How did the NFL become America's favorite sport

The NFL has long contested the status of being America's pastime, which was formerly held by Major League Baseball

Only this year, 34% of Americans say that professional football is their preferred sport. This contrasts with baseball's meager 16 percent. And it's obvious that Americans enjoy their ball sports with a fun flavor when we include in the 11% of people who say college football is their favorite Football is growing in many ways than simply watching. Nowadays, children choose "sexier" sports than baseball

According to the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade organization for the industry, the number of children aged 7 to 17 who played baseball decreased by 24% between 2000 and 2009, the most recent year for which statistics are available. Despite rising worries about the long-term effects of concussions, youth tackle football involvement has increased by 21% over that time, while ice hockey participation has increased by 38%. Another industry trade association, the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, reported a 12.7% decline in overall population baseball participation

Jim Thorpe, who had just won a medal at the 1912 Summer Olympics, established professional football's first superstar status one hundred years ago. Thorpe's career lasted for 42 years, and in 1923 he was selected to the league's inaugural All-Pro team

It was then. Thorpe and his colleagues would be astounded at the enormous NFL stadium audiences now, 100 years later. They wouldn't believe the weekend NFL activity marathons that begin on Thursday night and last until Monday night, when the fifth game of the football week is played

Again, it doesn't even take into account how much college football there is to watch every day of the week. There is little incentive to watch football without a DVR connected to the T

The NFL Will Eventually Fill the Sports Vacuum the 1990s Created

My generation has little trouble recalling a period when the NFL reigned supreme since we grew up in the 1990s

With all due respect to the (many) larger-than-life characters who have come through the NFL throughout the years, only Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were able to hold the attention of all Americans

I'm confident that die-hard football fans would recall a period before the 1990s when the NFL was their preferred sport. And I can! However, the NFL has recently transformed slow advancements into leaps and bounds from a social standpoint. The Super Bowl viewing graph shown above shows when the largest game is shown. The NFL didn't control the world as much in the 1990s

For many sports enthusiasts at that time, the NFL was the only reliable game in town. The public believed that the NFL was a real team sport whereas players in the NBA, MLB, and NHL were overpaid brats even as pay continued to grow and labor discontent simmered under the surface

Yet MLB was able to make it very obvious that it still had a good chance of winning the race to the top in 1998 when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire targeted home run records

A More Active League Is Created through Expansion and Rules 

Modifications

Although the first fantasy football league was established in 1963, it took several years for it to become widely popular. More specifically, it required the Internet's advancement over the antiquated fax machine technique of score monitoring and the ability to get scores instantly rather than in the newspaper box score the next morning

Given that CEO Brian Grey joined Yahoo! Sports as general manager in 2001, Bleacher Report really has an intriguing relationship to this surge in NFL popularity. He set up their fantasy sports scene as one of his first priorities. Grey's main concept was to create a free version of fantasy football instead of the premium leagues that Yahoo!'s rivals were giving It started to spread like wildfire

Yahoo! is still one of the biggest websites for fantasy football on the Internet, even after ESPN, CBS, and other companies were compelled to join free leagues

Since the invention of fantasy sports, fans have developed a stake in teams and players that are located far from them. A Syracuse, New York, fan didn't need to know that the St. Louis Rams running back scored two touchdowns twenty years ago. The same fan now expects to be informed of the most recent injury updates on that running back and demands retaliation if the coach restricts his carrying capacity

NFL reporters have become more assertive as a result of fantasy sports, and more people are watching on second screens as fans set up shop not only with their large TVs but also with their tablets and mobile devices. to continue

The NFL now has a channel dedicated just to scoring opportunities. For its new Xbox One platform, Microsoft is releasing a number of fantasy football-friendly features. The way we watch the game is evolving, and it won't be long until fantasy football at least has an impact on how league offices decide to play the game

Labor unrest and the departure of a few NBA legends left a void that was filled by the NFL. That was at the same time that the NFL undertook a significant expansion and rule reform to improve the game's attractiveness to regular fans across the nation. More than any other development, fantasy football brought those fans together and provided them a cause to care about each and every club nationwide

America's sport is the NFL, and it doesn't seem like that will change anytime soon