The Miami Dolphins missed their first game of the season because of Hurricane Irma so I didn't find out until this past Sunday that field goal kicker Andrew Franks was let go from the team after two seasons.
The appearance of Andrew Franks was always my favorite part of any NFL game because of the incredulous reaction from the broadcast commentators whenever he appeared on the field. They would always say something like: "Andrew Franks from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute?!?"
That's right: Franks rose to the NFL from a Division III school sometimes described as the "oldest technological university in the English-speaking world." The recently-unemployed Franks will now have to fall back on his Bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering.
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Baffling news from the NFL: Colin Kaepernick has been excised, and yet the league's ratings continue to falter.
So many political think pieces last fall, about the kneeling protest "driving away viewers." Could all those analyses have been confirmation bias junk?
No "distracting" election is being held this year, either. Unless all NFL fans are compulsive followers of Judge Roy Moore and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
One of many:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/09/21/nfl-ratings-struggles-getting-noticed-by-wall-street/
#1, baby, #1: "BOSTON (CBS) — Last season’s surprising decline in NFL TV ratings happened for a number of possible reasons. A new survey suggests that player-led national anthem protests, led by then-49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, were a bigger factor than many may have previously believed. In fact, they may have been the biggest."
"As the National Football League struggles to explain this season’s downturn in viewer ratings, 34% of American Adults say they are less likely to watch an NFL game because of the growing number of protests by players on the field. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 12% are more likely to watch, while 50% say the protests have no impact on their viewing decisions. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
These numbers are little changed from October of last year after Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, initiated the protests, citing racial and police brutality issues."
This is - somehow - "censorship" of Kaepernick in the left-wing realm. Kaepernick can talk all he wants...and the NFL has no obligation to hire him.
Rasmussen? Ah yes, the polling name that says kwality.
A third of football fans can't enjoy tuning in to a football game unless they start with the national anthem? Yup, that's plausible.
NFL ratings fall with Kaepernick. And the ratings also fall without Kaepernick. So the logical reason for the decline is... Kaepernick?
Hey, swallow whatever you want to swallow. I'll stick with cord-cutting, for starters. And, crazy though it sounds, easily-measured Nielsen rating drops for the great majority of channels, as well as the great majority of sports.
Animal Planet's ratings are down, too, probably because 34% of Americans object to snakes refusing to stand for the national anthem.
Cause and effect - how does it work?
I don't know how to advance an argument when several polls indicate that Americans have been turned away by Kaepernick and his buddies. I thought the Left used to believe in science.
In other news, the University of Missouri just posted its worst enrollment since 2008. Must be due to the cord-cutters or those liars at Rassmussen.
We both know that polling is not a science. We both know that Rasmussen has a shameless record of being the GOP's house pollster. And as tempting as it is to shift goalposts in a football discussion, we both know that choosing a college is a ludicrous analogy for TV football watching.
As for what Rasmussen polled, the real NFL ratings aren't down one-third. The real NFL ratings aren't down one-third of one-third.
Nielsen measures what actually happens among actual viewers. It doesn't measure what's "more likely or less likely," in push poll-style wording that offers just one suggested cause. (By the way, this doesn't make Rasmussen "liars," it makes them a motivated pollster.)
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/questions/september_2017/questions_nfl_player_protests_september_20_21_2017
Rasmussen chose not to ask about the "likely or unlikely" effect on NFL viewership due to the league's ongoing concussion problem. Nor its string of violent off-field incidents and bad publicity. Nor its persistently terrible numbers in the nation's #2 TV market. Nor the interminable "instant" replay delays. Nor the doubling of national NFL broadcasts per week. Nor the federal crackdown on fantasy football betting sites. Nor the cord-cutting. Nor the ever-increasing array of viewing choices on and off television. All of which, including the protests, would add up to well over 100% of the "cause" of the ratings drop, were they ever combined into one opinion poll.
Two months ago, in another poll, 20% of the respondents claimed they had recently tuned out of the NFL because of too many commercials. You know, because TV started running lots of commercials in 2016.
But ignore everything else, because it's only about protests, protests, protests. As the pollster John Keats said, that's all ye know and all ye need to know.
Cause and effect - how does it work?
Ha ha, good one, Shaggy 2 Dope! Let's take one show. The average-rated broadcast of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" is about 12 million. ESPN lost 3 million subscribers between May 2016 and May 2017. ESPN has lost 14 million subscribers in the past seven years. Viewership for ESPN's "Monday Night Football" has declined six times in the past seven years.
Those are hard numbers, not prompted "more likely"s.
But the kneeler-hating ESPN viewers who walked away in 2011 and 2013 and 2015, they just knew. Tell me another story all about the Kaepernick, papa.
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