The NFL has every reason to be terrified about the direction the league is heading with rampant issues like anthem kneelers, drug offenders and players accused of domestic violence.
All three of these things have driven fans away from the NFL to focus more on college football where those issues are significantly less. But now the NFL has a new problem on its hands.
And there was one shocking number about the recent Super Bowl that the NFL should be panicking about.
The NFL doesn’t just have to deal with boring games though; they got bigger problems then sheer boredom. They have to compete with NCAA football in the AAF now.
The Alliance of the American football is brand-new but it’s already making a big splash in the sports community.
And according to The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman, he claims that in the AAF game between the Memphis Express in the Birmingham Iron last weekend, it featured 65 star recruits, which just so happens to be the exact same amount that were featured in the last New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl.
My goodness, what a nugget from @BruceFeldmanCFB's Feldman Files column today. https://t.co/BeWSq5ilRx pic.twitter.com/6DGRuus4lm
— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) February 12, 2019
That is terrible news for the NFL.
Firstly, it’s a telltale sign that the NFL may very well lose starts to the AAF in the coming future.
Can they pay the players as much as the NFL does right now? Nope, not right now.
But when you factor in television contracts that the team owners get in conjunction with the union of the AAF, that might all change pretty quickly.
It’s important to understand that the majority a team makes during an NFL season is through the TV contracts. After a few years, if the AAF can stay relevant considering that their regular season is during the NFL’s off-season, it’s not an overreaction to think that they have legitimate shots at making just as much money as their rival.
Also you have to take into account that the NFL is run so poorly that people are dying for another football “fix,” outside of the NCAA.
Just a last couple months, the league executives flubbed up several times. In the NFC championship, for NFL referees blew a call so egregious that they were taken to federal court. A Los Angeles Rams cornerback got away with two calls – pass interference in helmet to helmet – that would’ve effectively ended the game and sent the New Orleans saints to the Super Bowl.
And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did because all four of the refs in that game reside in southern California, which coincidentally happens to be where the Los Angeles Rams play.
Then they allowed former Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt – who was caught on camera pushing and kicking two different girls at a Cleveland Hotel a year ago – signed with the Cleveland Browns this week.
If you were a fan of the NFL and you were sick of all the gross incompetence then why wouldn’t you become a fan of the AAF instead?
This could be a sign of things to come for the future the NFL.