It's a ****tail of reasons, really, if you look around at what fans across the country are saying.
- The national anthem thing; it's a real issue, but not the only one. It seems to me that the anthem thing is a case of the straw breaking the camels back. I'm a vet (which seems to be the thing to say), so I have my own opinions on respecting the flag. They can disrespect it if they like, but they can't expect to be free from consequence...except jail and civil fines, etc.
- Flags...flags...flags; in the gameday chat a few years back, we coined a term "flag****ed" to represent those times when strange or bad calls screwed us over. I think the league flag****ed themselves.
- Rules that take away from the game; that includes celebrations, taunting, but also the various infractions for different kinds of hits and ticky tack contact down the field. You see the referees on screen more than the head coaches these days. And all the new and ever-changing rule sets have confused referees to the point that they don't even know how to call a good game anymore. We're at the point that we judge a ref by his ability to say "**** this", stick the whistle in his pocket and let the men play football.
- Deflategate, Punch-the-fiance-and-drag-her-by-the-hairgate, Bountygate, Bullygate, Spygate, Whatevergate; if it isn't on the field news, then it's probably about a scandal, typically bolstered by unnecessary and gratuitous coverage from BSPN. Deflategate isn't quite seen as the witch hunt around the country the way it is in New England, but most fans I talk to recognize that the NFL ****ed the pooch on this one and screwed Brady over. The curtain finally got pulled back. Sure, Herr Goodell got his man, but it was a Pyrrhic victory at best.
- The CBA killed the volume of full-contact practices; ostensibly, this was supposed to be a safety measure, but injuries haven't gone down. And while I don't have empirical data in front of me, the eyeball test tells me that injuries to stars are probably going up. The bigger issue is that the NFL is no longer putting out a quality product. Missed tackles, blown coverages, and poor techniques really lower the quality of the games. Players need more practice.
- Commericals...kickoff...commercials; Sunday was once about football, interrupted by ads. Now it's an ad package interrupted by football. Starting a few years back, I'd DVR the games and then start watching about an hour later, while preparing snacks/meals for the game. Generally speaking, I'd catch up to the broadcast around the mid-point of the fourth quarter. It makes life much better, but it says a lot that about 40% of game you're watching is actually advertisements. It's certainly a higher percentage than what you see on a sitcom, which has about 27% percent of a broadcast tied up in ads.
I'm with the others here. Defamegate was the straw that broke this camel's back. Last year, I watched a few non-Pats games as I was overseas and with a group of dudes, so we watched what was available. This year...I've watched about 20-30 minutes of non-Pats stuff, and mostly as background noise. I don't watch pregame, postgame, or even halftime reports anymore. And I used to be a guy who was up at 9am with pregame stuff on in the background, and was up until late on Sunday taking in the banter, especially if we won that day.
This is starting to feel like my divorce from baseball during the 1990s.
