Oct 1, 2016 4 min read

Chances are pretty good that you’ll be watching Sunday Night Football on NBC this week. In case you missed it, the Steelers and the Chiefs are the featured attractions.

Chances are also pretty good that fewer people around the country than NBC and the NFL would like will be joining you.

NFL TV ratings are down.

And we’re not just talking about the Monday night game that went up against the Trump vs. Clinton fiasco.

Monday Night Foootball on ESPN, through the first four weeks, is down 19 percent from last year. Sunday Night Football on NBC is down 10 percent. CBS and Fox Sunday games are down 15 percent from last year.

Is it the Colin Kaepernick factor? Who knows? But there is a Boycott the NFL movement out there that started when Kaepernick started the trend of players protesting during the playing of the national anthem.

If the NFL finds hard evidence that the anthem demonstrations are costing it viewers, then players should be suspended for not standing. It’s a business and the business isn’t paying employees hundreds of thousands of dollars per game to chase customers away.

But it says here that the NFL has done as much if not more to chase customers away than a few players kneeling or raising their fists during the Star Spangled Banner.

Touchbacks for instance.

Remember long kickoff returns? They used to be one of the most exciting plays in sports. The NFL tried to make them a thing of the past when they decided to let kickers kickoff from the 35-yard line.

You can’t have 22 players running around willy-nilly chasing a little guy who might make everybody miss. Somebody might get hurt.

Imagine the NHL outlawing breakaways to cut down on groin injuries for goalies.

How about Major League Baseball outlawing triples because too many players were getting hurt sliding into third base?

It doesn’t matter that the NFL’s concern about injuries is legitimate. The fact remains fans are deprived of one of the most exciting plays the sport has to offer.

How many times have you seen an extra point or a boring, chip-shot field goal followed by 2½ minutes of commercials followed by a touchback followed by 2½ minutes of commercials?

Only the arrogance that comes with operating a monopoly would cause any business to believe it could get away with that kind of drudgery on a regular basis.

Add to that the disappearance of the running game in favor of dink-and-dunk passes that go the length of your garage and coaches who won’t try anything inside the 30-yard line that would risk the automatic field goal and you have a game that barely resembles the one that replaced baseball as the National Pastime in the ’60s.

And don’t forget the NFL Red Zone.

That’s the NFL-owned station that offers its fans a chance to escape all the boring touchbacks, dink, dunks and chip shot field goals and watch only big plays and touchdowns.

The NFL loves fantasy football players but fantasy players don’t have to love the NFL back by watching games. They can find the stats they need on their phones.

A generation is growing up with the idea that football isn’t about ebb and flow, strategy, field position and all that boring stuff.

It’s about highlights and stats.

I still love watching NFL games and can’t imagine Sundays in the Fall without them, but nobody should be surprised when a watered-down product starts to lose customers.

• These are tough times for the Sidney Crosby-is-overrated crowd. He just played in a tournament with and against the best players in the world and was far and away the best player. He was a unanimous choice for MVP of the World Cup of Hockey. He is now one of three players to win a Hart Trophy, a Conn Smythe Trophy and a World Cup MVP. The other two were Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky.

Crosby is one of the five best players of all time.

If he played in Gretzky’s era he would have averaged 160 points a season. And still played defense.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday sports column for the Observer-Reporter.