The cultural critic Chuck Klosterman recently released Football, a collection of essays about America’s game. The most controversial chapter was about how football, seemingly invincible, will at some point in the next few decades, cease to be the cultural juggernaut it is today. I thought I’d take a look at his argument, point out where I thought it was weak, and give my own alternative as to why football may, at some point in the not so distant future, be seen as just another sport.
Klosterman’s argument is that in the next 45 or so years football will peak in popularity before declining to be roughly analogous to horse racing or boxing as they are perceived today, ie. sports that are much more niche and less mainstream than they were in their heyday. 
His argument breaks down as such:
Because of NIL and the transfer portal, the college game has become, essentially, indistinguishable from the professional game and the top programs will break away from the NCAA. In this new, breakaway league, consisting only of football, schools will allow players to be paid directly (as if they were employees of the university) and the requirement for athletes to attend school as students goes away. This change, though Klosterman is not explicit here, likely homogenizes the game and makes it less interesting for non-casual fans to enjoy but it does lead to higher performances on the field, as professionalization starts sooner, so the NFL game has athletes who are able to perform even higher levels of athleticism than before. 
However, at the same time, as more information is released about the dangers of CTE, areas of the country that have not historically been hotbeds for football (ie. everything not the Midwest or the South) have falling rates of participation in youth football. Klosterman also ties this to a broader cultural shift away from the values inherent in football: domination, lack of individuality, violence.
At some point in the future, television ad revenue starts to drop because, Klosterman says, “Somewhere in the middle of the current century, there will be a panoramic realization about TV advertising. The realization will be this: It doesn’t work, at least when compared with what it costs.” Companies will cut back on ad spend, causing television networks to offer less money to the league, which will in turn force the league to have much less revenue. 
Because the operating costs of each team are so high (Klosterman cites a recent filling that shows that the Green Bay Packers spend roughly $400M each year to run that franchise), the league scrambles in order to cover the lost revenue by raising ticket prices, playing additional games and cutting franchises. All of these things alienate the fanbase. The confrontation between players and owners leads to a strike that fundamentally cripples the league and leads fans to remain disconnected even after it is resolved.
Football loses its status as king of the monoculture.
What is wrong with Klosterman’s argument?
There are two main cores of his argument – one is cultural and one is economic. The cultural argument about the downfall is based on contact and here Klosterman uses horse racing as an analogy. Once one of the biggest sports in the country, it has fallen drastically in esteem. Klosterman ties this to the rural nature of America in the early 1900s – in a much more agrarian society, everyone owned a horse or knew someone who owned a horse. Once people moved to cities and cars, the days of horse racing as a major American sport were numbered. Extending this argument to football then would mean that most football fans started out as youth football players. 
The issue with this line of thinking is this – women make up nearly half of the football fans in the United States. Per a USA Today article from 2025, they make up 47% of the NFL audience. Surely the difference of 3 percent cannot come only from the fact that women make up less than 1% of amateur players at the high school and collegiate levels. 
The concussion issue is another wrinkle here - it’s been over a decade since the Will Smith-led Concussion was released – the number of female fans only grew during this time. More evidence has come out since the release of the film – while youth football participation has dropped, adult female fans do not seem to have abandoned the game due to the health risk of the players.
Maybe the take away here is that even those aware of the dangers of concussions will not allow their children to play but still enjoy watching those who choose to play. The issue with Klosterman’s theory is that, if this is true for female fans, why would contact be necessary for potential future fans, male or female, to care about the came?
I do think Klosterman’s cultural argument is stronger for other components – namely the idea that the values inherent in football are anathema to larger cultural trends in the United States, so I don’t discontinue this cultural argument completely but I don’t think the lack of direct contact with the sport will be what kills it.
The economic argument I found to be more dubious – I think Klosterman misses something about advertising. It is certainly true that one of the primary functions is to launch new products but, perhaps an even more important function, is to distinguish your brand from a competitor. This is especially important in industries that have one or two major players. Brands that tend to advertise nationally (Coke, McDonalds, Chevrolet) do so because they have competitors who are near equals in their category. If the quality of your product and its price are nearly identical to your competitors, one of the only places left to compete is in the minds of consumers – hence, advertising.
Historically, most NFL and college games have been on free, ad-supported television. I think this will soon come to an end as more streamers will be able to outbid the cable networks and their ad-supported broadcast TV counter-parts. The migration to the streamers, will, IMO, begin the end for the NFL. 
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Chuck Klosterman has done a lot of press for this book. One of the things that he has brought up in a few interviews is that, and I am paraphrasing, there have been no monocultural products that have been dominate in their particular cultural area for a century. This is one of the cornerstones of his argument for why football will see its time as the leader of the monoculture come to an end. Nothing huge lasts forever – not even football.
I think that Klosterman is correct but not for the reasons that I critiqued above. I get to his destination but I take a different route. I think the end of football as something that is heads and shoulders more popular than other American sports will happen in the next 15 to 20 years. Here’s how:
I’m starting my argument by focusing on Gen Beta. This is the generation that is being born right now and will be born for the next 13 – 15 years (generations are always inherently subjective but we’ll use this for now). Why start here? The argument is a bit plodding, so please give me a bit to unpack my steps. 
Gen Beta are the children of younger millennials and older Gen Z. Both of these cohorts are the first to be true digital natives, with older millennials the last generation to have anything resembling an analog childhood. Why does this matter?
I think the movement towards individualization of many aspects of culture will continue apace. One of the most important will be the individualization of education. One of the easiest (and cheapest) way to do this is through the use of technology. I believe that we are moving towards a world of continued low birth rates. Because of this, there will likely be a push to maximize the talents of each and every child. Because most people are gifted in some areas and not in others, this will likely manifest in specialization at increasingly younger ages. The K-12 charter system, especially charter schools that are online, will likely not view sports as a key feature of their academic offerings, as many online charters will not have the facilities to offer sports.
Students at these schools, then, have one less avenue to play or experience the sport as spectators. I believe that we will see similar things happen at the collegiate level. 
Klosterman lays out an argument that the NIL and Transfer Portal have fundamentally changed college sports and he believes that 40 or so college football programs will break away from the NCAA to form their own distinct league. From an economic standpoint, it makes sense – college football is very top heavy with a small percentage of the schools supplementing the revenues of smaller schools through massive TV revenues. Malcolm Gladwell, in a debate on Intelligence Squared from years ago, argued for something similar, ie. that colleges could license their names and lease the stadium space for a semi-pro football league to use. This would allow for non-college students to compete at this level and still provide the schools with most of the benefit of the program with fewer of the costs. The downside, at least for my argument, is that the other schools not included in this semi-pro league would (most likely) shutter their football programs. This would, again, reduce the number of people who have had direct or indirect experience with football, either as players or live spectators.
In his essay, Klosterman points to the concern of parents when it comes to concussions as a reason that football will likely reduce in popularity over time. This has been a trend since Will Smith starred in Concussion and will likely continue into the future. If Klosterman’s argument about direct contact proves correct, if the level of sport participation is revitalized, non-football sports (baseball, soccer, lacrosse) could rise in popularity and be seen, increasingly, as competitors to football. Why would participation in youth sports increase? In Robert Putnam’s Our Kids, one of the policy proposals that the Harvard Political Scientist proposes is to limit the cost to youth sport participation in order to allow for cross-cultural flourishing between wealthy and non-wealthy children and families. If this proposal is enacted, it could lead to an increase in sports participation at a time when football is increasingly seen as out of vogue.
By the time that Gen Beta exits from college, they will have less involvement, as fans and as players. What about the thing that has not been mentioned? I believe that in the next 10 to 20 years (probably closer to 10), we will see a nation wide reckoning with online gambling, especially on sports. The popularity has exploded since the supreme court ruling in 2018 and a backlash against the downsides of instant, legalized gambling is mounting. By the time that Gen Beta enters adulthood, I believe the online gambling experience, a driver of at least some of the sports’ popularity with the youth, will be greatly diminished and, thus, some of the excitement that comes from watching football will diminish as well.
With that being the backdrop, I believe that, at least for this generation, the appeal of watching football will decline. Where does that leave us?
The NFL is likely to enter into a media deal in the next few years that will tilt its media rights more towards the streaming services. That is, away from broadcast television and cable television, which have both shown a decline in ratings (for everything except for the Super Bowl). 
At this point in the essay, I’m going to move towards some speculation that may seem a bit much. Here goes: I believe that sometime in the next 10-15 years, due to consolidation and higher prices (and possibly a weakening global economy), the customer base will begin to shrink for streaming services. Customers will cease to see the value in a $50-$75 per month streaming service that they don’t use very much. It is an open question as to whether or not Netflix (or other streamers) can utilize AI to lower production costs while still providing customers with shows they want. This is still an open question. Assuming that this does not happen, Netflix will find itself in an increasingly IP driven world without high quality IP (see the failed attempt to buy Warner Brothers). There are only so many customers left to acquire and most of them are outside the United States, where the amount of money they can reasonably expect from these customers tend to be lower. The levers they can pull to bring in additional revenue (password sharing crackdowns, introducing ad plans) have already been done.
Because the rights to NFL games will be very expensive when the initial contracts are signed (if they were not considered lucrative by the NFL, they would have no reason to leave their pre-existing relationships with the linear networks), if the streamers are looking to cut costs in the future, these streaming services will begin to look at the numbers and determine that the NFL is not worth the costs and begin either a). ending the deals or b). severely curtailing what they are willing to pay.
One of the main reasons will be the international viewers who the NFL have been trying unsuccessfully to capture for years (remember NFL Europe?). I believe Klosterman is correct when he says that American football simply doesn’t translate well outside of the United States. In my experience with international students, their interest in football was approximately 0.00 when compared to cricket or soccer. The streaming services that have paid top dollar for NFL games will have, in very beautiful infographics, hard data showing the NFL execs that their product is unwanted by almost everyone outside the continental US.
The vaunted demographic of Gen Beta, who will be entering adulthood at this point, will not be interested in a game they have not had contact with (see above) so will not be the next generation of fans the NFL was hoping to replace the (nearly dead) boomers or aging millennials with.
I should spend a bit of time here expanding on the idea of a semi-pro league (formerly known as college football) because it is important to my argument later. Brief aside: do we still call it college football even if the players are unlikely to be college students? Is it semi-pro football if the games are played at college stadiums? Is it truly a minor league for the NFL if the NFL has no direct involvement in its success (and in some ways, sees it as competition)? I want to give it a name that distinguishes it from the NFL – arena football and the XFL have already been taken. I don’t love 40F (and the number of teams will likely change over time anyway). Chat GPT suggested Saturday Football League and that’s probably the best we’re going to do.
The SFL will probably be less likely to jump ship to the streamers and more likely to stay with the networks because of the longstanding relationships and the decision to not chase an international audience. I believe that, especially in the next 10-15 years, very few people will care that the players are not college students and the ratings for the 20 games or so each week will remain high. Fans will almost certainly view the SFL as a superior alternative to the NFL because they will see the NFL’s decision to go to the streaming services as a betrayal. The NFL’s policy of pushing taxpayers to pay for stadiums (which can cost multiple billions of dollars) and increasing cost of season tickets, which can run a few thousands of dollars, haven’t warmed them in the hearts of many fans either.
Players in the SFL will be very well compensated because they will no longer be shackled by the NCAA and the broadcasting revenue will no longer be split the way it was under the old system. Due to the obvious dangers of the game, the players will almost certainly unionize. NIL has made many college players millions of dollars – if the players continue to play in the college stadiums, I believe that this will continue and that there will still be an attachment that many fans and boosters have to their teams, even if they are now fully professional players. Estimating salaries are difficult but I believe that the average salary will probably be comparable to NFL players, when taking into account the NIL money that will likely still roll in for many players at the SFL.
Where does that leave the NFL? For the first time in recent memory, if not its overall history, the NFL will have to cut back. I don’t think this will be directly because of companies cutting back on ads as Klosterman notes – I think it will be because the networks will have leverage: the number of buyers for the NFL will likely shrink 10-15 years from now because both linear and cable networks are seeing viewership declines. Cable television especially has shown a giant loss in subscribers. If the streamers kick the NFL to the curb, the NFL will have no choice but to go back to the networks – it will be the only game left in town that is able to (almost) afford the games.
Because of the accelerating lack of players available due to the loss of youth sports as a driver, each NFL-caliber player will become rarer. With the introduction of the SFL, there will be, in a real way, an alternative for NFL players, some of whom may prefer the SFL to the NFL for whatever reason. If this happens, the NFL will have to pay more for players and, again, overtime, the contracts of NFL players will get more lucrative. However, this will cause the owners to take less money and a labor fight will likely ensue. If the demographic watching football was increasing in size or value, then this labor fight would likely be over very quickly – it’s always easier to argue over a growing pie than a shrinking one.
My second major assumption is more of a hunch than backed by any informed opinion. I think that the NFL has been very lucky to have Roger Goodell as their commissioner over the last twenty years. Klosterman notes in his essay that the value of the league has increased at a rate that is roughly 9% per year, which means that it has doubled every eight years or so. The number of scandals that the league has endured is more than the fingers on both of my hands during this time and scandals that would have wrecked nearly every other league have been, if not completed overcome, certainly weathered. It is likely that Goodell will not be the commissioner ten years from now, when I foresee the problems really beginning for the NFL. I believe it is more likely than not that a less skilled commissioner will take his place. 
If Roger leaves and a new commissioner has to deal with a sexual scandal on the scale of say Deshaun Watson, I could see it going much worse this time – as the number of female fans continues to grow, there will be more and more pressure for the NFL to throw the book at this type of behavior, putting them in conflict with the players union.
Even setting aside the likelihood of further scandals, the new commissioner will likely have a hard time with a strike, if that does happen. The players will not want to take less money. They’ve been accustomed to having played in a semi-pro league nearly identical to the NFL for at least three years and can threaten to go back there if the owners don’t cough up. The increased health risks of playing a violent game will continue to mount and there will be a moral reason that they can demand higher salaries: it’s a dangerous game and they should be compensated as such.
This puts the owners in something of a bind – they have an asset that is decreasing in value with a workforce that has leverage. They can do one of a few things – capitulate to the players, giving them a larger total share of revenue, or sell their team. Selling the team may seem unlikely now (how many billionaires are there really?) but in ten years, the number of ultra wealthy will continue to grow, get married, and combine fortunes. We’ve seen the beginning of generational wealth being passed down (hello David Ellison) from the baby boomers and some of that will inevitably make its way to sports ownership. If someone owns an NFL team for the growth, they may be more willing to get out at this point, when the days of high growth are likely at an end. Someone will always want to own an NFL team, even if, on paper, there are better investments. 
A new equilibrium will form. Depending on how long the lockout or strike is (this depends, in part, of how good your commissioner is), it could harm the product for a very long time. Using the 1994 MLB strike as a corollary, sports are, in some ways, always competing with other sports for viewers’ attention. If the NFL wasn’t played for a season, it’s almost certain that some other league (maybe MMA, maybe baseball, maybe soccer) would see an increase in either cultural or economic power. 
This is pretty much where Klosterman leaves us in his analysis. I believe this will happen much sooner than he does but both of us can imagine where football’s longtime dominance in the American imagination, if it does not come to an end, is certainly weakened.
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