The NFL Myth

For years there seemed to be some truth to the NFL's claim that "on any given Sunday" a lower-ranked team could defeat a higher-ranked team. For the last several years this propaganda has had no relation to reality at all. The Detroit Lions will not defeat the Minnesota Vikings this season. Everybody knows that, and we also know that the score is not going to be close. CBS, Fox, ESPN, and the NFL all know that the "on-any-given-Sunday" line is bull crap, but they would like for us to think it is still true, even though they have the statistics to demonstrate the fallacy. Not only are the fans not likely to see an upset, they are not likely to see a close game. The margins of victory have continued to increase steadily over the last several years.

Why then would fans invest 3 hours of their Sunday afternoon to watch less than 1 hour of actual football, all the while knowing which team will win? Why do fans pay big bucks to attend NFL games? The fans of winning teams probably enjoy watching their teams win, even though it is a foregone conclusion. Why do fans of losing teams attend or watch NFL games? The answer to that is football's dirty little secret: either 1) the fans are gambling on the game and their only interest is to cover the spread, or 2) they are involved in a fantasy football league and are interested, not in a team's success, but in an individual player's success.

The NFL has to be thankful that so many of us gamble on football or are playing fantasy football, because their product is not what it used to be.