Re: The public is losing their interest in college sports

I’m pretty sure college football is more popular than it’s ever been. SI dying is more related to the fact print media has been on life support for the last decade due to free online content. Geriatric outlets like SI refusing to adapt and holding out behind paywalls is what killed it, not a lack of interest in college sports. Most of SIs content was pro sports related anyways, and last time I checked even pro football had like 93 of the highest rated 100 broadcasts last year.

The game is changing, some parts for better, some for worse. I think the idea of a super conference outside the NCAA is an inevitability that will ultimately make a lot of people angry but finally bring some order to the chaos we see today. But as the boomers age into retirement everyone is going to stop catering to them and focus on the more relevant, younger consumers who have different tastes. Basically lots of things are going to keep changing so Karen’s going to have a get used to it (even though she won’t and will be asking for the manager)

Places like Sears has shown that if you try to cling your literally dying target market at the expense of younger generations you’re going to die with your target market.

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Rock Defender [54]

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Joined: 11/30/98

Downsizing is less about interest and more about the commoditization of the

Jan 19, 2024, 3:24 PM

content. It's just harder to wring money from these platforms than it was 20 years ago.

It's also easier to do several jobs now than it was 20 years ago. I spent years in/on TV. What took 10 paid FTEs to do when I started out now takes three.

The appetite, though, remains. A recent NFL playoff game drew a staggering 28M homes. That's a huge share. SEC and B10 football games routinely draw tens of millions of households. And that's not accounting for streaming viewers.

I can't say wokeism is turning huge chunks of the viewing/consuming public away. But I suspect it is turning some away. I know that during COVID/Summer of Protests, I went from knowing I wasn't really the target demographic for the NBA machine, to realizing I was no longer even welcome.

Same happened a few months later with NFL. I watched a game and quickly realized I was no longer welcome. So I tuned out and will likely never tune back in.

And on the rare moments I catch a few minutes of something on primetime TV, I see the advertisers are no longer interested in me, either. It's as if white, married, hetero couples no longer exist in American society and are not still the single most powerful economic bloc. But in this brave new world, let the facts be ######.

But college football remains a good spot for my ilk -- just an average evangelical white dude who isn't freaked out by mainline liberalism, probably because I've been around long enough, and am well-read enough, to see through many of its tenets and tropes.

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The public is losing their interest in college sports