That's a good article. A couple of bits stood out to me:
"revenues are up 65 percent since Goodell took over, even while the number of viewers under the age of 50 is down 10 percent." - That is a very concerning number. It is pretty obvious that the NFL's focus on short term profits is seriously endangering the long term well-being of the game.
"If we consider playoff victories as a scarce necessity that must be spread evenly to maintain national interest in the sport, then each team should average a playoff victory once every three years; Belichick and Brady have averaged nearly two per year. If we take appearances in both conference and league championships as the highest value assets the NFL distributes to its franchises, there have been seventy-eight such assets over the past thirteen years (twenty-six Super Bowl slots, fifty-two conference championships) to spread between thirty-two teams, or, again, an average of a little more than two per team per decade. If you step back and think about it, if each team either got to the Super Bowl, or the game before the super bowl, twice a decade, that probably would make for a pretty happy and healthy league. Problem is the Patriots have fifteen such appearances, more than seven times what they should if the system is working. That rate of over-accumulation can be destabilizing, especially in a system where the only other kind of revenue, the real kind, is pretty tightly controlled." - It is truly amazing how successful the Pats have been under BB. In time, BB will be considered the best coach of all time.
