{"id":12484,"date":"2020-07-17T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12484"},"modified":"2020-07-16T17:33:12","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T00:33:12","slug":"the-nfl-is-on-the-brink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nfl-is-on-the-brink\/","title":{"rendered":"The NFL Is on the Brink"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;National Football League celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. This should be a time of self-congratulation for the brutal sport, which has no similar counterpart outside the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The NFL\u2019s megaprofits dwarf those of other professional sports in the U.S. The Super Bowl, not the World Series, is America\u2019s national sports event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The league survived all sorts of crises in the past. It was one of the first professional sports to integrate its teams, doing so in the 1920s. But the integration unfortunately ceased, and the NFL didn\u2019t reintegrate until the mid \u201940s, becoming one of the last sports leagues to embrace fully a racially blind meritocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The NFL successfully absorbed the rival American Football League in 1966. So far the NFL has avoided federal safety regulations that could curb the incidence of physical trauma inherent in the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The league\u2019s owners are a cross-section of America\u2019s most successful entrepreneurs and old-money families \u2014 many of them politically well-connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/2020\/07\/nfl-football-politics-risks-alienating-fans\">Read the full article here <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The&nbsp;National Football League celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. This should be a time of self-congratulation for the brutal sport, which has no similar counterpart outside the United States. The NFL\u2019s megaprofits dwarf those of other professional sports in the U.S. The Super Bowl, not the World Series, is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3fm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10653,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-glass-house-of-the-nfl\/","url_meta":{"origin":12484,"position":0},"title":"The Glass House of the NFL","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The league\u2019s national significance is rapidly diminishing, due to hypocrisy and hyper-politicization in a once-loved American establishment. \u00a0 The National Football League is a glass house that was cracking well before Donald Trump\u2019s criticism of players who refuse to stand during the national\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Sports&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Sports","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/sports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10605,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nfl-house-of-cards\/","url_meta":{"origin":12484,"position":1},"title":"The NFL House of Cards","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson National Review The Corner The problem with the NFL is not just Donald Trump, but the greater dilemma that the league\u2019s reason to be has become predicated on a labyrinth of lies. The majority of the viewing audience is not young, hip, and loyal as hyped,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9519,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-postmodern-nfl\/","url_meta":{"origin":12484,"position":2},"title":"A Postmodern NFL","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The Corner: The one and only.\u00a0\u00a0 In an essay that could come right out of 1984, Washington Post Ministry of Truth writers Drew Harwell and Rick Maese struggle to explain the abrupt erosion of the NFL\u2019s televised audiences. They manage to cite every conceivable longer-term\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;American Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10682,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/status-quo-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":12484,"position":3},"title":"Status Quo Blues","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0 The public is turning away from the institutions that used to unite Americans \u2014 the NFL, mainstream news, late-night TV, movies . . . \u00a0 The familiar cultural order of the last half-century is crumbling \u2014 partly because of larger forces beyond its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Media&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12539,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-summer-of-cultural-suicide\/","url_meta":{"origin":12484,"position":4},"title":"Our Summer of Cultural Suicide","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 2, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Cultural\u00a0suicide used to be a popular diagnosis of why things suddenly just quit. Historians such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee cited social cannibalism to explain why once-successful states, institutions, and cultures simply died off. Their common explanation was that the arrogance of success\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8657,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-weariness-of-the-whiners\/","url_meta":{"origin":12484,"position":5},"title":"The Weariness of the Whiners","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJ Media Brandon Marshall, the New York Jets wide receiver and occasional sports commentator, charges that the National Football League is racist [1]. He alleges that the league favors white players over black athletes like him, especially white marquee quarterbacks. Aside from the fact that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;American Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJ Media","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/sjw_stormclouds_9-13-15-1-500x445.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12488,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12484\/revisions\/12488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}