Jim Morrison couldn’t sing it any better: “This is the end, my only friend, the end/Of our elaborate plans, the end.”
While the Doors weren’t referring to the National Football League (at least we think they weren’t), The Undefeated argues that the end is nigh for the league—at least in the foreseeable future. That’s because the NFL Players Association has been talking about a lockout or strike that could hit the league as early as 2021. And the current players-owners battle over the anthem protests can’t be helping to douse the flames. Neither can more widespread CTE research, nor a steep decline in youth football participation.
Not to mention the fact that the NBA is vying for market share—and could, with the help of an NFL strike, make it even more difficult for the league to return to form afterward. While, certainly, the NBA doesn’t have a Super Bowl or the type of TV ratings that the NFL might, argues The Undefeated, what they do have is the ability to “embrace an important fact about American culture: Black culture and black people determine cool,” writes David Dennis, Jr. “Cool resists linear structures. If the NFL wants to maintain its dominance, it needs to embrace black culture or get left behind. Just like baseball.”
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