous percentage of downtime. Football's the same way: if I had to wager, I'd say that both sports are less than a third actual play between waiting for the pitcher, waiting for the music cue, waiting for the batter to get to plate, even throwing balls is pretty much downtime, nobody's really doing anything and you only care about it in the very rare situation that it's the very end and someone can win the game with a couple of good hits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2018, @03:08PM
I think a good case could be made that there is much less downtime in those games than in your typical soccer match. There, technically true that the action is continuous, but the ball is held or passed between defenders for so long that it is essentially downtime [youtube.com]. The larger issue of downtime, at least for the NFL, is all the commercial breaks. That at least is where soccer and rugby have HUGE advantages over the NFL in terms of watchability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:58PM
Commercial breaks are the big time wasters. Most baseball games would be 2 hours or less without them. That's why I DVR and skip the commercials.