By Shaun Lowrie

Every now and then, I like to write 'properly' about the NFL on Pickwatch. I know what our primary aim is here, but we could do more of this stuff, and it's generally been pretty well received in the past. The real passion I have is for journalism as a profession, however I find myself in the unique position of being both part of it and separate.

Essentially I'm the Coastguard in Homer's 'Who watches the watchmen?' moment, observing from afar, while also being intrinsically tied to the media as a whole.

So today, I'll take on the NFL TV ratings furore. For those who don't know, ratings are down this year for the first time in forever. Some prime time games have been down 40% on last year's matchups. Sure, the Sunday 1pm-7pm time slots are still pretty solid, but for the NFL, it's the big showcase Sunday night and Monday night contests that they make an extraordinary amount of money from that are the concern. Make no mistake, those TV franchises are the NFL's most lucrative 'crown jewels' in a league that has already established an incredibly dominant presence across all forms of media.

The theories so far...

A lot of theories have been floated about what might be at the root of this unusual downturn.

The main focus of attention in the search for a cause (no pun intended) is the high-profile Colin Kaepernick anthem protest, and subsequently those he has inspired to make similar expressions during the anthem. At first glance, it's plausible. The NFL's core audience is largely white, male, middle class, and in the 35-65 range, demographics that at first glance, are far more likely to take offense to Kaepernick's gesture. There is anecdotal evidence of this, certainly, but it's often pretty difficult - particularly given the current political climate - to work out whether it's the defining factor.

I have no horse in this race (as some of you may know) and my background means I prefer not to get involved in the rights and wrongs of the discussion, but I still doubt that the actions of any small group could genuinely force a substantial amount of people to abandon the NFL, let alone 40% of the audience on any given Sunday. That's not to say a small hard core aren't doing so, but I think that it's just one factor in a very complex equation. The NFL has always had polarizing characters who were at odds with the values of the target demographics, it's never (alone) been a reason for people to switch off, and if anything, the theatre of the Kaepernick sideshow will likely attract as much passing interest from other demographics if it were a real driver of this TV ratings issue.

Some have talked of over-saturation, pointing to the International Series games in London as an example of the NFL's hubris in assuming they could put football in as many windows as possible and maintain viewership. My opposition to more NFL games in London is well documented (and I definitely can comment on that one), both because I feel the logical conclusion of an NFL franchise in London would hurt the game irreparably, and because fundamentally I think the NFL should have more respect for it's core audience in America rather than expanding to 'new' frontiers that may never yield benefits for their US fans.

I do find this argument more compelling. I've long advocated that all NFL fans should spend some time over the Summer detaching themselves from the NFL. Without that time away from the game, it's easy to become jaded and lose the anticipation, the excitement and in the end, the commitment needed to be an active fan of a sport. Again though, it would be remiss not to point out that the level of NFL media coverage in 2016 is still only slightly increased on the last few years. While I think that the first symptoms of apathy related to this could be starting to seep through, it would be hard to pin everything on this.

Similarly, the criticism that prime time games have been poor matchups holds very little water. Remember ESPN's 2014 slate, when they couldn't manage to get two teams with winning records together on a Monday night? Ratings were still steady. Sure, nobody wants to watch the Jags and Titans next week on Thursday, but the reality is that they have done so in previous years. Besides which, there have been teams as varied as the Colts, Patriots, Broncos, Steelers and Panthers involved in these matchups. These are good teams and national draws, so essentially, it ain't that. Even without Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, the NFL is still the NFL.

There's a few more issues (the domestic violence issue, the league's treatment of Tom Brady and other high profile players etc) but none that are particularly unusual in the context of the NFL - sadly.

So what gives?

Well, you're not going to like it.

One of the factors that I think is hurting the NFL in 2016 (but nobody is talking about) is the league's noticeable embrace of fantasy football over the last 5 years.

You might say 'but fantasy has been around for decades and not changed anything!', but it hasn't. Not like this. Anyone of my age (I think early thirties is a good way of phrasing it...) will remember the early days of internet leagues on Yahoo, ESPN and CBS, with plenty of fan interest, but almost universal disassociation by the NFL and it's players, coaches and media caravan. Players weren't shy about putting it bluntly - fantasy football wasn't just something they ignored, it was something they disliked.

Even the NFL.com version of fantasy football didn't launch until way after the TV networks had established their products and the league realized they'd lost their cut of a potentially lucrative pie to ESPN, Yahoo, Fox and CBS - not to mention many independent offers. Put in that context, it's easy to see why the NFL was reticent to promote fantasy football until the last few years; they had little or no reason to.

But that has changed in a way that can not be overstated. The league now frames almost all of it's own coverage of the sport in the context of fantasy.

I have grown to love fantasy football over the last ten years, but even if I didn't already, it's never been harder to avoid it. I didn't play a redraft game in 2014, because it didn't feel like something I had to do to get more enjoyment from a sport that I do still enjoy for what it is, a sport. It was a personal choice, but lately, I've begun to think that there are times when I get at least as much, if not more fun from winning a fantasy matchup than watching the Bears continuously lose.

What I do with Pickwatch requires me to be pretty aware of the way the sports media and their websites work. Over time, you get a pretty good feel for where and how a company is trying to drive people around it's website, and what their emphasis is in any given year, and what their writers are devoting their time to. The NFL website has become increasingly devoted to fantasy football at the expense of the actual real-life action, constantly encouraging players to engage in games that I suppose someone in an NFL meeting room, with impossibly perfect hair and teeth, convinced the decison makers would promote engagement with their 'brand'.

To that end, the league's website is dominated by fantasy football, and NFL Network broadcasts two evening fantasy shows, while also laying it on thick across their other shows too. Good Morning Football, their new breakfast show, has fantasy references peppered throughout, and almost any discussion of players on the league's network is provided with a fantasy slant. Player back from injury? Let's see what his fantasy value is. Player just got injured? Who should fantasy owners start in his place?. We may be seeing over-saturation of the NFL as a whole, but within that, we're being constantly bombarded with the message that Fantasy Football should be the most important part of your weekly NFL experience.

But Fantasy is not reality...

Fantasy football promotes an interest in individual player achievements. The context of those achievements plays no role at all in the fantasy owner's outcome, so if a QB throws for 300 yards and 3 TD's, but his team gets blown out 45-21, that's irrelevant. I've seen die-hard fans cheer their team conceding touchdowns to opponents, and seen people in NFL stadiums cheer scores by both teams because they had a positive impact on their fantasy team. The matchup that really matters to fantasy football players is the one against their own opponent that week.

You may think that fantasy encourages people to watch games they would otherwise ignore, between teams they have no interest in. Yes, that's definitely a possibility, but the numbers wouldn't support that being of consequence to prime time matchups - at least not in a positive way. If you're in a standard 8 team league, you probably have 9 NFL players each week you want to watch, which means 72 players spread across the 8 owners. Spread those players across the 32 NFL franchises and you have just 2.25 players per team - or 4.5 players per matchup - that are of interest to the players in that league. Put in context, that means just over half of your league, on average, would have a rooting fantasy interest in an NFL prime time game on a Sunday or Monday night, and that assumes those fantasy owners are still hoping to win by that point.

Sure, during that heady NFL Redzone period of Sunday, it's a rush as those scores come in, as players rack up fantasy points and your game ebbs and flows, which probably accounts somewhat for the lack of much change in Sunday viewing figures.

The Redzone phenomenon can't be discounted in all of this - it promotes a somewhat unhealthy (from the NFL's point of view) lack of interest in 80% of each game, instead dipping into each game at it's peaks, cutting out the commercials and the stoppages in play.

Why would you watch a single game and all of the inherent ebbs and flows, when you could watch 6 games at once and cherry pick the best bits, seeing the key moments not only in each game, but in your fantasy matchup? Sure, there are people who enjoy the sport, but the reality is that for many younger NFL fans, the NFL and fantasy football have always just existed in sync with each other and without fantasy football as a context for player achievements, the allure of the actual sport is lost.

Essentially, the NFL has sacrificed viewers being invested in the outcome of actual NFL games, in favor of them being invested in their fantasy matchups.

An Inconvenient Solution

How do you solve a problem like this? Fantasy football has become not only the most prominent way for fans to interact and watch the league, but also a potential slow drain of the league's lucrative broadcast partnerships. It can never be 'undone', so whether it's one of the causes of this downturn or not, the NFL is stuck with it. Will ESPN and NBC revisit their existing arrangements if NFL viewer numbers continue to decrease? Eventually yes. It's worth noting that NFL games still dominate TV ratings even during the current malaise, with Thursday Night and Sunday Night Football still in the top 5 most watched show on TV last week according to Nielsen, and Monday Night Football the most watched cable program each week.

But the trend is clearly down, and if it continues, the league will need to think of a way to make more people invested in the outcome of every game, especially the marquee games of the week. Some of you might start to guess where I'm going with this...

Yes, it's radical, but I think if the figures become more of a problem, the NFL needs to think of a way for fans to legally gamble or be financially invested in the outcome of it's games.

Would the NFL go for it?

Five years ago I'd have said absolutely no chance. Now? I'd say it's not impossible.

The Las Vegas Raiders will be a big acid test in this regard. If the league can support a team in Vegas, with all of the common arguments against an NFL team being in such a market - such as the corruptibility of players and opening up the game to a potential Tim Donaghy-style (real or perceived) scandal - then there should be no reason for the NFL not to at least tacitly embrace sports betting. There would seem, for example, no reason for the NFL to continue to be such a high profile plaintiff attempting to prevent sports gambling in New Jersey, when it can benefit directly from deregulation.

In a world where Daily Fantasy - which we can almost all recognize as being barely disguised gambling - is defensible for the NFL, with all of the conflicts of interest it brings to the table, then some form of league endorsement for a game that allows people to win money based on the outcome of NFL games but is (WINK) not gambling (LAUGHTER) must be possible. I can think, off the top of my head, of about 3 different ways you could create a DFS style pick'em game that would circumvent gambling laws in a similar manner.

At the very least, the league should stop the strange moratorium it has in place that prevents any discussion of gambling in relation to the NFL. It's just weird, especially when we all know that there is a huge amount of illegal and legal sports gambling that goes on in the US, both in Nevada and the rest of the country.

A league-sanctioned 'pick'em for money' style game wouldn't be pretty, and it wouldn't necessarily be what I'd call ethical, but neither is DFS, and frankly, neither is the NFL as an organization. At some point, they might just be forced to ask how strong their moral opposition is to gambling.